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The online auctioneer's main app (there are a suite of Links of London Sale for various retail niches) clears the overwhelming clutter of the website by letting you browse through filtered lists for daily deals on stocking stuffers, gadgets, toys and the like. Or you can just search for that obscure item by browsing through the auctions.2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.Like a Renaissance artist taking cues from a Medici family patron, Nike sneaker designer Eric Avar starts by listening to his star athlete.When Kobe Bryant told Nike executives in 2006 that he wanted his namesake basketball shoe to be the lightest ever, a maverick low-top in a sport dominated by high-tops, Mr. Avar held hours of free-association chats with the Los Angeles Lakers star to imbue every curve with Mr. Bryant's hypercompetitive personality.Mr. Avar's team eventually compiled a 20-page guidebook of Kobe-isms to forge the spirit of Mr. Links of London Earrings sneakers, ranging from the pinpoint precision of a laser-scoped rifle to the quick twitch of the snake that inspired Mr. Bryant's nickname, Black Mamba."Good design is a marriage of science and art," Mr. Avar said. "Telling a story is also really important." Mr. Bryant will debut the latest version of the shoe, the $130 snakeskin-styled Zoom Kobe VI, on Dec. 25, when the Lakers play LeBron James and the Miami Heat.Creative director of the design workshop that Nike Inc. calls its Innovation Kitchen, Mr. Avar, 42, is celebrated in the "sneakerhead" subculture for fashioning shoes that not only boost performance but are also objects of beauty. As others build bulkier footwear, Mr. Avar favors a minimalist approach that uses as little material as possible to harmonize with the movements of the foot.The website Nicekicks.com last year declared Mr. Avar designer of the decade, noting his work on the Hyperdunk, which captured the look of old-school high-tops but dramatically reduced their weight, and the Huarache 2k4, which abandoned complex shock absorption systems in favor of a simple cushion.On the Nike campus in Beaverton, Ore., the designer retreats to his closely guarded space in "The Kitchen," which is off limits to all but a special cadre of employees Links of London Pewter And White Friendship Bracelet of concerns that rival shoemakers could glean trade secrets from the prototypes inside.Mr. Avar sits at a desk in an open room across from a portrait of the celebrated runner Steve Prefontaine. Rather than working alone, he prefers cross-pollinating ideas with Nike's in-house bio-mechanics and other eggheads, as well as fellow sneaker-architecture legends such as brothers Tinker and Tobie Hatfield. "I am a big believer in collaborative space. It is the playful impromptu meetings with colleagues that produce the best ideas," said Mr. Avar, a slender, soft-spoken man casually dressed in a V-neck sweater and the limited-edition Nike HTM2 Run Boot.He and his fellow designers come up with quirky challenges to try to stay loose. They spent hours this summer trying to shoot down a Mylar balloon that had floated to the ceiling, using only the tools at their desks.For the current version of Mr. Bryant's shoe, the Zoom Kobe V, Mr. Avar Links of London Pig Charm the herringbone design common on sneaker soles because it helps with traction, and transformed it into the spiked pattern seen on heart rate monitors. "How can we take that proven geometry and put a twist on it?" he said. "We tried to get Kobe's actual EKG but that didn't quite work out."