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  Some Adidas employees attended

I had to follow up and see how the Etnies party for Adidas employees went Monday night in Portland. The party was the brainstorm of Sole Tech’s Don Brown, who came up with the idea after hearing Adidas cancelled its holiday party this year. 

I asked Brenda Springer of Sole Tech to do some reporting for me at the event, and she was nice enough to send this dispatch in the early hours of this morning.

Here’s Brenda’s report:

“When we had two hours of open bar as planned, we were at $1,100. But of course, the party was still lively, so my fearless crazy drunken leader Don, shown at right with Obama, kept the free PBR bar flowing for an extra four hours, plus added over 100 shots of liquor (not to mention all of the drinks everyone else paid for on their own – I didn’t even ask the bar for those stats). Total drink tab turned out to be right under $3,000 with the extra hours. Not bad. About 1,200 PBR 16 oz. tall boys in a can were served.

“I counted six employees of Adidas, about 20 Nike employees and these really nice guys from Yahoo who showed up because they just found out that their Christmas party was cancelled, so they wanted to join ours. (The Adidas employees there didn’t want their faces photographed for fear of getting in trouble with the company, but they let Brenda photograph their shoes).

“Overall through the night, we counted about 250 people, mostly a big crew from the Portland skate scene and a handful from the city’s  “hipster” scene.

We handed out “corporate gifts” which were coffee mugs with Santa on a Skateboard and it says “etnies believes in Santa.” They were a huge hit! We did three drawings for free product (etnies backpack, T-shirt, hat and shoe gift certificate).

It was a very fun event, we’re all happy that we did it for Adidas. Everyone who showed up had a great time and said it was the buzz of the town. A big Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday to Adidas employees. We hope those who attended from their company had a good time and will take back our greetings to them.

Here’s Sole Tech’s Yasemin Hume with Santa.