The Jordan Brand is, by every metric, the greatest sneaker company ever. According to Forbes, the brand raked in $6.6 billion for Nike in 2023, and was, by some distance, their best-performing division. While the Jordan Brand is already the market leader in revenue and appeal, Quentin Richardson highlighted another reason why it’s the greatest.
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During an interview on Sternberg Scoop, the former Knicks star spoke about how Michael Jordan has fostered a family-like culture within the brand. He revealed that the company signed him in 2000 expecting him to be a star in the future. However, he failed to hit the heights that many predicted he would.
But despite Richardson’s failure to become a marketable and influential athlete, the brand did not cut ties with him. He said,
“Ain’t nobody doing it better than MJ doing it. I’m talking about from a brand standpoint. The way he rock with his people… Brands don’t do this… I was nobody’s All-Star, my jersey ain’t hanging in nobody’s rafters… There’s real Hall of Famers that don’t get the same love from their shoe brand in their careers that I get from the Jordan Brand.”
Richardson admitted that his opinion about the Bulls icon and the Jordan Brand is slightly biased, especially considering he grew up in Chicago and still enjoys the perks of being an athlete signed to the company.
However, he genuinely believes that no other brand can compete with it and credits the culture that Jordan created to its impeccable success.
The Evolution of the Jordan Brand
After the unprecedented success of the Air Jordan shoe line, Nike let Jumpman take a life of its own and created a subsidiary called the Jordan Brand in 1997. It was a raging success from the get-go.
In its first full year as an independent entity in 1998, the brand earned a whopping $300 million. The number only increased with each passing year and set a new record almost annually.
In 2017, 20 years since the brand’s debut, it grossed over $3 billion in revenue, nearly 10% of Nike’s earnings. After a slight decline in 2018 and a recovery in 2019, it soared to $3.6 billion in 2020.
The following year, the brand earned a record-shattering $4.7 billion before crossing the $5 billion mark in 2022. Last year’s $6.6 billion revenue was a new high point for the Jumpman. According to Business Chief, Jordan Brand, a subsidiary of Nike, had the fifth-highest revenue of any sportswear company in 2023, trailing only its parent company, Adidas, Puma, and Lululemon.
It’s a testament to the Bulls icon’s vision and drive that the brand named after him is one of the biggest on the planet, despite only being a division of the world’s biggest sports manufacturer.
