A struggle for the sole

• Blackspot sneakers strike a defiant, anti-corporate stance

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Jan 4, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Blackspot sneakers are designed to give Nike co-founder (and now former chief executive officer) Phil Knight “a kick in the ass,” according to Adbusters, the “anti-corporation” that makes them. The question is, how many people want to walk around in a metaphor?

After 18 months of talk, the “fair trade” sneakers began arriving in people’s mailboxes in November. They sell online for $67.50 plus $11.50 shipping within the United States.

Now the consumer has the chance to vote with his or her feet.

“Blackspot came about in a brainstorming session, out of extreme dissatisfaction with Nike,” says Vancouver, Canada-based Kalle Lasn (pronounced kol-lay lazzen). He’s the founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, which is known for its Adbusters magazine and for organizing the annual Buy Nothing Day protest against consumerism.

The fire he’s fighting is “the mind-(messing) cool (Knight)’s created, paying off celebrities and coming up with bogus corporate cool and pushing it down teenagers throats.”

Nike Inc. spokeswoman Caitlin Morris noted that the company does not comment on competitors’ products. She says she doesn’t know whether anyone at the Beaverton campus has come across the shoe.

“Nike is on its own corporate responsibility path, and there really aren’t any lessons here for us to learn,” Morris says. She cites the hemp issue, saying Nike has used hemp (in its skateboarding shoes), and that Nike is one of the world’s largest purchasers of organic cotton and a founding member of the Organic Exchange.

“From a labor perspective I’ve got a compliance team that is focused on improving working conditions in over 900 factories around the world,” she says. “On that scale you have successes and you have ongoing challenges, but we’re committed to that work.”

Lasn, for his part, often talks about “Phil” as if he has a personal relationship with Knight.

“We (culture) jammers and activists have been fighting him for 10 years and nothing happened,” he says.

Culture jammers try to critique corporate dominance and hyperconsumerism by creating parody ads. The idea was to undermine what Lasn calls “mega-corporate capitalism, which seems to be the dominant form of capitalism these days,” by picking on the athletic shoe industry.

“Three or four huge corporations control that one industry. Adidas, Nike and a couple of others control over 90 percent of it,” he says. As the Blackspot Web site puts it: “Our business plan is to cut into his market share, unswoosh his swoosh and give birth to a new kind of cool in the sneaker industry.”

A low-top version of the Chuck Taylor All-Stars style was chosen because in 2003, Nike bought Converse, the maker of All-Stars, long considered a humble, purist sneaker. (John Lennon wore them, Kurt Cobain died in them, Avril Lavigne has a pair.) Adbusters types have been particularly cross about Yoko Ono licensing John Lennon’s image to “Peace Chucks,” which came out last summer.

Lasn, who tends to be brash, fell out with Adam Neiman the president and co-founder of No Sweat Apparel, who at first wanted to help. So Neiman brought out his own No Sweat Converse knockoff last summer, made in Indonesia.

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