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@StandardPractice
This is always such a bullshit way of looking at value.
"£400 for a few bits of pipe welded together?" (bike frame)
"£1000 for a bit of egg and flour?" (wedding cake)
"£25,000 for a load of pressed tin?" (car)
Nike's bullshit hype machine is extremely cynical and there's no doubt that they're raking it in, but I don't think the products themselves are that unfairly priced. They probably cost fuck all to manufacture per unit, but the cost of keeping Nike Inc going will be absolutely astronomical. These items are state-of-the-art, where the art is constantly making new things in new ways to satisfy a hungry but demanding market and making it almost entirely automatically in factories equipped with the very latest equipment, by the tens of thousands, and bringing it to market in such a way that it seems cool and not like a shrewd exercise in emptying people's wallet, often by associating the brand with the world's most highly-paid athletes (to cite one of many techniques by which they maintain crediblity).
The idea that you could make a Nike Roshe by hand at home is laughable. Maybe you could a kind of shite Wurzel Gummidge Converse All-Star. Even a professionally hand made shoe costing £200+ is technologically archaic next to Nike products, or, rather, the way Nike products are made. But there's the difference: with Nike you're paying for endless novelty and a cleverly-conceived icon of modern culture that is ultimately disposable (which is just as well because they'll be out of date before they're out of life). I wonder what their marketing budget is compared with R&D?
(bit of rant... I love this sort of shit, sorry)