EVOLUTIONARY NIKE

How did what started as one man selling shoes from the back of a car grow into the sportswear giant we all know today?
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Bill Bowerman
The Co-founder of Nike

American businessman
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Phil Night
The co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike

American businessman
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Phil & Bill
The Co-founders of Nike

American businessman
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Bill Bowerman
The Co-founder of Nike

American businessman
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Phil Night
The co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike

American businessman
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Phil & Bill
The Co-founders of Nike

American businessman
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Bill Bowerman
The Co-founder of Nike

American businessman
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Phil Night
The co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike

American businessman
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Phil & Bill
The Co-founders of Nike

American businessman
BillBower
   Bill Bowermar    January 25, 1964 57 years ago

Establishment

How Was Nike Founded?

The story of Nike begins with the story of Blue Ribbon Sports back in 1964. Around that time, Phil Knight had just gone through University of Oregon followed by a stint at Stanford for his MBA, l eaving him with two crucial experiences that set the trajectory of his future.
At University of Oregon, he ran for the school's track and field team, putting him into contact with their coach, Bill Bowerman. Aside from an intensely competitive ethos, Bowerman displayed a fascination with optimizing his runners' shoes, constantly tinkering with different models after learning from a local cobbler. According to Nike, Knight was the first student to try one of Bowerman's shoes. Seeing him as a safely-unimportant runner to test his shoes on, Bowerman offered to take one of his shoes and fix them up with his custom design. Knight accepted the offer, and, supposedly, the shoes worked so well that his teammate Otis Davis took them and ended up using them to win gold in the 400-meter dash in the 1960 Olympics. Otis Davis insists to this day that Bowerman made the shoes for him. After the University of Oregon, Knight went through Stanford's MBA program, during which he wrote a paper theorizing that the production of running shoes should move from its current center in Germany to Japan, where labor was cheaper. Knight got the chance to put this theory to the test with a trip to Japan shortly after his 1962 graduation. He struck a deal with a group of Japanese businessmen to export the country's popular Tiger shoes into the U.S. Coach Bowerman, who long believed that German shoes, though the best on the market, weren't anything too special to be replicated or even improved on, supported Knight's venture, entering into a 50-50 business deal for ownership of their new company, Blue Ribbon Sports, established in Eugene, Oregon, on Jan. 25, 1964.
This shoe was a major success for Nike, the first of many to come as the company maintained a strong and steady growth through its early days, culminating in its 1980 IPO, which immediately made Phil Knight a millionaire with shares worth $178 million. Since then, the company has only continued to grow, helped on in part by a series of clever ad campaigns, most famously the 1988 "Just Do It" ad campaign apparently inspired by the last words of American murderer Gary Gilmore before the firing squad, "Let's do it.") The company's other greatest asset has been its celebrity endorsements. They struck big signing athletes like Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and Lebron James in the early stages of their career. By far the most lucrative endorsement Nike has ever had, both for the company and its sponsor, has been with Michael Jordan. Spotting potential, Nike tried to swoop in for an endorsement from Jordan before the start of his first season with the pros in 1984. Despite having never worn a pair of Nike's before and harboring hope for a deal with Adidas, Jordan ended up signing on with Nike after a meeting in which they promised the soon-to-be star $500,000 a year for five years, two die cast Mercedes cars, and shoes customized to his specific requests. The deal proved a smash hit for Nike, with Jordan quickly rising to super stardom and his shoe line, Air Jordans, hitting the market to make over $100 million in revenue by the end of 1985. Air Jordans continue to be a cash cow for Nike. Despite some recent declines in sales, the brand still nets the company a staggering $2.8 billion in sales for 2018. Jordan continues to make roughly $100 million a year in Nike royalties alone.


BillBower
  Phil Night   January 25, 1964 57 years ago

HISTORY

History of Nike?

