• Retailing Today, New York, Tuesday, March 9, 2010 10:40 AM

Target yesterday announced that snowboarder Shaun White and his brother, Jesse, are designing an exclusive line of skateboarder shoes for the retailer that will debut this fall, Retailing Today reports.

Calling White the "embodiment of youth-culture marketing potential," New York's Jada Yuan captures the brashness that makes the Olympic champion so appealing to his target. White, for example, put a picture of his bulldog wearing sunglasses on a T-shirt for his Target clothing line. "And then I look around and there's all these people wearing my dog!' White says. "It's just hilarious that these massive companies allow us to do whatever we want."

It's not like White hasn't had a lot of practice figuring out how to delicately balance his free-style comments with what marketers themselves want. The 23-year-old had his first sponsor at age 7 and, according to Forbes, earned $8 million last year from promotional endeavors. You might conjecture that he applies the same philosophy to his endorsements that he does to his tricks: "I mean, you need such confidence to complete these tricks," he tells Yuan. "Right when you start to doubt yourself is when you're in trouble."

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