Tinker’s toys

Nike designer has shod 2 million feet, and he’s not done yet

By KERRY EGGERS
The Portland Tribune

It seems such an appropriate first name for the mad scientist behind the genius that is known as the Air Jordan.

Tinker.

For 24 years, Tinker Hatfield has been a creative giant at Nike Inc., his latest title being vice president of special projects.

Hatfield’s expertise has covered many projects over the years, but none with so bold a stroke as the Air Jordan, the most successful sports shoe of all time.

The Air Jordan — signature shoe, of course, for the great Michael Jordan — made its debut in 1986 and has been reissued with a different design on an annual basis since then. Hatfield became principal designer in 1988 with the advent of Air Jordan III, recently voted the most popular shoe ever.

The Northeast Portland resident laid his imprint on the next 11 Air Jordans, and when the 20th anniversary came around this year, he was asked to return to the scene of his most memorable work.

So when Air Jordan XX was unveiled in February during NBA All-Star Weekend at Denver, Hatfield was front and center, accepting accolades and meeting with the media. ESPN The Magazine played up the occasion with an article. The industry magazine Sole observed, “Michael Jordan and Tinker Hatfield are both men who dream with open eyes and have the passion, talent, dedication and force of will necessary to make their dreams a reality.”

Heady stuff for the native of little ol’ Halsey, a burg of fewer than 500 folks in grass-seed country near Corvallis when Hatfield was single-handedly leading the Cobras to the 1971 state Class AA track and field championship.

Hatfield, 53, is the son of the late Tinker Hatfield Sr., a legendary figure in Oregon coaching circles who won three straight state Class AA titles during his son’s time at Central Linn. As a senior, the younger Hatfield scored 40 points in the state meet, winning the 100, high hurdles, low hurdles and pole vault, then signed with Oregon and renowned coach Bill Bowerman in what proved to be an astute career move.

Hatfield became the Ducks’ first 17-foot vaulter and finished sixth in the 1976 U.S. Olympic trials, but it was his personal relationship with Bowerman that proved pivotal in his professional life. Bowerman retired from coaching after Hatfield’s freshman year but by that time was involved in the embryonic stages of Nike, tinkering with the waffle-iron sole in the workshop of his Eugene home. Hatfield, an architecture major with an artistic bent, hit it off with the Hall of Fame coach.

“Bill mentored me quite a bit,” Hatfield says. “You could say I was one of his test pilots. After he retired, he was still working on shoes and I saw him all the time. I would go with him to the mold-makers. He liked me because I could sketch up some ideas and give him feedback in a visual way.”

After graduation in 1976, Hatfield was employed for four years as a corporate architect in Eugene but also worked part time doing testing in Bowerman’s shoe lab.

In 1981, Hatfield’s history with Bowerman and one of Nike’s early employees, Geoff Hollister, led to his hiring by the fledgling firm. Hatfield spent four more years as a corporate architect before moving over to the product design department.

Third version posed a test
“Tinker created an amazing footwear design studio for us called Brand Design in the early ’80s, working trade show design and packaging,” says Nike President Mark Parker, then heading up the footwear division for the company. “I’d stop by his work area and see some sketches of shoes and think, ‘Wow, you have some real talent here.’ One day I said, ‘What would you think about doing some footwear for fun?’ ”

Hatfield’s first major thrust into footwear design was with the Air Revolution and Air Max shoes, “which sort of energized Nike and took our business to another level,” Parker says.

Hatfield’s next big project was Air Jordan III, which came at a crucial time in the evolution of Nike. Sales of Air Jordan II hadn’t been strong, in part because Jordan had missed much of the season with a broken foot, in part because the retail price ($100) was high for its time. A few weeks before deadline, Creative Director Peter Moore left along with Rob Strasser, another high-end executive, to start their own company. The pair had been responsible for bringing Jordan to Nike and working with him.

The project fell into the lap of Hatfield, who had watched but hadn’t been involved in the design of the first two Air Jordans.

Meanwhile, Nike Chief Executive Officer Phil Knight was on pins and needles because Moore and Strasser were pursuing Jordan.

“They were going to develop their business around Michael,” Hatfield says. “Phil was pretty nervous about MJ leaving. It was a very anxious time. I felt super pressure.”

Building shoes like a house
Hatfield called on his architectural background to establish rapport with Jordan.