This shoe was a major success for Nike, the first of many to come as the company maintained a strong and steady growth through its early days, culminating in its 1980 IPO, which immediately made Phil Knight a millionaire with shares worth $178 million. Since then, the company has only continued to grow, helped on in part by a series of clever ad campaigns, most famously the 1988 "Just Do It" ad campaign apparently inspired by the last words of American murderer Gary Gilmore before the firing squad, "Let's do it.") The company's other greatest asset has been its celebrity endorsements. They struck big signing athletes like Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and Lebron James in the early stages of their career.
By far the most lucrative endorsement Nike has ever had, both for the company and its sponsor, has been with Michael Jordan. Spotting potential, Nike tried to swoop in for an endorsement from Jordan before the start of his first season with the pros in 1984. Despite having never worn a pair of Nikes before and harboring hope for a deal with Adidas, Jordan ended up signing on with Nike after a meeting in which they promised the soon-to-be star $500,000 a year for five years, two die cast Mercedes cars, and shoes customized to his specific requests. The deal proved a smash hit for Nike, with Jordan quickly rising to super stardom and his shoe line, Air Jordans, hitting the market to make over $100 million in revenue by the end of 1985. Air Jordans continue to be a cash cow for Nike. Despite some recent declines in sales, the brand still nets the company a staggering $2.8 billion in sales for 2018. Jordan continues to make roughly $100 million a year in Nike royalties alone.
This shoe was a major success for Nike, the first of many to come as the company maintained a strong and steady growth through its early days, culminating in its 1980 IPO, which immediately made Phil Knight a millionaire with shares worth $178 million. Since then, the company has only continued to grow, helped on in part by a series of clever ad campaigns, most famously the 1988 "Just Do It" ad campaign apparently inspired by the last words of American murderer Gary Gilmore before the firing squad, "Let's do it.") The company's other greatest asset has been its celebrity endorsements. They struck big signing athletes like Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and Lebron James in the early stages of their career.
By far the most lucrative endorsement Nike has ever had, both for the company and its sponsor, has been with Michael Jordan. Spotting potential, Nike tried to swoop in for an endorsement from Jordan before the start of his first season with the pros in 1984. Despite having never worn a pair of Nikes before and harboring hope for a deal with Adidas, Jordan ended up signing on with Nike after a meeting in which they promised the soon-to-be star $500,000 a year for five years, two die cast Mercedes cars, and shoes customized to his specific requests. The deal proved a smash hit for Nike, with Jordan quickly rising to super stardom and his shoe line, Air Jordans, hitting the market to make over $100 million in revenue by the end of 1985. Air Jordans continue to be a cash cow for Nike. Despite some recent declines in sales, the brand still nets the company a staggering $2.8 billion in sales for 2018. Jordan continues to make roughly $100 million a year in Nike royalties alone.


BillBower

TIMELINE

Nike Timeline

1964 - Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman found Blue Ribbon Sports.
1971 - Cutting ties with Onitsuka Tiger (now Asics), Blue Ribbon Sports becomes Nike Inc., using swoosh logo created by Portland State University student Carolyn Davis for $35
1971 - Bowerman comes up with iconic sole pattern for Waffle Trainers after putting rubber into a waffle iron
1972 - Romanian tennis player Ilie Nastase becomes the first athlete to sign an endorsement with Nike.
1979 - Nike introduces patented "Air" technology with new Tailwind shoe.
1980- Nike completes IPO with a price of 18 cents a share.
1984 - Nike signs Michael Jordan, launching Air Jordan series.
1987 - Nike drops ad for new Air Max shoes set to The Beatles' "Revolution," making it the first ad to use the band's music.
1988 - First "Just Do It" campaign launches with ad featuring 80-year-old running icon Walter Stack running across the Golden Gate Bridge.
1989 - "Bo Knows" ad campaign drops featuring baseball and football star Bo Jackson.
1990 - First Niketown store opens in Portland, Oregon.
1991 - Activist Jeff Ballinger publishes report exposing low wages and poor working conditions among Indonesian Nike factories. Nike responds by instating its first factory codes of conduct.
1996 - Nike signs Tiger Woods.
1998 - In the face of widespread protest, Nike raises the minimum age of its workers, increases monitoring, and adopts U.S. OSHA clean-air standards in overseas factories.
1999 - Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman dies at 88.
2002 - Nike acquires surf-apparel company Hurley.
2003 - Nike signs Lebron James and Kobe Bryant.
2004 - Nike acquires Converse for $309 million.
2004 - Phil Knight steps down as CEO and president of Nike, but retains chairman role as William D. Perez becomes the company's new CEO.
2008 - Nike signs Derek Jeter.
2012 - Nike becomes official supplier for NFL apparel.
2015 - Nike becomes official supplier for NBA apparel.
2018 - Nike unveils ad campaign featuring athlete and political activist Colin Kaepernick, garnering a mix of public approval and backlash.


BillBower
  Bill Bowermar   January 25, 1964 57 years ago

NEW STOCK

Controversy

Sweatshops
Nike has faced a long history of controversy over its labor practices. The company was founded on a principle of finding cheaper labor to produce same-quality goods and followed this unfailingly, till it finally came back to bite them. Nike's factories were initially in Japan, but then moved to cheaper labor in South Korea, China, and Taiwan. As the economies of these countries developed, Nike again shifted, moving away from labor in South Korea and Taiwan to focus on China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Not much was noted of this until activist Jeff Ballinger published a report in 1991, documenting the poor working conditions of Nike's operations across Indonesia. This was followed with a popular article in Harper's Magazine, detailing the life of an Indonesian Nike employee who worked for 14 cents an hour.
Outrage fermented among the public, with protests against the shoe ware giant at the 1992 Olympics and an increased media scrutiny on the plight of sweatshop workers. This came at the same time the company sought to expand its Niketown retail stores, resulting in mass protests around the planned expansions. With protests around college campuses, calls for boycotting the company, and pressure put on its stars like Michael Jordan to denounce the brand, Nike made a concerted effort in 1998 to improve the labor conditions of its factories. It included raising the minimum age among workers, increasing the monitoring of factory conditions, and enforcing U.S. standards for clean air. This was followed by Nike's creation of the Fair Labor Association in 1999, and audit of roughly 600 factories between 2002-2004, and the public disclosure of all of its factory locations in 2005.
While reports of abuse at the Nike factories still persist, many human rights activists have acknowledged Nike's efforts to have minimized the worst problems at these factories, and the public outcry today over the company's labor conditions is a shadow of what it once was.