20 Years Development Of Sports Shoes: Inspiration From Technology Competition

Science and technology have become the basic elements of the development of this industry today.

"Technology business" is so powerful.

In the past June, there was a major event that shocked the sports world.

On the evening of June 2nd, O'neal, a 39 year old NBA player, suddenly announced the news on Twitter, announcing that he would lift his contract with the Celtics for a year ahead of schedule and end his 19 year career.

A generation of NBA legend retired.

O'neal announced less than 24 hours of retirement. He liked his fans quickly to sort out all the sneakers introduced by O'neal in his 19 year career and put them on the Internet for fans to recall.

From the Reebok series, which he endorsed at the beginning of his career, to the Lining series endorsed by his late career, each pair of shoes can recall countless wonderful memories of leather shoes fans.

O'neal's career in the past 20 years is exactly the fastest growing 20 years in the sports shoes industry.

From his sneakers, we can clearly see the development and evolution of sports shoes, and see how the power of technology gives the new life of the traditional footwear industry.

Nike, the subversive

The NBA arena before 1970s is still CONVERSE's world.

CONVERSE was born in 1908. In the early years, most athletes in NBA wore CONVERSE's canvas shoes to compete.

Today, the circular logo on CONVERSE's high quality canvas shoe upper is commonly seen at the beginning of the design, in order to protect the ankle better through such a rigid logo.

This is almost the prototype of basketball shoe technology.

The market for sports shoes outside basketball is the world of Adidas, founded in 1948.

In 1954, the German team won the World Cup championship by virtue of Adidas's rotary soccer shoes with rotary embedded studs, which laid the dominant position of Adidas in the field of football shoes.

Since then, Adidas has continuously strengthened its technological superiority in the field of football shoes, and extended the influence of brand to other sports.

By the time Nike became popular in 1970s, Adidas had become the world's top sports brand.

Although Adidas has accumulated certain scientific and technological strength in football field, the particularity of football project determines that more scientific and technological content, such as stud technology, can not be extended to other popular products.

The demand for professional products and popular products is not exactly the same, which makes Adidas's experience accumulated in the field of professional football for a long time.

This also resulted in CONVERSE, the overlord in the field of basketball shoes.

In half a century, CONVERSE's products have changed little in details, including material and other details.

In the era of Adidas and CONVERSE, the sports shoes industry developed slowly until Nike was born.

At the very beginning, Nike appeared with a unique image. It did not choose to compete with the giants at that time. Instead, it grabbed the jogging market that was just emerging and ignored by Adidas. It launched a sports shoes suitable for public wear and quickly stood firm.

The disruptive change brought by Nike is that it really introduces the power of technology to this traditional industry.

Today, "air cushion technology" has become synonymous with Nike.

It is difficult to verify who first introduced the concept of "slow motion" into sports shoes, but it is certain that Nike's Air air cushion technology will bring the idea of "slow shock" to the extreme.

In the decades since the birth of the air cushion, slow shock technology has become an eternal theme in the development of sports shoes.

In 1977, Frank Rudy, a spaceflight engineer, presented a bold idea at the time to Nike founder Phil Knight, which injected air into durable and flexible films, so that shoes could be cushioned.

The two hit it off quickly, and Nike quickly collaborated with Rudy.

After 9 months of hard work, a revolutionary new technology for earthquake mitigation was born. Nike named this innovative achievement Air, and the Chinese call it "air cushion technology".

The Air air cushion is lighter than any foam used in the midsole (part of the soles and insoles). What's more, it is not as slow as other midsole materials for the time lapse.

Most of the sneakers were made of rubber materials. With the increasing number of stampede, the midsole will be deformed, thus losing the shock absorption effect.

But air cushion technology solves this problem very well.

The first pair of sneakers using Nike Air technology is Tailwind in 1979.

In 1982, Nike first applied the Air Sole air cushion to basketball shoes, thus creating Air Force 1, which was later praised as "the greatest basketball shoe in Nike history" by countless shoe fans.

