According to legend, Namejs was the leader of the Semigallian tribes during the early 13th century invasion of Latvia by German crusaders. He was one of the last warriors fighting against foreign occupation at that time. During the battles, Namejs was forced to retreat to Lithuania. Before leaving, Namejs gave his ring to his son with the hope that his son will recognize him upon return. Germans heard about this exchange and began a search for Namejs’ son; they wanted to capture the boy and force him to profess Christianity. In an effort to protect Namejs and his son, nearly all Semigallian boys and men made and wore similar rings. As a result, Namejs became the most popular Latvian ring. Latvian people and friends recognize each other around the world by wearing this particular design.Another legend states that after a battle lost against German knights, Namejs was forced to retreat to Lithuania together with his family and tribe. There Namejs ordered to make those rings and gave them to his closest people as a symbol of friendship and trust. The four close braids in the design express the solidarity of Latvian nation.
Nike Air Max latest running shoe got its start when designers tried to solve a longstanding request from athletes: make Nike Air Jordan 11 es as comfortable as socks.
“We think a lot about what-ifs,” said Ben Shaffer, studio director of Nike’s so-called innovation kitchen. “This was a what-if. What if we made Nike Air Max 95 shoes?”
Cheap nike air max had tried bringing sock attributes to shoes before, starting in the 1980s with a flimsy mesh sneaker called the Sock Racer. More attempts followed, and while offering comfort, they were insufficiently durable for running and other sports.
The world’s largest sporting-goods maker now says it has the solution with Flyknit, a 5.6-ounce nike air max shoes running shoe made from synthetic yarn woven together by a knitting machine. Besides giving Nike Air Max 2010 an edge in the fast-growing lightweight running category, executives say the new weaving process could cut costs enough to move production outside Asia and one day allow anyone to personalize Nike Air Max 180 shoes to their exact specifications.
“This is a complete game changer,” said Charlie Denson, president of the Nike Air Max, while holding a Flyknit after its debut in New York last month. The process cuts costs so much “that eventually we could make these shoes anywhere in the world, which makes things very interesting.”
Flyknit, Men Nike Air Max 2011 costs $150 and hits U.S. stores in July, is the latest product aimed at the minimalist running movement, whose devotees advocate lightweight shoes to reduce injuries. The lightweight category accounted for 30 percent of the $6.5 billion U.S. Women Nike Air Max Skybline running shoe market last year and was responsible for all of its 14 percent growth, according to SportsOneSource, a research firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Top-Selling Shoe
The Nike Air Max, originally a niche product when it appeared in 2004, is now the top-selling running shoe in the U.S., SportsOneSource said. It helped push Nike’s North American footwear sales up 21 percent to $1.31 billion in the three months ended Nov. 30. Running is Nike’s biggest category, generating $2.8 billion in annual global sales, about 50 percent more than basketball and soccer.
Those sales gains have coincided with a surge in Nike’s shares, which have advanced 19 percent in the past 12 months. Nike reached an all-time closing high of $109.24 on March 5.
The sock shoe project started four years ago with a prototype of a sock attached to a foam bottom. The concept got early support when Chief Executive Officer Mark Parker, who joined Nike as a shoe designer in 1979, made one of his regular visits to the innovation kitchen at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and saw the sock.
What’s This?
“I was going in to look at some other things, and it was sort of like, ‘What’s this?’” said Parker, whose design credits include a patent for Nike Air. “We got into it, and it was like ‘Wow, this has huge potential.’”
The designers soon decided that in order to create a shoe that replicates a sock they had to mimic how a sock is made. Nike hired a team of computer programmers and engineers to take a machine used to knit sweaters and socks and re-engineer it to weave the upper part of a sneaker.
Spools of colored polyester yarn are fed into the 15-foot long machine, which weaves together the top of the shoe and creates a “second skin” with tiny synthetic cables knitted into the weave around the mid-foot for support.
In a process the company calls “micro-level precision engineering,” in-house software instructs the machine to minutely alter a shoe’s stability and aesthetics. If the toe needs more stretch, the design can be digitally altered instantly to add Lycra-infused thread. For added strength in the heel, the computer can use multiple layers of yarn of varying thickness. Nike plans to patent the process.
