In 1972, Nike unveiled what is recognizable today as the Nike Cortez. Eventually, Nike won out and received the rights to the Cortez, and Onitsuka was allowed to continue manufacturing their own version of the shoe, called the Corsair. Of course they did - it was one of the most popular shoes in America. It became so important to Blue Ribbon's business that when the company started manufacturing its own shoes and rebranded as Nike, the Cortez was one of a handful of shoes at the center of a lawsuit between Blue Ribbon and Ontisuka.Įach company wanted to retain the rights to the name Cortez. We'd gotten people hooked on the thing, turned them into full-blown Cortez addicts, and now we couldn't meet the demand, which created anger and resentment up and down the supply chain."
It was so popular that it caused a whole host of inventory and supply problems for Blue Ribbon. Immediately upon release, the Cortez was a hit, helping the company hit its end-of-year revenue projections.
"Cortés stands out for the scope of the violence and warfare that he organized and led, making Columbus look tame by comparison," says Terraciano.īlue Ribbon couldn't have predicted it at the time, but the Cortez would turn out to be not just one of the most important shoes in the company's history, but one of the most important shoes of the twentieth century - every bit as iconic as the Chuck Taylor All Stars or the Adidas Stan Smith. For example, even after the Spaniards declared victory, Cortés had the last Aztec Emperor Cuauhtémoc tortured by burning his feet, Terraciano says, and eventually executed by hanging him from a tree. Only a few years later, the Aztec Empire was toppled.Įven amongst conquistadors, the tactics Cortés used were particularly brutal. There were cities with very sophisticated societies with writing systems and marketplaces - all of the trademarks of what we might consider to be a great civilization," says Kevin Terraciano, a professor of history at the University of California Los Angeles who specializes in Latin American history. "When the Europeans arrived, the population as many as 25 million in Mesoamerica.
When Spaniards arrived at Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec Empire, in 1519, some experts estimate the population was higher than 200,000 people – making it larger than most cities in Europe.
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