While other companies go after those who counterfeit their products, Nike makes their own knockoff. Nike’s The One Line shoes first began as a ploy to get back at the US Government over a tariff dispute.
Nike founder Phil Knight shed a sliver of light on the incident in his book Shoe Dog, explaining how The One Line was crafted to contest an obscure rule in the US Customs Code. In 1980, the American government had hit Nike with a $25 million tariff bill, which he claims was brought by his competitors in the shoe and rubber business lobbying to bring down Nike. So, the company produced a bootleg of their own shoes and priced it low in order to decrease the flagship products’ import tariff, which according to the US Custom policy is based on the price of a similar American-made product.
The One Line shoes is a one-to-one knockoff of the Nike Oceania runner. It bears all the significant marks of the running shoes, except for the logo.
Read the full story over at The Deffest.