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| 1.17.01 | MIT graduate student Jonah Peretti sends the original Nike e-mails to ten people after Harpers decides at the last minute not to print them. The exchange is also posted in its entirety on shey.net along with information about Nike's labor history, and begins to get forwarded around the internet in two variants: one with a link to shey.net, another without. Thousands of people worldwide will eventually receive the e-mail. |
| 1.18.01 | Within one day, the Nike e-mails have spread so far as to have been forwarded to one of the engineers at Customatix, a Nike competitor. The engineer points out in an e-mail to Jonah that you can only put 7-character combinations on Customatix's shoes, meaning "sweatshop" is a no-go. |
| 1.25.01 | Web log Lot 49 apparently becomes one of the first of literally hundreds of personal and non-commercial sites like the squall that post links to the nike page over at shey.net, spreading the word in yet another way that circumvents traditional media. |
| 1.30.01 | The San Jose Mercury News may have been the first traditional media outlet to report on the story. Deborah Lohse's article, "Bid to personalize sneakers has Nike sweating," begins ironically:
Nike's Web site invites sneaker zealots to "build your own shoe," choosing their personal colors and even a personalized ID running up the side. "It's about freedom to choose, and freedom to express who you are," the site says. |
| 2.4.01 | Plastic.com runs a link to the nike page as its top story for the day. |
| 2.4.01 | A link shows up on Metafilter soon after. One interesting rumor that starts in the ensuing discussion is the idea that Nike shortened the ID field on their online order form to 8 characters, making it no longer possible to request the nine-letter word "sweatshop" on a pair of shoes. This was actually untrue; certain shoes allow eight letters, while others, like the running shoes Jonah ordered, allow nine, and this has not changed. |
| 2.8.01 | Salon reports about the nike e-mails in their "cheap shots" column, linking to shey.net and calling us "crazed postmodernists" in passing. |
| 2.9.01 | Nike apparently adds more words to its automatic filters (designed to immediately reject profanity and "gang terms"), including:
Sweatshop Sweat Shop |
| 2.12.01 | Time runs a brief piece on the e-mails (middle of page). Jonah kind of gets called a "smart aleck." |
| 2.14.01 | The Village Voice runs the most in-depth account yet of the e-mails and the issues behind them. |
| 2.15.01 | After many inquiries, the Snopes urban legends website contacts Jonah to confirm that the Nike e-mails are not a hoax. They then add a "true urban legend" listing to their site. |
| 2.16.01 | A posting on slashdot about the Village Voice article further propels the idea. |
| 2.18.01 | San Francisco cartoonist, animator, and playwright Dan McHale does a great cartoon about the whole phenomenon. |
| 2.21.01 | UK newspaper The Independent reports on the e-mails. Two days later on the 23rd, UK paper The Guardian also publishes a report. |
| 2.28.01 | Jonah Peretti appears on NBC's Today Show, and goes up against Nike spokesperson Vada Manager in a debate moderated by Katie Couric. Watch the whole thing here. |
| 2.28.01 | The Wall Street Journal weighs in with an article. Vada Manager from Nike tells the WSJ that sales of personalized shoes are up, but would not give any numbers. He then gave specific numbers of the increase in traffic to the Nike iD site (it stands to reason that most of this traffic was from protesters and people trying to order shoes that say child labor, etc.). However, Jonah notes that the personalized shoe business is a very small percentage of Nike sales. So even if they sold a few more personalized shoes, their overall sales could have gone down because of the bad publicity. On WNYC radio a few days later, Vada Manager admitted that the Nike emails were not good for business. |
| 3.1.01 | USA Today reports on Jonahıs Today Show appearance and the e-mail phenomenon. |
| 3.2.01 | Another MIT student begins selling T-Shirts with the Nike swoosh and the word "sweatshop" via cafepress.com. It will later get shut down. |
| 3.14.01 | By mid-March, Jonah's emails have turned up in Italian (La Repubblica), German (Jungle World), and in French (Liberation) on sites worldwide. |
| 3.15.01 | The Von Mises Institute posts what must have been an unintentionally funny defense of Nike's actions. |
| 3.22.01 | The story next turns up in a column in the San Francisco Chronicle. |
| 3.27.01 | Continuing their global tour, the Nike e-mails turn up in Sweden. |
| 4.1.01 | UK paper The Independent mentions the e-mails again in a story about new forms of political activism that are popular among teens and young people. |
| 4.2.01 | Adbusters finally picks up on a story that was made for them. The same day, going into more detail than any outlet yet, ABCNews posts a story as well. |
| 4.9.01 | jonah writes an article for the April 9 issue of The Nation entitled "My Nike Media Adventure." |
| 4.25.01 | citing copyright reasons, cafepress.com shuts down the site that was selling nike "sweatshop" t-shirts. the student says that he is using the nike logo under the "fair use for parody" section of the copyright title, but cafepress.com disagrees. The funny thing is, cafepress.com had sold and shipped about 20 of the shirts before anyone over there noticed. |
| know of something that should be added to the timeline? please |
Below is an email correspondence with customer service representatives at Nike iD, an on-line service that lets people buy personalized Nike shoes. The dialog began when Nike cancelled an order for a pair of shoes customized with the word "sweatshop." [get the latest on this story at shey.net]
1) Your Personal iD contains another party's trademark or other intellectual
property.
2) Your Personal iD contains the name of an athlete or team we do not have
the legal right to use.
3) Your Personal iD was left blank. Did you not want any personalization?
4) Your Personal iD contains profanity or inappropriate slang, and besides,
your mother would slap us.
If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new personalization
please visit us again at www.nike.com
Dear NIKE iD Customer,
Your NIKE iD order was cancelled because the iD you have chosen contains, as stated in the previous e-mail correspondence, "inappropriate slang".
If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com
NIKE iD
Your web site advertises that the NIKE iD program is "about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are." I share Nike's love of freedom and personal expression. The site also says that "If you want it done right...build it yourself." I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my personal iD was offered as a small token of appreciation for the sweatshop workers poised to help me realize my vision. I hope that you will value my freedom of expression and reconsider your decision to reject my order.
Jonah Peretti
Dear NIKE iD Customer,
Regarding the rules for personalization it also states on the NIKE iD web site that "Nike reserves the right to cancel any Personal iD up to 24 hours after it has been submitted".
In addition it further explains:
"While we honor most personal iDs, we cannot honor every one. Some may be (or contain) others' trademarks, or the names of certain professional sports teams, athletes or celebrities that Nike does not have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate or simply do not want to place on our products.
Unfortunately, at times this obliges us to decline personal iDs that may otherwise seem unobjectionable. In any event, we will let you know if we decline your personal iD, and we will offer you the chance to submit another."
With these rules in mind we cannot accept your order as submitted.
If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com
Thank you, NIKE iD
Dear NIKE iD,
Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my request. I have decided to order the shoes with a different iD, but I would like to make one small request. Could you please send me a color snapshot of the ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?
