Nice Kicks: Well, since you are the one that has seen the inside and outside of each stage of all three shoes, which one is your favorite and why?
Jason Petrie: I had a lot of favorites along the way in building the shoe. My favorite model of the three is probably the V2. I’m right there along with everybody else. The PS is right behind that. That’s a tough one for me. I’ll go with the V2 because I love that full Max unit. I’d rather play in the PS, but I’d rocked the V2 if I’m just walking around. There’s a couple of colors that changed my mind a little bit. You guys have seen the “Dunkman” V1 pair that is absolutely sick. We had a very early colorway that was grey with orange and black. We were going to try to get him to wear it on Christmas Day. It’s been one of my favorites since the beginning. There’s a V2 we did early on that’s just ridiculous. I don’t even know if I can say what it looks like, but I have one sitting in my office. It’s probably my favorite one of the whole bunch.
Nice Kicks: This innovative concept of three shoes in one season is undoubtedly groundbreaking in terms of signature lines. Will this become the norm in LeBron’s line and/or other signature lines within the Nike brand?
Jason Petrie: It’s innovative only in the sense of LeBron and his new mindset. Anybody can make three shoes, but we just kind of felt like LeBron was going through this transformation. So, we just thought we could kind of ride along with this transformation. So, it’s kind of a double edged sword in that regards. It just kind of worked for this year. We may or may not use this concept again, but I just think it was a cool moment in time, and I just think we were able to tell a really deep story about LeBron in this way.
Nice Kicks: With LeBron switching multiple shoes throughout the season, does the break-in period of a shoe become a factor for either LeBron or your average consumer who may want to play in all three during the duration of a season?
Jason Petrie: We worked with him all along the way, and we try to build the shoes to where you’re not having to go break them in. We want them to feel great right out of the box. But, LeBron has these shoes months and months in advance before he puts them on the court. So, he already knows the feel of them. He had on the PS months ago. He was wearing the V2 before the regular season started. He knows what’s coming, and he is able to give us feedback. It may not be right at first just like the PS I was telling you about earlier. So, it gives us a chance to go back in and alter things. We want it to be perfect for him when it’s time to put it on the court.
Nice Kicks: Many consumers obviously love LeBron’s signature line, and there are a lot of basketball players who praise the LeBron Soldier series just as much. If you continue to design multi-sneaker concepts for LeBron, do you think it will take away from the Soldier series or exclude it all at once?
Jason Petrie: The Soldier series will stick around. It’s sort of become LeBron’s team shoe. It’s for the soldiers, you know? It’s something that will now come out in the fall at the start of the college basketball season. So, it’s just a little bit of a different cadence now. LeBron wanted the playoff shoe to be an extension of this regular season shoe. He still wants to offer the Soldier because it provides the perfect solution for that team situation. We still want that to be apart of the line. You’ll see him wearing it in warm-ups or at a camp or something.
“We all love it, and we would be talking about it even if we were not working on the shoes, so it’s just great to be able to talk about ideas and have them come to life. That’s just the power of Nike.”– Jason Petrie |
Nice Kicks: Lastly, was there any special things or places you and the Nike design team visited when going through the creation process of the three-sneaker Nike LeBron 8 concept?
Jason Petrie: The team that creates LeBron’s products is very close. We do a lot of stuff together. We take trips to Asia, New York, Cleveland or wherever. We’re always talking about sports, LeBron, Kobe, KD, Nike and competition. So, there’s always ideas being thrown out. We’re always talking about the next shoe, and that’s constantly going on. Really, it formulated through those conversations. We had a bunch of sessions where we got together and hashed things out. Our team got together with LeBron and had conversations about what we wanted to do and what he was thinking. Once we did a couple of those things, the shoe starts to build itself in certain ways. Through all of that time, I’m sketching and trying to build it that way organically. I actually went to Asia for the More Than a Game tour for the Nike Air Max LeBron VII and was working on the LeBron 8. I spent a couple of weeks in Asia, and then I went to meet up with LeBron in Paris and then came back and spent another week in Taiwan working on these. I came back with early samples of the V1 and V2. Those two weeks, armed with the experiences our team leading up with that, I was able to come home with a good sample. Of course, it changed because of more discussions and meetings, but we knew we had something. It was just all about refining and testing it and making sure it was perfect for LeBron. If anything, I always like to get a week in North Carolina to clear my head, and just come back with a little Chick-Fil-A and sweet tea in my system and I’m ready to work. Really, we’re always talking about it. It never stops. That’s the good thing about work around here. We all love it, and we would be talking about it even if we were not working on the shoes, so it’s just great to be able to talk about ideas and have them come to life. That’s just the power of Nike.
Click here to see detailed photos of the evolution of never-before-seen Nike LeBron 8 samples.