Air cushion technology has injected new vitality into the depressed sports shoes industry at that time.

In 1984, Nike signed a price of $500 thousand to sign Mike Jordan, who was also nameless at that time.

In 1985, Nike launched the first generation of signature shoes for Jordan, carrying the air cushion technology Air Jordan 1.

At that time, according to the NBA requirements, the players wore shoes with a predominantly white tone, but the shoes used the red and black colors of the bull's Jersey.

The league has banned Jordan from wearing the shoes again, otherwise he will be fined once every time he wears a game.

But Nike prefers to pay a fine for Jordan rather than pay attention to the rules of the alliance.

The union raised the fine from the initial $1000 per session to the last $5000, but in order for more people to see their air cushion technology, Nike still went its own way.

With the rapid rise of Jordan, more and more Americans know about Nike, and know the amazing air cushion technology.

At this point, Nike has begun to threaten CONVERSE's position in NBA.

In fact, CONVERSE didn't have the chance to block Nike before it grew stronger.

In 1980s, CONVERSE actually held a good hand.

At that time, CONVERSE had NBA's most influential "black and white double" - "big bird" Bird and "magician" Johnson. Their endorsement of Weapon series basketball shoes had a good market reaction.

At that time, Jordan, the "God of basketball", was only a prime minister.

Although in the 1984 rookie season, Jordan became the league's scoring champion, but at this time he really boarded the "altar" to win the first "three consecutive champions" in 7 years.

However, CONVERSE has not been able to take advantage of this brand.

Although the Weapon series has made significant progress compared with the previous basketball shoes, it has only been optimized in terms of material and shape.

Compared with Nike's Air Force 1 and Air Jordan 1, there is hardly any technology content.

Products are not powerful, and good spokesmen are useless.

CONVERSE can only watch Nike eating its site a little bit.

With its new air cushion technology and smart marketing strategy, Nike rose rapidly after the 80s of last century.

In 1984, Nike's sales amounted to $900 million, and by 1997, this figure had been $9 billion 190 million.

More importantly, through the wide application of air cushion technology to all kinds of products, Nike has enabled the masses to really enjoy the convenience of technology sports shoes for the first time.

The rise of Nike makes more and more sports brands realize the importance of science and technology, which directly promotes the upgrading and pformation of the whole industry.

Science and technology melee in 90s

"This is the best and the worst of times."

This is undoubtedly the best commentary on the sports shoes industry in 1990s.

Well, in the past 10 years, all kinds of sports brands have been flourishing, and all kinds of dazzling technologies have been launched. The whole industry has made a qualitative leap for the first time.

The shock absorption technology that helped Nike to rise rapidly in 1980s has become the theme of unchanged brand competition in 1990s.

In the past 10 years, Nike has continued to optimize its air cushion technology, and has continuously developed subdivision products on the basis of early Air Sole air cushion.

In 1995, the Zoom Air air cushion was developed for speed players. The Air air cushion was poured into the airbag with built-in elastic three-dimensional fabric, so that the feet were closer to the ground and the stability of the shoes was strengthened.

After more than ten years of development, Nike's damping technology has become more mature.

Until the late 1980s, faced with Nike's aggressive attack, the old CONVERSE realized the seriousness of the problem.

In 1991, CONVERSE finally developed a React shockproof system to compete with Nike's Air air cushion.

What is the React shock absorber system?

Simply speaking, it is a kind of "oil bag" containing compressed liquids.

It is generally placed in the main stress area of the heel of the shoe, using the mobility and pressure elasticity of the stored liquid to achieve shock absorption and power supply.

Although there is a "oil bag" vulnerability, it must be admitted that React technology is not inferior to Nike's Air products at the same time.

With the success of CONVERSE's advertising strategy, sports shoes equipped with React technology also received good market feedback.

React helped CONVERSE temporarily recover its decline and gained a foothold in the early 90 years of last century.