Long read, conspiracy theories on why the mass release Pippen 1 wasn't a Zoom shoe.
Allegedly, Pippen was offered a Foamposite at somepoint and turned it down, saying he wanted a sig.
He did of course wear the Foam Pro for a little while, but that was after his first sig shoe dropped.
Now, if he wanted a sig shoe, why did he have relatively little input into its design.. maybe he really was too busy, but
lets think about it another way for a bit.
I'm wonderng if the design got 'hijacked' somewhere along the line.
The skeptic in me thinks the mass release shoe may have ended up as an Air Max shoe due to... money/marketing.
He Wore the OG full length Uptempos, the More Uptempos, the Uptempo 3, there was a fairly well established trend there
in terms of the type of shoe he wore, or was expected to wear.
There's also the profit margin...
The ZF96 was,.. what? $125 back in the day?
In terms of construction the (Zoom) Pippen 1 probably wouldn't have been substantially different...
Okay, lets say they tack on an extra $10 because it was Pippens sig... so $135 for the Zoom Pippen 1.
How much could they charge for an AIR MAX Pippen 1, an extra $15? (or was it as much as $160 new?)
How much extra would it cost to put an Air Max unit in the Pippen 1?
My guess would be its disproportionately low relative to how much they could charge for it,
and IIRC it used the same Air unit from the Uptempo 3, and that was used in the Total Max as well (?)
Plus a Pippen sig was long overdue, so they could charge a little extra anyway.... maybe they wanted an Air Max unit
to differentiate it a little from the Jordan 12 at the time.
Some random thoughts there... but whenever a shoe doesn't come out the way the designer intended it, or the player is wearing something different,
i always smell $$$ as a motivating factor.
(See also: The original concept drawing for the Penny IV)
Originally Posted by size twelve
oops my bad.. it was aaron cooper, not eric avar. sorry for the mistake.. both of them were interviewed in the very first SLAM issue.
thanks for the correction.
Okay, now im a bit lost: Did Cooper design the first two Pippens, or did Avar design 1, and Cooper 2?