2004 September « Sneakers and Interactive Media Culture

In many ways, the sleek, four-story building that houses Nike Inc.’s (NKE ) Innovation Kitchen is a throwback to the company’s earliest days. Located on the ground floor of the Mia Hamm building on Nike’s 175-acre headquarters campus in Beaverton, Ore., the Kitchen is where Nike cooked up the shoes that made it the star of the $35 billion athletic footwear industry. In this think tank for sneakers, designers find inspiration in everything from Irish architecture to the curving lines of a Stradivarius violin. One wall displays models of every Air Jordan ever made, while low-rise cubicles are littered with sketches of new shoes. The Kitchen is off limits to most visitors and even to most Nike employees. The sign on the door says, only half in jest: “Nobody gets in to see the cooks. Not nobody. Not no how.”

This is where, nearly 20 years ago, Nike star designer Tinker Hatfield came up with the Air Jordan — the best-selling sports shoe of all time. Right now, Hatfield and his team are tallying the results of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. Hatfield and his design geeks produced an array of superfast sneakers for the Games, including the sleek track spike called Monsterfly for sprinters and the Air Zoom Miler for distance runners. As befits a global company, Nike’s sponsored athletes hailed from all over the world. They took home a lot of hardware from Athens, including 50 gold medals and dozens more silver and bronze. In the men’s 1,500-meter run, for instance, Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco grabbed gold, Bernard Lagat of Kenya took the silver, and Rui Silva of Portugal won the bronze. All wore the Air Zoom Miler, while U.S. sprinter Shawn Crawford won the 200-meter gold in a pair of Monsterflys. And Nike apparel had its day in the sun, too. The top four finishers in the men’s 100-meter race all wore the sign of the Swoosh.