Word: swooshed
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...Swoosh...
...Knight put him in heaven. By paying Jordan and other athletes millions to endorse his shoes, the chairman and CEO of Nike has helped turn them into household names ... [Knight] is the master of the mantra of the age ('Just Do It') and the proprietor of Nike's unmistakable swoosh, the icon that has turned the lowly sneaker into winged sandals ... Knight's stars are frontiersmen, exponents of an in-your-face brand of American optimism. And thus sports, as Knight has asserted, are 'the culture of the U.S.' By exporting the culture he has conquered the world for America...
...chinese covet nike's Swoosh. America loves the iPod. Australians are hooked on a TV show called Idol. And Solomon Islanders have the cult of ramsi. An intervention force may seem an unlikely thing to swoon over, but the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands has pop-star appeal across the 992-island archipelago. The freshly minted brand has gained the status of savior and sorcerer with a long-suffering people, who utter the acronym in respectful whispers or with toothy smiles. From the streets of the ragtag capital, Honiara, to remote villages that the modern world has barely touched...
Phase 1, getting the Swoosh recognized, proved relatively easy. Nike outfitted top Chinese athletes and sponsored all the teams in China's new pro basketball league in 1995. But the company had its share of horror stories too, struggling with production problems (gray sneakers instead of white), rampant knock-offs, then criticism that it was exploiting Chinese labor. Cracking the market in a big way seemed impossible. Why would the Chinese consumer spend so much--twice the average monthly salary back in the late 1990s--on a pair of sneakers...
...wear Adidas (with black tape over the trademark). In 1997, Nike ramped up production just before the Asian banking crisis killed demand, then flooded the market with cheap shoes, undercutting its own retailers and driving many into the arms of Adidas. Two years later, the company created a $15 Swoosh-bearing canvas sneaker designed for poor Chinese. The "World Shoe" flopped so badly that Nike killed...