Howdy y’all. Just putting up a quick post that we have a second round of eBay auctions up now until 6/19/2023 and this lot includes some really rare pairs of 1970’s and 80 sneakers. If you’re interested in buying any pairs you can check out the auction at our eBay shop! Good luck!
The Deffest vintage sneaker eBay auctions.
We’re going to open up this blog post by asking a simple question:
Was Kinney’s NBA brand of sneakers actually made by Nike?
Kinney NBA Nike “Le Village” style sneakers
Image credit: Nike Le Village brown leather vintage sneakers over at GOAT.com
Part II - Kinney Shoe Store NBA brand sneakers
A few days ago we posted about Nordstrom’s Norsport brand of sneakers and today we’re back and looking at another brand that Phil Knight mentioned working with on the Nike ‘Futures’ program. In his book Shoe Dog Kinney was named as one of Nike’s biggest retailers so we thought it was worth checking out. Before we get going we want to note that this blog post is just a speculative theory based on a some observations and a lot of reading on Nike’s history.
From Shoe Dog:
“I had an idea. Why not go to all of our biggest retailers and tell them that if they’d sign ironclad commitments, if they’d give us large and nonrefundable orders, six months in advance, we’d give them hefty discounts, up to 7 percent?
This way we’d have longer lead times, and fewer shipments, and more certainty, and therefore a better chance of keeping cash balances in the bank. Also, we could use these long-term commitments from heavyweights like Nordstrom, Kinney, Athlete’s Foot, United Sporting Goods, and others, to squeeze more credit out of Nissho and the Bank of California… I told them that this program, which we were calling “Futures.””
Which brings us to the Kinney NBA sneakers and their flipped swoosh logo.
Kinney NBA 1977 vintage sneaker ad
Was Kinney’s NBA brand of shoes made by Nike? The idea of this might seem absurd but after looking into it we think… maybe, yes. Kinney NBA sneakers were infamous for their short lived upside down Nike swoosh and 4 stripe logos that were used in the late 1970’s. The Kinney NBA line of sneakers was mentioned at the bottom of this Sneaker Freaker article last year titled “10 More Of The Most Stupidly Expensive Sneakers Ever” and the article hits on some popular notions about these NBA branded sneakers. The main idea is that Nike must have hated the theft and flipping of their swoosh logo. From the Sneaker Freaker article:
During the 1980s, the NBA ‘Choice of the Pros’ sneaker brand just went for broke and ripped everyone else off. As you’d expect they didn’t stick around for too long. I don’t think Nike appreciated the flipped Swoosh, nor adidas the Four Stripe. As blatantly tacky as they are, if you want a pair of these vintage lookalikes you're going to have to part with a few grand.
The quote above seems to summarize the conventional thinking on the NBA brand of sneakers. But what if the conventional thinking is wrong? Could these sneakers have been made by Nike? It’s possible and we get into why and how below.
Kinney was a kind of shoe store that does not exist anymore. These ‘family shoe’ stores were along the lines of other now-defunct mall shoe outlets like Thom McAn or Fayva and in the late 70’s and 80’s almost exclusively carried their own in-house brand of shoes. To understand why Nike would be in an arrangement to make private label sneakers for Kinney we took a look at who Kinney was and what was going on at the time.
Kinney Shoes founded Foot Locker.
Kinney Shoe stores was owned by the large department store called Woolworth. Woolworth was a chain similar to a modern day Target or Walmart. Kinney Shoes also founded Foot Locker in 1974. Why does this matter? Nike was founded in 1972 and as a new brand probably wanted to forge a solid relationship with Foot Locker as an athletic shoe outlet that could offer Nike larger distribution.
More on Nike’s relationship with Kinney from Swoosh:
One of the first dealers Moodhe tried Futures on was Ted Bertrand of Foot Locker. Foot Locker was a division of Kinney Shoes, the family chain that was part of the Woolworth empire. From its very first day, Foot Locker had smart merchandising, ready money, and commitment from the top.
Based on everything we’ve read it sounds like Kinney Shoes was seen as an ally and business partner to Nike.
THE VINTAGE NIKE LE VILLAGE MODEL SNEAKERS
Image credit: Vintage Nike Le Village Brown and White sneakers at GOAT
The vintage Nike Le Village line of brown leather shoes was a very specific model of sneaker. It was basically an upscaled leather Cortez meant for leisure and not really for sports. Outside of the Kinney NBA shoes there was no other brand at the time that made a shoe that looked like the Le Village. Below we posted some photos of the Kinney NBA Le Village shoes. There are subtle differences with the Nike version but similar to what we saw in the Norsport waffle trainer styled shoes these look like a more ‘basic’ version of the Nike shoe with the side stitching in slightly different locations.
