The Starbury Basketball Shoe

Sneaker Factory came across this interesting podcast to share from NPR’s Planet Money, Episode 785: The Starbury.

Stephon Marbury Makes a $15 Sneaker

Back in 2006, New York Knicks player, Stephon Marbury, had an opportunity to license and sell his own basketball shoe, The Starbury, as cheap as possible. It sold for $15. Did people buy it? Did it perform? Planet Money reviews the details of this sneaker experiment, including an analysis from cutting a Starbury basketball shoe in half to compare it to the materials used to make a $100 Nike Air Jordan.

Download or listen to the entire story here:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/21/538621509/episode-785-the-starbury

When Stephon Marbury was eight years old, the Nike Air Jordan sneakers came out. Kids everywhere wanted to fly

like Michael Jordan on the basketball court, and they wanted to wear the sneakers with his name on them too. But they were pricey. Stephon couldn’t afford them. Lots of kids couldn’t. For years, he wondered if there was a different way.

Two decades later, he had a chance to try a different way himself. When he was an NBA star, Marbury got approached by clothing company Steve & Barry’s. They had a crazy idea for a sneaker, and they thought Marbury might be just the celebrity to get behind it.

Today on the show: The story of what happened when an athlete used his name not to make a shoe more expensive than it needed to be but to make it as cheap as humanly possible.

We look at this experiment and the strange problems that arise when you make a shoe that’s so much cheaper than the competition. We also find out what Stephon Marbury is doing right now, on the other side of the world, with another big plan to try a different way of doing things.

Story from NPR Planet Money Episode 785: The Starbury, July 21, 2017, By Kenny Malone/NPR

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/21/538621509/episode-785-the-starbury