Shoes From the Trunk of a Car, 1964
A business-school graduate and his old track coach import running shoes from Japan and sell them at track meets. Fourteen years of banks, a broken supplier, a $35 logo and the jogging boom. Based on a well-known true story.
It is 1964. You have $500, a contract to import three hundred pairs of Japanese running shoes, and a coach who wants to make them better. You sell them from your car at track meets. Everything that follows really happened to a company like yours: the first salesman who writes to every customer, banks that keep cutting the credit line because you grow too fast, a supplier who plans to drop you, a logo bought from a student for $35, the Olympic trials in your town, the jogging boom, a waffle iron that makes the best-selling shoe in the country, and a $25 million customs bill. You play every desk alone, a year at a time, from 1964 to 1977. The choices are the founder's: how much stock to buy on borrowed money, when to stop relying on one factory, whether to sell to racers or to the new joggers, and how much to pay to put the shoe on the right athlete. Based on a well-known true story; the companies and people here are composites, and no real company or person is named or affiliated…
$5.00 a seat · 14 simulated years, decided yearly · by SparkTower.