“My first inclination was to get Michael on the phone and meet personally with him,” Hatfield says. “As an architect, I was used to dealing with clients. I treated him like I was building a house for him. If you are designing a house for someone, you don’t just go, ‘Here’s your house.’ You have to know about the person’s life.

“I don’t think Michael had ever been worked with that way; in fact, I don’t think anybody in the footwear business had done it that way. It was kind of a natural extension for me, to sit there and find out more about the person as well as the player in order to design the product.

“Dr. J., Magic Johnson, Larry Bird all had a shoe, but they were just endorsing it with their name. This was the first time anyone ever sat down with an athlete and really involved him in the process of building the shoe. That’s what I feel most proud about.”

Jordan had mixed emotions.

“We had some pretty tense meetings where he was ready to bolt, but kind of got drawn back into it because of the excitement of the design,” Hatfield says. “The development of the shoe and some apparel that went with it, along with advice his father gave him — to stay with the people who had done a good job for him — kept Michael with us.”

Air Jordan III was the first luxury sports shoe with high-quality material, lighter than the normal basketball sneaker, three-quarter cut instead of high- or low-top at Michael’s behest.

“He wanted to wear a new pair of shoes every game, so they couldn’t be stiff and difficult to break in,” Hatfield says

Passing the Air Jordan torch
Despite a short window of time for design and production, Air Jordan III was off the charts in sales and popularity. It began a famously productive relationship between the greatest basketball star of them all and the small-town kid from the mid-Willamette Valley. Hatfield had many responsibilities within the company, but each year devoted a portion of his time to devising a new and improved Air Jordan. Sometimes it worked better than others, but each one was a rousing success that retailers scrambled to keep in stock.

In 2001, Hatfield backed away from Air Jordan duties.

“Over the years, there was this tremendous pressure,” he says. “(The Air Jordan) is more than just a shoe. It’s a leadership-type project that drives customers into the stores to buy other shoes and apparel. You have to design something that is compelling and innovative, but not so far out there that people couldn’t get their hands around it. It did wear on me a little bit. It was time for me to pass the torch to someone else.”

When it was suggested that Hatfield retake the lead design role in Air Jordan XX, “it took me about five seconds to say yes,” he says. “It was a nice opportunity to connect a little more closely with Michael. I’d been in touch with him all the time, and had seen him a fair amount, but this was more serious and back to the old days almost.

“One of the things I wrote right off the bat: We’re going to look back at Michael’s career and at all of our lives and how the stuff happened, but it’s only a mechanism to take the next step forward. We’re going to design the world’s most advanced performing basketball shoe; we’ll use the look back to take the step forward. It was a bit nostalgic, but in a fresh new package.”

Details tell the story
There are several creative wrinkles to AJ XX: 20 pods built into the soles of each pair, 69 dimples on the side (for each point in Jordan’s highest-scoring game), a leash that can be used to convert from high-top to low-top.

And Hatfield borrowed an idea from a custom-trumpet designer in Southeast Portland, David Monette, for the central theme of Jordan XX. Monette had a jeweler engrave symbols on the bell of a piece he had made for Wynton Marsalis, reminding the great musician of important moments in his career.

It got the wheels turning in Hatfield’s brain. He flew to Chicago and spent four days with Jordan, sketching as he relived memories. The result: a midshoe strap decorated with a mosaic of some 200 lasered graphics — roughly half of them depicting important pieces of Jordan’s life, the other half reflecting those at Nike who have had an important role in helping design the Air Jordans over the last two decades.

“Maybe the most important (graphic) for MJ,” Hatfield says, pointing to a spot on an AJ XX, “is this toolbox. It says Pops — that is what he called his dad, who was gifted with his hands and could fix anything.”

Hatfield calls AJ XX “the best project of any we have done” and says the chance to reconnect with Jordan made it special from a personal standpoint.

“We both were in a certain way forced to get in touch with how we felt about our relationship and how the whole process has gone over the years,” Hatfield says. “It was a cathartic experience. Michael is all about what’s around the next corner. It was good for him to slow down, force himself to answer some questions and think about some of the influences in his life. It was a little bit emotional for both of us.”

Strategy sells itself
At $175 per, the AJ XX shoes sell as quickly as retailers can put them on the shelves.

“We hold down the number we sell these days,” he says. “We used to sell many more pairs of Air Jordans a year, but because the Jordan line has expanded to a number of other products, it doesn’t make sense to flood the market. In the first 10 or 12 years, we sold a million or more, and that doesn’t include the less-expensive kids shoes, which sometimes sell bigger than the adult versions.”

