cowpies and roadkill are excluded from this offer
array of sporting subjectivies

What happens when you cross cultural studies with market analysis? You get "Postmodern Puma" by Andrew D. Grainger and David L. Andrews:

Puma’s brand presence and identity was negligible quite simply because it failed to operate according to the rhythms and regimes of the commodity sign economy that the sport shoe industry had become.

For what it's worth, I've worn a pair of baby-blue Puma Californias nearly every day for a year now, and they're in surprisingly good shape, considering the amount of walking I do.

Converse, whose Chuck Taylor "All-Stars" are often fetishized by punks and indie rockers, ain't indie no more. After struggling through bankrupcy and closing its last domestic plant, the company has been assimilated by the Borg. Nike announced yesterday it would buy Converse for $305 million. According to this New York Times story, Nike plans to slap the brand on down-market shoes, enabling it to sell products in Wal-Mart and other discounters without diluting the Nike brand.

Posted by McChris at July 10, 2003 09:54 PM
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Comments

Did you know that the Obey Giant guy contracted a job designing logos for Mountain Dew?!?

Posted by: cayce at July 11, 2003 12:57 PM

wow, talk about a post-postmodern let-down.

Posted by: clare at July 12, 2003 11:45 AM
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