Founding father of the Jordan Brand recalls Nike “having the guts” to bet big on Michael Jordan 40 years ago

“Sneakerheads” continue to line up for Nike’s Air Jordans, the most successful basketball shoe in history. The first Air Jordan shoe – the iconic black and red with a Nike swoosh – was released to the public 40 years ago for $65. 

The shoe revolutionized the sneaker industry, but it almost didn’t happen.

Michael Jordan’s game-changing sneaker

Howard White, a Nike veteran and founding father of the Jordan Brand now serving as its senior vice president, was in the room in 1984 with untested NBA rookie Michael Jordan to meet with Nike at its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Jordan was practically dragged into the meeting by his parents, Deloris and James Jordan.

The stakes were high for Nike, then a relatively small sneaker company.

“This was bigger than anything that we’d done. You know, typically a great player would get like a hundred thousand dollars. But this was so unique in terms of just doing it, I mean, just having the guts to make something like this happen,” White explained to “CBS Sunday Morning,” while wearing Christian Dior Jordans, which retail up to $17,000 dollars.

The offer: $2.5 million for Jordan to wear their shoes. That was triple what anyone else in the league was making at the time.

Jordan ended up taking the deal – and the rest is sneaker history. He went on to lead the Chicago Bulls to six championships, while sporting his shoe brand.

Nike hoped the Air Jordan would net them $3 million over four years. Instead, they sold $126 million in year one.

Much of that success is thanks to Jordan’s ability to seemingly defy gravity with his “hang time,” soaring across the paint for legendary dunks. He solidified his nickname “Air Jordan” when he got a perfect score with his free throw line dunk in the 1987 NBA All-Star Slam Dunk Contest. 

Jordan still “very integral to the operation”

Nike’s marketing approach for the Air Jordan was groundbreaking, joining the cultural conversation in ways few ads had before. 

“In order to translate what he did as a man into what we do as a brand, you have to start with the series of principles we call them ethos,” Jason Mayden, chief design officer for the Jordan Brand, told “CBS Sunday Morning.” 

“So you first start with connectivity, why this product has relevance and reverence. Then you put that into a very strict process that we call visionary. And so what’s interesting is we have a playbook. I can’t show you what’s in it but you can see by the outside,” he joked.

The Jordan Brand, a standalone division within Nike, generates some $7 billion for Nike annually. They’ve released a new design every year for the past four decades. Next up: the top secret “Jordan 40.” 

Forty years later, Mayden says Jordan is still involved with the Air Jordan brand.

“He’s very integral to the operation. He sees everything. He trusts us a lot. He has opinions on things that are near and dear to him,” he said.

Bigger than basketball

Sean Williams runs the SOLEcial Studies CommUNITY Academy, a Brooklyn-based program dedicated to studying, promoting and collecting shoes – some 40,000 pairs, he says, since the first Air Jordans came out. He says it has given him his life’s purpose.

“Sneakers are wearable art. So if you take the artistic approach to interpreting a story through certain features on the shoes, certain colorways going behind the design often, and talking to the people who actually design and make these shoes, you’re giving the sneakers a level of depth in AKA storytelling that convinces them, that they’re making the right purchase when they buy these secrets,” Williams explained.

For the Jordan Brand, Air Jordans are bigger than basketball. It’s about empowering people to believe more in themselves.

White, who still talks to Jordan, says he often reminds the basketball legend that Air Jordan’s success is because it’s not actually the story of a shoe.

“If this simple article of footwear can make people interpret themselves in a way that gives them just the power to believe more in themselves. That’s what the Jordan brand is about,” he said.