Hold the Shoe Phone: Sneaker Makers Making Big Strides in Technology
When it comes to “trash talk,” ain’t no playground hoops or NBA final with the kind of verbal elbows thrown by the all-stars of the sneaker business. Nike Chairman Phil Knight once dissed rival Reebok by asserting that “the most innovative piece of R&D; equipment they have is the copier machine.”
Maybe. But when it comes to recycling trash, Reebok may have a leg up on Nike: The company has announced that its new Telos shoes will consist of 70% recycled materials--featuring rubber from used tires in the soles and plastic bits in the uppers. Nike put one environmentally correct cross-training shoe (with a 10% recycled sole) on the market in January and plans to “green” the rest next year.
Now, who knows if the idea of green footwear will get people’s toes a-wiggling in the $7.5-billion global market in branded sports shoes. This nascent race for the eco-sneaker merely reinforces the odd reality that in America, sports shoes are as much a medium for technological innovation as software or silicon.
As far as the sneaker establishment is concerned, the sole of a new Nike is the soul of a new machine.
“We are just coming into a new age of aggressive engineering,” insists Nike General Manager Thomas E. Clarke, who points out that Nike has reached out to grab materials in everything from girdles to windsurfing sails in its quest to build ever lighter and more flexible shoes. Rapid technology transfer has been an essential part of Nike’s design philosophy.
Nike also helped pioneer “blow-molding” techniques for the ultra-lightweight mid-sole that goes into its phenomenally successful Air shoes. Clarke now expects Nike’s new computer-aided design software to slash its sneaker development time from 15 months to less than a year. Ultimately, those snazzy prototype shoes in spring might be marketed en masse for people’s feet by fall. (Of course, shoeing Uber- athletes from Michael Jordan to Charles Barkley to Bo Jackson doesn’t hurt either.)
Nike insists that these innovation investments are all focused on making your feet feel and perform better. “Everything in our fundamental design revolves around the question, ‘What’s the biomechanical theory here?’ ” says Clarke, who holds a Ph.D in biomechanics and once ran Nike’s research and development center.
The real question that emerges from all these investments in research and development, new materials and manufacturing techniques is whether they represent genuine innovation. Nike has its Air, Reebok has its Pump, ASICs has its gel and L.A. Gear has L.A. lightGEAR footwear, which offers more fiber optics than a telephone network.
“Is this innovation or gimmickry?” asks Kidder Peabody analyst Gary Jacobson. “Are lights innovation or gimmicks? I think it’s all gimmicks. . . . Nike is under the misconception that everybody who buys their shoes is an athlete; companies like L.A. Gear recognize that they’re really in the fashion business.”
Not so fast, says Mark Goldston, the former Reebok executive who, as CEO of L.A. Gear, has struggled to revive it from its near-death experience. Goldston has split his $400-million-a-year company into two parts: L.A. Gear, for fashionable everyday sneaker wear, and L.A. Tech, for the razzle-dazzle, eye-catching shoe tech that he expects to redefine the market. Goldston is betting that L.A. Tech innovations will drive his company’s revival.
“Look,” says Goldston, who launched the Pump at Reebok, “when Sony made transistor radios smaller and smaller, was that just gimmickry or was it real innovation? I think Sony is about technological innovation, not gimmicks. L.A. Tech wants to be like Sony. . . . Nike and Reebok are like Mercedes and BMW--we think that the more technical innovation you have, the more fun it is to drive. . . . We’ve got a patented technology (light-emitting) shoe coming out with a fiber-optic blanket in the tongue and a cartridge in the heel.”
In a few years, says Goldston, he won’t be surprised if L.A. Gear is sticking microprocessors, accelerometers and other kinds of chips into shoes that make noises, track foot speed and measure distance traveled.
“The visual drama is as important as the authenticity,” he says. “The challenge for all of us is to take a fresh group of 13- to 19-year-old consumers and wow them with innovative devices.”
With companies such as Nike, L.A. Gear and Reebok, you have precisely the technological tensions and opportunities that affect Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Sony. At what point is technical innovation merely ornamental? At what point does it fundamentally transform the customer’s perceptions of value? Do larger societal trends such as environmentalism really matter? Or do they distract from the company’s basic business mission?
Every company offers its own answer to those questions, but it’s clear that the sneaker industry today says as much about American industrial innovation as anything going on in Silicon Valley or on Route 128. Indeed, if L.A. Gear’s Goldston is right, the Intels and Motorolas may end up being key suppliers to the sneaker biz.
