Almost 20 years ago, Nike set out to craft a shoe that delivers peak performance for athletes while reducing manufacturing waste in the process. In reality, what it created was a war that would give rise to hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars in costs and stretch over years and continents. Inside Nike’s ultra-secretive Beaverton, Oregon headquarters, this shoe took the form of years of intensive research and Nike Air Force 1 Womens NNike Free Run 3.0 Dames Nike Air Huarache Womens development, and expenses that CEO Mark Parker thought the $86 billion sportswear giant might never recoup.
But then in February 2012, Nike debuted what was deemed to be the most momentous innovation in the fiercely competitive, and multibillion-dollar-earning sneaker market in years. It was Flyknit.
The technology, itself, uses yarn and fabric variations to engineer “a featherweight, formfitting and virtually seamless upper.” In addition to “a precision fit,” the woven upper of Flyknit footwear – the first sneakers to bear an upper that consists of a single piece of material, as opposed to one derived from different pieces stitched together – results in little to no waste in the manufacturing process.
With roots at Nike that date back to at least 2000, when the Oregon-based sportswear giant made its very first prototype in working Nike Air Max 97 Womens Nike M2k Tekno Dames to create Adidas Ultra Boost Donne a sneaker with a woven-fabric upper, the technology represents “the right direction for Nike, from both a bottom-line and an environmental perspective,” Parker told the Wall Street Journal in 2015. And it has performed. In the five years since its initial release, sneakers that bear the Flyknit technology have brought in upwards of $1 billion in sales for Nike.
Within five months of the debut of the Nike Flyknit came another striking development: adidas unveiled knitted footwear of its own, Primeknit. Hailing the product as "a first-of-its-kind running shoe,” adidas’ Primeknit was borne from a method that involves digitally knitting a single piece of fused yarn to create a single-thread upper and reduce material waste.
While James Carnes, adidas' head of sport performance design, said at the time that the Primeknit had been Nike Roshe Run Damen Nike Air Max 2017 Donne in Nike Air Max 720 Femme development for three years, and while adidas executives had, for some time, “been quietly telling a select number of footwear industry figures” about their own Primeknit technology, no one was prepared for what was to come ... except maybe Nike.
"Adidas told me they were working on a similar technology to Flyknit," trusted footwear analyst Matt Powell, told OregonLive, "but I had no idea it was this similar."
The likeness of the adidas’ shoe to that of its American rival’s Flyknit was unmistakable.
Adidas called its Primeknit shoe “one of [its] most exciting and sustainable products ever.” Nike called it a copy.And Huston is never short of sponsors. He currently represents the drink company Monster Energy and Hawkers Sunglasses Co. as well as Nike SB, of course, and the ever-present Element Skateboards.
Even with all the young Nike Air Max 90 Femme Nike Air Max 90 Donnepro-Nike Air Max 90 Mujer skater talent in the skating world, Huston’s accomplishments are extreme for his 23 years. And if that’s not enough, he has Tokyo 2020 in his sights — skateboarding’s first foray into the Olympics. He speaks of qualifying in 2019 as something that is a matter of course. He says he hopes there will be a good skate park with an inclusive format that everyone can be “stoked” on, including some big rails for him.