We’ve heard that these sneakers were merely ‘copycat’ designs ripping off Nike’s sneakers but the thing that doesn't add up with the 'copycat' idea is that Kinney and Nike were working closely together during this time through the 'Futures' program. It would seem to be a bad business strategy if Kinney was both working with Nike on one side of the equation and knocking Nike off at the same time. If Nike was willing to make Norsport shoes for Nordstrom then maybe Kinney NBA was a similar arrangement. Nike would have wanted to maintain a solid relationship with Kinney Shoe Stores knowing that they were about to open up the Foot Locker line of stores. This is speculation but you can imagine two brands who were closely connected might have found the incentive to work out a deal.
Policing the Swoosh image credit: Print Mag
Phil Knight famously liked to hire lawyers and accountants during the early years of Nike. For all of the passages dedicated to lawsuits and big fights with Tiger and the US Government in his book Shoe Dog the book is also suspiciously quiet on the topic of Kinney NBA and brands that ripped off the Nike swoosh logo. There is no mention of a battle with Kinney in the book Swoosh either. You can spend awhile Googling around to try to find a lawsuit or settlement between the two brands and you won’t find anything. Based on the ‘Futures’ quote from Phil Knight above it does not sound like Phil Knight was bitter towards Kinney. Instead he describes Kinney as a business partner.
COMPARISONS TO ANOTHER VINTAGE NIKE SHOE: THE ALL COURT BLAZER CANVAS COPY
The Sneaker Freaker article that we linked to above has an image in it that shows what appears to be another familiar vintage Nike silhouette, the vintage All Court Blazer Low Canvas. There are differences in photography but check out the side by side below. The toe cap is a little different but the metal eyelets and side stripes stitching are very similar.
Image credit to Sneaker Freaker and this eBay listing.
CONCLUSION
We can’t say for sure, but based on the designs and relationship between Nike and Kinney Shoes it is possible that some of the Kinney NBA line of sneakers might have been manufactured by Nike. Beyond the obvious similarities in appearance we have a hard time believing that Phil Knight would let one of Nike’s main retailers directly knockoff their own shoe models without Nike being involved in the production.
Lastly, if this post is correct then this would be the first time that Nike flipped their swoosh logo, pre-dating the factory error Air Jordan 1 “Reverse Shattered Backboard” by almost 40 years. If there are any old Nike staff from around this time who are familiar with the relationship between the two brands please send us a note at the contact page. We’ll update this post if we are able to find more information on it.
We’re going to open up this blog post by asking a simple question:
Was Nordstrom’s Norsport brand of sneakers actually Nike?
UPDATE: We have confirmed that these sneakers were produced by Nike. Info added to the end of this article.
Was Nordstrom’s Norsport brand waffle trainer made by Nike?
Nike and Nordstrom Norsport vintage sneakers compared
NIKE PRIVATE LABEL:
The last time we went down the rabbit hole of some old school Nike we ended up unearthing one of the strangest chapters in the storied brands’ history, the Nike One Line knockoff shoes. In that instance Nike created an unknown-to-most sub-brand in order to fight the US Government’s tariffs and won. Today’s post is like the prequel to the One Line story and along the same lines. Before we get going we want to note that this blog post is just a speculative theory based on a some observations and a lot of reading on Nike’s history. None of the information below is conclusive but we figured it was worth asking some open-ended questions to see if the power of the internet can help us find the answers. If any of the late 70’s / early 80’s Nike team reads this post and has more information please contact us on the contact page.
What is Private Labeling?
Let's start by defining what private labeling means. For those of you not familiar with the concept, private labeling is when a manufacturer creates a product for another retailer under a brand name that is not their own. In most cases the final product on the store shelf does not feature any indication of its origins or the manufacturer behind it. Private labeling still happens all the time. For modern examples I’ll point to this article on who supplies Trader Joe’s private labeled products behind the scenes. Those Pita chips are really Stacy’s brand in a Trader Joe’s bag at a lower price.
Back in the 1970s and early 1980s a common practice was that sporting goods and large department stores outsourced their private labeled in-house generic shoe brands manufacturing to major footwear retailers like Converse and adidas. Many of the sneakers that they produced had 4 stripes or logos that looked similar to real sporting goods brands. One example that we can point to is Sears who worked with both Converse and adidas throughout the 1970s to manufacture their ‘The Winner’ model sneakers. See the Sears catalog pages below from 1974 with both 3 stripe and 4 stripe winner sneakers. One catalog was from the United States and was manufactured by Converse and the other from Simpson-Sears Canadian catalog and manufactured by adidas.
