NIKE Success Story

The advertising slogan “Just Do It” must suit the founders of Nike, Inc. Their brassy approach to business has guided the company’s masterminds, Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, as they built their athletic shoe and clothing company from a basement-based business into a worldwide corporate giant.

Bowerman, the rugged University of Oregon coach who built a hugely successful collegiate track and field program there, taught his athletes to seek the competitive advantage everywhere – in their bodies, their gear and their passion. Bowerman was convinced that one key to winning was a lighter shoe, and he set out to make them himself, stitching shoes together, and pouring rubber into an ordinary waffle iron to make the soles.

Knight was an accounting student at UO, and a middle-distance runner for one of Bowerman’s teams. In 1962 Knight decided there was a business to be made of importing low-priced, high-tech athletic shoes from Japan to compete against the German shoes that dominated the U.S. market.

Knight and Bowerman put up $550 each, shook hands and started importing shoes. But Bowerman kept wanting to make the shoes better, and Knight didn’t like the idea of selling someone else’s shoes.

Soon, the importing business gave way to new designs and a new company, Nike. The company was joined by two more key players, Jeff Johnson, a former runner for Bowerman’s teams, and Steve Prefontaine, an international track star who also ran for Oregon.

At first, everything was located in Knight’s basement. Most sales were made from the trunks of employees’ cars, at local track meets. By 1974, Nike was selling $4.8 million of track shoes annually, and growing by 50 percent per year.

Over the next five years, Nike’s sales more than doubled each year. In 1980, Nike went public with an offering of 2 million shares. Today, Nike is the largest sports and fitness company in the world.