Different color versions, known as color ways, are being released separately this year.

“The first color (white) came out in a limited quantity of 30,000,” Hatfield says. “The second color (black) came out at between 75,000 and 100,000. And then there will be third, fourth and fifth color ways that will come out fairly soon and will be regional colors. West Coast, Midwest and East Coast will all get different color ways that will only be sold at their location.

“We’re always trying to find ways to keep the product limited in numbers and exclusive. It’s not like you’re going to see them on every street corner, and that’s part of the mystique of keeping special a high-end product.”

The Air Jordan XXI already is designed, incidentally, though with a different creative designer, D’Wayne Edwards.

“It’s going to be a really nice shoe, to be released somewhere around the 2006 All-Star break,” Hatfield says. “When we look at inspiration each year for how these shoes get designed, we always involve something in Michael’s life. He has a beautiful new Bentley, and there is some inspiration from the high performance of this superluxurious car that is one of the main focus points of XXI’s design.”

Hatfield estimates between 5 percent and 10 percent of his time at Nike is spent developing Air Jordans. Hatfield does his work in a segment of the Mia Hamm Building on the Nike campus that is called the Innovation Kitchen.

“Our thinking is, rather than having Tinker there doing it himself, let’s surround him with some great talent and make him even that more powerful,” Parker says. “He’s in a position to lead them through special projects not necessarily on Nike’s formal agenda.”

Phil Knight’s in kitchen, too
Knight, who now carries the title of chairman of the board of directors, has worked out of the Innovation Kitchen since his retirement from the CEO post last year.

“Phil comes in just as much as he did over there, but is now a little more involved in talking to us about products,” Hatfield says. “Other than dealing with athletes, that’s where he finds the most fun. He’s still interested in whom we should be signing and how the products relate to those people and how we can innovate.”

About 30 employees work out of the Innovation Kitchen, including Mark Smith, with whom Hatfield worked most closely on AJ XX.

“We are a little segmented from the main business at Nike, so I don’t have to get bogged down with that,” Hatfield says. “It allows me to continue to be part of the creative process and not so much of a managerial executive. I’m a VP, but my value to the company is to touch base with the athletes and design stuff or lead groups that do.

“I’ve always been a floater, working on projects wherever Nike or Brand Jordan feels I need to be. Though I’ve never reported to a particular group or category like basketball, I’m one of the few people who cuts across most sports categories and work on projects as they pop up.”

Says Parker: “Being an ex-athlete, Tinker has a great sense of what athletes are looking for. He has that ability to pull it out of an athlete, take it deep and turn it into something that can help the athlete perform better. Tinker quickly became an all-star in that category. If there is a major project we need big guns on, Tinker is first out of the bullpen. He has consistently hit it out of the park. His body of work through the years is amazing, not just for Nike but for the industry.”

And then there’s Lance
Of the relationships Hatfield has built with athletes over the past 24 years at Nike, the closest besides Jordan may be with Lance Armstrong.

“A cool guy,” Hatfield says, “inspirational to be around. I’ve worked out, been on a ride and played hoops with him, been to the weight room with him, and had a good time.”

Hatfield helped engineer the “10-2 collection,” named after the date of the cycling champion’s cancer diagnosis. “I was at the Tour de France last year, and we were trying to figure out what we would call his product line,” Hatfield says. “Lance kept talking about how he wanted to introduce some products on 10/2, which is what he sort of celebrates as his rebirth day. I thought about it and said, ‘That’s it. We’ll call the line 10//2.’ We have a pretty involved program of putting the 10//2 mark on all our cycling products, as well as designing new products like his training shoe and apparel.”

Hatfield keeps busy outside his job at Nike. He coaches select pole vaulters and serves as an assistant coach on Grant High’s track and field team, and stays active through cycling, rock climbing, Pilates and weight training. The 5-10 1/2, 175-pound Hatfield is within a few pounds of his college weight. His three daughters are grown and out of the roost, so he and his wife of 28 years, Jackie, are free to travel when time permits.

There remain plenty of professional challenges for Hatfield, who doesn’t see retirement coming anytime soon. Being on top is never good enough at Nike. Just Do It is the slogan, and Hatfield will be in the thick of it for at least a few more years, trying to do it even better.