Saturday, March 12, 2011

Chapter 4: New Frontiers - And Inner Cities

By 1992, both Jordan and Nike started to come under fire in the form of accusations about the exploitation of employees around the world, especially in poorer countries. Another issue was that there were many killings that happened simply over Air Jordan sneakers, which of course did not help Nike and Jordan's rep as well. Furthermore, Jordan's criticisms were raised to another level, when it was found out that he might very well have an addiction to gambling. It was publicized that he frequently bet extremely large sums of money in games of cards or golf. Although, he was never accused of a crime, he was linked to several people of questionable backgrounds, to say the least, including a known drug dealer.

The second part of the chapter dealt mostly with Asia, and specifically China. With the largest population in the world, China presented endless opportunities for the spreading of the Nike and Jordan brand; however, there were many obstacles there as well. One big one was the tension there with the Communist government. They even kicked out the American news network CNN after they began publicizing ruthless imprisonments and killings at the hands of the Communist leaders. Still, with all of these issues, Chinese plants quickly became Nike's fastest growing production source. Nike founder Phil Knight once remarked: "There's no telling what can happen to the business if China truly catches on". Well, as we know from China's booming industry today, China did continue to catch on and move up the ladder in terms of global economies.

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