We might never have had Nike’s Jordan shoe line had it not been for Michael Jordan’s mom.
The first Nike Air Jordans were worn by Michael in 1984 when he played for the Chicago Bulls. The shoes were then made publically available a year later, and in the three decades since the shoe line launched it has become one of the biggest and most recognizable assets for the brand. However, it didn’t always seem like it was going to end that way.
Michael Jordan worked with Nike because his mom told him to
In a docuseries called The Last Dance, which is available on Netflix, Michael Jordan spoke about how he came to work with Nike. He said it was his mom, Deloris, who convinced him to work with them. He had been adamant at the time he would work with a big rival of Nike, Adidas. However, he also met with Converse, though they decided not to produce anything in partnership with the now 60-year-old as they were already working with other huge sports stars like Larry Bird.
“My mother said, ‘You’re gonna go listen. You may not like it, but you’re gonna go listen. She made me get on that plane and go listen,” Michael explained in the TV series, “[I] go into that meeting not wanting to be there, and Nike made this big pitch. My father said, ‘You’d have to be a fool not taking this deal. This is the best deal.’”
The celebrity then signed onto a $250,000 deal. What Nike had offered him was twice what Adidas had and it came with a signature shoe – one which has become a fashion and pop culture staple. Nike apparently expected to sell $3 million in Air Jordans in the products’ first three years and instead ended up selling $126 million.
He said in another interview that before signing with them, he had never worn a Nike shoe.
“You know what, the thing is, I never wore Nike shoes until I signed the Nike contract. All throughout college, we wore Converse, and up to that point, my favorite shoe was Adidas shoes. At that time, when everybody was trying to recruit me about what shoes to wear, I was pro-Adidas the whole time.
“And once I went through the presentation with Nike, they really made a great effort of having my input on the shoe, any shoes that I wanted to wear,
Everyone wanted him to work with the brand
It wasn’t just Michael Jordan’s parents who wanted him to work with Nike. His agent, David Falk, said he just couldn’t get the basketball player to agree and so had to enlist the help of his mom.
“Adidas was really dysfunctional by that time,” Falk said. “And they had just told me, ‘Look, we’d love to have Jordan, we just can’t make a shoe work at this point in time.’ I wanted Michael to go with Nike because they were the big upstart. I couldn’t even get him to get on the damn plane and go visit the campus,” said Falk.
Since the original pair was put onto the market, there have been 35 new pairs with one coming out every year since their debut. It’s estimated Air Jordan’s has made over a billion dollars for Nike, so we think it’s safe to say Michael’s mom was right to push him in Nike’s direction.
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