Nike have come up with a new training shoe design which features Harris Tweed extensively.

Sportswear Giants Nike have designed a new range of trainers featuring Harris Tweed from Luskentyre

Luskentyre Harris Tweed, run by Donald John Mackay and his wife Maureen, at their home in Luskentyre, have landed an order from one of the world's most famous companies. Nike intend to produce a range of five different ladies trainers of the baseball boot type and these will have panels of the Luskentyre designed Harris Tweed. The amount of tweed wanted by Nike would have taken Donald John more than two years to make on his Hattersley handloom as his usual output is 100 metres a week.

" It was a complete shock to us" said Donald John " We expected a few hundred metres which would have been a big order but when Nike asked for 9,500 metres we realised we would need a lot of help"

The Mackays contacted Derek Murray of the KM Harris Tweed Group with whom they have had a very close working relationship over the years, and the order was fed into the Shawbost mill who produced the yarn and sent it out to more than 50 of the island weavers. Most of the cloth is now finished and on its way to 5 different Nike factories in the Far East to become part of the unique trainers.

This new range was in the shops worldwide in October 2004 showing the Harris Tweed label alongside the Nike logo.

Derek Murray of the KM Group said: " This is good business for us and for the whole industry. The Nike brand alongside the Harris Tweed label is priceless advertising"

Ian A Mackenzie of the Harris Tweed Authority welcomed the good news:

" We congratulate Maureen and Donald John on their success.They work very hard and portray Harris Tweed at its best. This develpment is going to introduce the magic of Harris Tweed to a new generation of fashion conscious youth and can only do us good. There will undoubtedly be opportunities to build on this and we must all be ready to take advantage of them."