Exclucity DIX30 Grand Opening Recap w/ Gentry Humphrey

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Do you think it’s beneficial when Nike offers outsiders a look into their design process and what goes on in headquarters?

I hope it helps people because people can see the design of the shoes when they come out, but they don’t really know much more of how it came out and they don’t really have the forum to ask someone “why this” or “why that.” Hopefully it just provides some insight that allows them to respect the process of what we do. For me, there’s a lot of kids out there that just love sneakers and love sports–this industry is way different from what it used to be. If you love sports and you can get into this industry then you can be be a part of sports really, really fast. If you’re good in accounting, there’s room for you to work in Nike to work with numbers. Whatever you do well, this industry has opportunities for you because it’s such a big industry. There’s lots of opportunities to develop in this world.

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Will [other countries] get the Kobe Prelude Pack?

The Prelude pack is a super, super tight pack, but I really don’t know. But what I will tell you is that there is a plan after the Prelude Pack to bring back a couple of retro Kobe’s.

Are the Kobe 9’s coming out in a low cut version as well?

Yes.

Back to Kobe–were there any other Jordan samples that he used to wear before he got his line made for him?

Yes, so that whole thing…Kobe was leaving adidas and in his contract in leaving adidas, they said that he couldn’t wear any one shoe for more than a three game period. we didn’t know at the time if Kobe was going to the Jordan side or with Nike, so what we did was both Nike Basketball and Jordan, and since [the adidas exit contract said] he can’t wear any one shoe for more than three games, we’ll just have a bunch of shoes ready for him. And with JB, which was where I was at the time, we did a 3, a 7, a 8, and a 9 which he never wore.

Are those ever going to come out?

You know, I don’t know. the Jordan guys…to me, they should bring them back. I’m not over at JB anymore, so I don’t know what their plans are for them, but I would if I was them [laughs].

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Is Nike doing anything with Andrew Wiggins? [Editor’s Note: Andrew Wiggins is a Canadian college athlete who plays basketball for the University of Kansas and is considered to be the top pick for the 2014 NBA Draft]

As of right now, no. I was thinking that he’s a college athlete, so we can’t do anything with him right now. i actually had the chance to see Andrew Wiggins when he was in eighth grade and he sat in on some focus groups, and even back then I was going around telling people: “This dude is the truth!” I was telling a bunch of people about him a couple of years ago, but it’ll be interesting to see this class that’s coming out now–they’re great athletes. Jabari Parker, there’s a lot of them. i love them because i got pretty close with them, so I’d love to see them become Nike Athletes one day but I don’t know yet.

You talked about retroing Kobes, but what about Lebrons?

I’ve been lobbying for that for a little bit and i’m dying to bring back the Zoom Generation, but we’ll see. We’re working on some things and we’re going to bring it over the top. To me, it’s time, but there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen on that one.

Four years ago, the whole NSW Olympic Collection played off different graffiti artists around the world–what can we expect with the upcoming Olympics in Brazil?

This one really, is so football and soccer oriented. I’ll just put it this way, there’s an aesthetic that the soccer group is working on that is pretty bold. that’s really all I can say. Until it comes out can’t really say much. Again, being that we’ve got a lot of things coming out especially between January and June, I don’t want to divulge too much, but it’s bold and expressive–I’ll put it that way.

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Why wasn’t LeBron [James] wearing the 11’s [earlier in the season]?

Actually, Lebron has some very, very specific needs. If you remember where he was over the last couple of years we had different air bags for shoes, and I think the great thing about Lebron is that he’s been a great athlete to work with. I think as he’s started to mature, he’s been more open to doing things a little bit different and this was a little bit of a different switch, going away from a [basic] air product and now straight zoom air bag in the shoe, so we just had to tweak some things to get it right for him. I mean, he’s 6’8″ and 265 pounds, and he’s putting a lot of stress on the shoe. Usually we have wear tests that we do with all our athletes, and he wear tested it but during practice, they’re not going as hard as they always go, so we just had to make a couple of tweaks to it just from a comfort standpoint.

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