<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The NBA star who makes nearly $240,000 per game will sport $14.98 sneakers on the court next year, his drive to create a consumer "revolution" against high-priced footwear marketed to poor kids. Stephon Marbury, the brash New York Knicks player who has declared himself as the greatest point guard in the NBA, arrives at 10 this morning at Perry High School to show off the Starbury1, the shoe that costs less than a pizza. The first nationwide Starbury shipment to 140 Dave & Barry's stores, including West Mifflin's Century III Mall outlet, sold out in three days. Marbury will be signing autographs at 4 p.m. today at the store. Designed by Rocket Fish, the New Hampshire shoe gurus who put Nike, Puma and Prince footwear on the globe's best athletes, the shoe that bears its star's nickname is poised to battle top-of-the-line Air Jordans and other $200 sneakers in a $50 billion dollar marketplace. "But for me, coming from where I came from, the Coney Island projects in Brooklyn, I've seen a lot of poor kids. I was one of those kids. I haven't forgotten that," Marbury, 29, said. "So, when I was thinking about a new kind of shoe that everyone could afford, I thought we should start by thinking in a humane way." From Marbury's initial idea about a low-cost, high-performance shoe came meetings with Dave & Barry's New York executives. Then, he spent months with Rocket Fish's industrial designers. They say Marbury demanded a shoe sculpted to withstand an ankle-breaking Allen Iverson spin and nights of pounding on Madison Square Garden's hardwood. "Dave & Barry's told us, 'Don't pull anything back. Give us a good shoe. You don't have to scrimp,' " Rocket Fish designer, T.J. Gray said. "We worked with Steph, and he really liked it." Dave & Barry's insists the Chinese-made shoes aren't stitched in sweatshops. The retailer can sell sneakers so cheaply because of innovative manufacturing, shipping and marketing cost cuts, including relying on word of mouth instead of traditional -- but expensive -- ad buys, according to senior exec Howard Schacter. Schacter says volume sales will slam dunk low prices, and Marbury gets a cut of the profit, not a spokesman. Marbury already boasts the fifth most popular NBA jersey, so the retailer expects his shoe and a related apparel line to fly off the shelves. Erin Patton -- formerly of Homewood, later of Northwestern University and Nike -- says the secret many footwear manufacturers don't want consumers to know is that a "paradigm shift" is shaking the retail shoe market, and now, it's possible to deliver an NBA sneaker at USBL prices. "We're not necessarily worried about Nike or adidas or Reebok. They've reached their own decisions about the prices for their products," said Patton, whose Mastermind Group is handling the Starbury hype. "We've looked at the same performance issues, and we've built a $14.98 shoe to an elite athlete's specifications, and we'll see what happens next." Once a Nike wearer, Marbury also endorsed And 1's $70 hightops until recently, without discussing the social implications of high price tags. </div> Source