Sears ‘The Winner’ sneakers made by both Converse & adidas in 1974.
Outsourced private labeling in practice
Why would sporting goods and large department stores like Sears outsource their sports shoe manufacturing to other brands? In a word… expertise. Sears, JC Penney, Nordstrom and others may not have had the inhouse skills required to set up their own sneaker line so instead they outsourced it to brands like adidas and Converse that were already successful in footwear. These department stores wanted to give their customers similar styles sneakers at a lower cost and it makes sense that they would not want to spend the time or money to design their own shoes and set up an entire manufacturing supply chain. With the private label setup they just had to come up with their own brand name, make minor changes to a product that already existed and then slap some branded labels on it. It was easier to outsource it.
It might seem counterintuitive to create a brand for other companies but from the sneaker manufacturer’s side of this deal they also must have benefited from this arrangement as well. Some of the ways that we can think of this being beneficial for them are the following:
A larger footprint for consumer reach - having products stocked in a department store like Sears gave them national distribution within the Sears network without having to open their own stores across the country.
Premium shelf space within the department store.
Valuable shelf space taken away from their competitors in America’s largest retailers.
Another revenue stream.
On the factory manufacturing side there were also probably benefits including:
Reaching factory order minimums
Testing out new factories capabilities without using their own branded product
Testing possible new designs under another brand name
A big part of this arrangement is that it was usually not brand damaging because in some cases it was hidden from the consumer. Also department stores were not seen as competitors to sporting good brands like Nike and adidas but instead seen as allies. Sears and Nordstrom’s customers would probably be shopping for leisure footwear while Nike and adidas were trying to dominate in the arena of competitive athletic footwear. For a long time we've wondered that if this was such a common practice then was Nike involved in it too? It turns out that they were. The quote below is from the book Swoosh by J.B. Strasser and Laurie Becklund:
“(Jeff) Johnson's duties read like a list of everything Knight wished for and couldn't afford: R&D, inventory control, advertising, promotions, exports, private label sales to other wholesalers, and company newsletters.”
Jeff Johnson was Nike’s first employee. Private label sales to other wholesalers?
Interesting.
Who is J.B. Strasser and Laurie Becklund?
The articles over the next few days are based on the description above from the book Swoosh by J.B. Strasser and Laurie Becklund and Nike co-founder Phil Knight’s book ‘Shoe Dog’ so it’s probably important to understand who the authors are and what their relationship to Nike was.
J.B. Strasser, now Julie Dixon, was a Nike’s first advertising manager. If the name Strasser looks familiar it is because she was married to Rob Strasser, the man who was a pivotal early leader in Nike’s history and brought Michael Jordan into the fold at Nike. Laurie Becklund was J.B. Strasser’s sister and an award-winning former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times.
‘Swoosh: Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There’ is an insider account of early Nike and was verified by multiple sources and early Nike employees. The contents of the book hit so close to home that Nike co-founder Phil Knight threatened to sue J.B. Strasser. From the Seatle Times:
Author Julie Strasser was the Beaverton, Ore.-based company's first advertising manager. Her husband, Rob Strasser, was part of the core management team and a close friend of Nike founder Philip "Buck" Knight. Rob Strasser, who had been associated with the company since the early 1970s, resigned in 1987. Laurie Becklund, co-author, is Strasser's sister and a Los Angeles Times reporter.
Despite Strasser's connections, or perhaps because of them, Knight never agreed to cooperate with her on the book. In fact, he opposed the project and threatened to sue, Strasser says.
Together Strasser and Becklund plowed through 30 years of Nike files and lawsuits, and interviewed most people associated with the company. Despite the lack of written documentation from the early years, Strasser insists "Swoosh" is accurate. In most cases, she says, two or three different sources corroborated information about particular scenes described in the book.
For those of you who have not read Swoosh yet I highly recommend this book if you want to learn about early Nike history. The book was reviewed in the New York Times as 'Chariots of Fire' meets 'Animal House.' It’s a great book and a bummer that it never made it to Kindle.
Sifting through the possibilities
One way to start to figure out which brands Nike made private labeled sneakers for seemed to be to look at the brands that Phil Knight worked closely with in his book Shoe Dog on the Nike ‘Futures’ program. The assumption here is that he’d want to keep these kinds of deals with brands that he had pre-existing business relationships with and trusted. From Shoe Dog:
“I had an idea. Why not go to all of our biggest retailers and tell them that if they’d sign ironclad commitments, if they’d give us large and nonrefundable orders, six months in advance, we’d give them hefty discounts, up to 7 percent?
