David Rosenthal: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Is it the Blue Ribbon shoes design company owns the design, and they hired a contract manufacturer? Or is it more like, oh, we just gave you a little suggestion idea, and we BRS don't own anything. Yup. The relationship complicates a little bit here. It's no longer just, hey, we're the American distributor of Tigers. Bowerman and Phil want to call the shoe. They actually want to borrow from the Adidas playbook and call the shoe the Aztec ahead of the Mexico City Olympics. Adidas has been doing this for years. They always come out with new shoe models ahead of whatever the Olympics is in the world every four years. Adidas, of course, has already beaten them to the punch. They have trademarked a shoe that they're coming out with called the Azteca Gold. I don't know if it's Blue Ribbon or Onitsuka decides that the Aztec is too close to that. Legend has and knowing these men, I assume this is quite true, Bowerman is casting about for other ideas for names of the shoe. He says to Knight, what was the name of that Spanish guy that kick the you know what out of the Aztecs? Knight is like, oh, that's Cortez. Thus, the Blue Ribbon/Tiger Cortez is born. Naming aside, the nylon uppers are a huge innovation, and this becomes a big hit. I bet someone out there is wearing Nike Cortezes right now. It's become a lifestyle shoe and less of a running shoe, because the definition of a running shoe has changed dramatically. The fascinating thing is if you look down at your Nike Cortez or you Google a picture of it, it's basically exactly the same as the thing that they came out with. But when they came out, it had the Onitsuka now ASICS' design on it, not the swoosh.…

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