ACG FEATURE - PART TWO

MONTY MAYKO INTERVIEW

Man, you all look so skinny and young. Mark Parker just looks tall! Were you testing your shoes out there?
I’d say a third of the people at Nike would say they’re size nine which meant you got a free pair of prototypes. I’m probably closer to a nine and a half but I’d say ‘Oh yeah, I can wear a nine!’ We’d always take whatever would be new down and the guys always had tons of bags and all of a sudden at the right time they’d pull out their newest Nikes and say ‘look what I got here!’ Tinker was a 10 and a half so he was always squeezing into his shoes. He’d always come back from Mowabb with black toenails...

EMO Tinker! (laughs) ACG colors were pretty interesting. I’m wondering what the industry thought when you guys entered the fray?
Initially the colors were conservative but people like Trip Allen would push color contrasts, sometimes with a European influence, in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s. But you couldn’t have bright colored shoes that didn’t perform very well. If you couldn’t back it up, it looked foolish out there. Our goal was to make whatever product we designed perform well and hold up. And I think we more than accomplished that.