This way we’d have longer lead times, and fewer shipments, and more certainty, and therefore a better chance of keeping cash balances in the bank. Also, we could use these long-term commitments from heavyweights like Nordstrom, Kinney, Athlete’s Foot, United Sporting Goods, and others, to squeeze more credit out of Nissho and the Bank of California… I told them that this program, which we were calling “Futures.””
This seems like a decent starting point.
Nordstrom seems to have been the main department store that stocked Nike products in the 1970s and 80s. Sears was a bigger department store than Nordstrom at that time but did not stock Nike sneakers in their U.S. catalogs between the mid 1970s and 80s. Both brands had in common that they hailed from the Pacific Northwest, with Nike based in Beaverton, OR and Nordstrom located in Seattle, WA. Here’s more on Nike’s relationship with Nordstrom from Swoosh:
Moodhe mentioned his idea to Knight and Hayes, and a program was developed called "Futures." The idea behind Futures was to offer major customers like Nordstrom an opportunity to place large orders six months in advance, and have them commit to that noncancellable order in writing. In exchange, customers would get a 5 to 7 percent discount and guaranteed delivery on 90 percent of their order within a two-week window of time. If retailers went for it, Blue Ribbon had a unique forecasting tool.
Also, since the shoes were presold, the retailer, not Blue Ribbon, took the risk. That brought up a good point: A big department store chain like Nordstrom had a better credit rating than Blue Ribbon. Shouldn't an order from a blue-chip company count as an asset?
Nordstrom and Nike were close enough to co-sponsor the annual ‘Beat the Bridge’ running event starting in 1982. In the early years of this event Nordstrom silk screened the shirts onto Nike blank ringer t-shirts. It seems like there was a level of coordination happening between the two brands.
Nordstrom vintage Nike 'Beat the Bridge' tshirt
DESIGN HALLMARKS OF VINTAGE NIKE RUNNING SHOES
Before we look at the Norsport sneakers below I wanted to point out some design attributes on many early Nike runners.
Image credit to Sotheby’s
Nike’s running shoes from the late 70’s and early 80's had some characteristics that set them apart including:
Exposed puffed foam tongue
Multiple ”support system” stitch lines on the side panels
Folder over tongue label with rear text
Stitch line on the top of the rear heel tab
Arrow Pointed stitching on the lace holder (on some not all models)
Outsole waffle patent stamp (on some not all models)
Outsole rectangular stamp (on some not all models)
This era of Nike was mostly manufactured in Korea or Taiwan
LOOKING AT NORDSTROM’S NORSPORT LINE OF SHOES
Based on Phil Knight’s quote from Shoe Dog calling out “Nordstrom, Kinney, Athlete’s Foot, United Sporting Goods, and others" we decided to look at Nordstrom’s in-house brand called Norsport. Below is an ad for Norsport and a comparison of Norsport’s shoes vs Nike silhouettes of around the same time.
Do any of these sneakers look familiar?
Norsport Cortez, Waffle trainer, and Wimbledon model vintage sneakers compared with similar Nike models.
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE VINTAGE NORSPORT “WAFFLE TRAINER”
These old school Norsport waffle trainer style runners share some of the distinct features of vintage Nike’s including:
Exposed puffed foam tongue
Multiple ”support system” stitch lines on the side panels (with slightly different spacing.)
Folder over tongue label with rear text
Stitch line on the top of the rear heel tab
Made in Taiwan.
The shoe below is a more ‘basic’ version of the waffle trainer without the Nike waffle sole.
…AND ALSO THE VINTAGE NORSPORT “WAFFLE TRAINER” ROLLER SKATES
This is from back in the day when they’d take a regular sneaker and anchor it to a roller skate platform with some screws.
CONCLUSION
We can’t say for sure but based on the sneaker designs and relationship between Nike and Nordstrom it seems possible that these sneakers might share a common manufacturer in Nike. Beyond the obvious similarities in appearance we have a hard time believing that for as much as Phil Knight liked to hire lawyers that Nike would let one of their main distributors directly knockoff one of their own shoe models without Nike being involved in it. From a strategy perspective if Nike occupied two shelf spaces in a store with both a real Cortez and a Norsport Cortez that shelf space for the Norsport sneaker is a space taken away from adidas, Brooks, Saucony, Etonic or other competitors. Nike would make money on the sale no matter if the real Cortez or fake Cortez sold. Seems like a solid enough strategy.
Questions or comments - please reach us on the contact page. If we find more information we will update this post.
UPDATE: Following up on the post from yesterday to confirm that the Norsport sneaker line was co-produced between Nike and Nordstrom. Big thank you to @goodbirger on Instagram for unearthing this vintage Norsport advertisement below.
