Exclucity DIX30 Grand Opening Recap w/ Gentry Humphrey

Now that Kanye’s signing with adidas, is there a possibility of a Red October release?

To be honest with you, we’re not actually sure of what;s going to happen now. With the whole situation now and how it’s laid out, it’s not totally defined. I don’t wanna be premature and say what’s going to happen because we really don’t know.

Nike ID is a great program available in the US, but is it ever going to be marketed in Europe?

Interesting question, but again not a question that’s really in my world. Again, my world is truly product creation, so [first let me] give you guys an idea of what I do—I have a team of people that I work with. In our world, we have what’s called product marketing folk, product developers, and we have designers. in my team, we have a group of designers who actually are on pen and paper and are actually on the computer and look at product, and we design. products are designed based on information that they get from product marketing folks–people who will go out and talk to consumers and look at whatever sport they’re in, in my case basketball, and they’ll find out what are some of the new concepts that we can come up with or ideas that we might wanna address and they’ll communicate those ideas and well come up with a story line for it and well actually make it happen. Product developers actually take that product and work with our factories to make that shoe possible–so we have a two dimensional sample. That’s kind of the process and what I do.

When it comes to doing Nike ID, what I do is tell that department, “Hey I’m cool with you putting this [model] in the ID format,” or sometimes it’s
“No, I don’t want you using this material or That material.” I can’t tell you when Nike ID is gonna make it out this way [in Canada or in Europe], but I can tell you it is a major initiative.

Can we talk a bit about the Oregon shoe situation and the players involved? How are the shoes getting out and are there any consequences for the athletes?

This is an odd one for me. For instance, college athletes today–and this is my personal opinion–I think that there are a lot of programs out there that take advantage of college athletes. They’re bringing a lot of revenue in for schools and there’s a lot of college athletes that don’t have the means to do a lot–some people say they’re getting a free education and that’s good enough, But we look at what some of the universities are getting [in terms of revenue] and to me, I think there should be some sort of [exchange]. And I only say that because when an athlete happens to get something and chooses to do whatever he wants to do with it, it’s kind of on him but we kind of perpetuate him to do the wrong thing if we don’t help take care of him. I think in the situation of the Oregon players, they’ve been given some product that was obviously meant for them, they should protect it and treat it with respect, but they’re 18-19 year old kids, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. There’s not much you can necessarily do to avoid it.

So in the situation of the two athletes, they paid the price–one got suspended for a whole season, so that’s a pretty big deal especially for an athlete who’s trying to get exposure and has aspirations to be on the next level. Then at the end of the day, what it ultimately does is it takes the whole thing where one bad apple spoils it for the rest–there’s going to be a lot less of that stuff going out there. Coaches are gonna be a lot less likely [to do these deals] because they don’t want their players suspended. You control it to the degree, but they’re young.