Just Do It
Nike
Tagline
Net Worth
$318,711,880
Started in (City)
OREGON
Started in (Country)
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (U.S.A)
Incorporation Date
30th December, 1971
Bankruptcy Date
-
Founders
- Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight
About
Founded on January 25, 1964 and originally known as Blue Ribbons Sports (BRS) by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, Nike officially came into being on May 30th, 1971. Nike originally started as a shoe company then went and released various other subsidiary sports products that included shoes, jerseys, shorts for all varieties of sports.
Nike gained popularity as a fashion brand and came to represent the American hip-hop fashion culture. Designing personalised shoes for legendary basketball player Micheal Jordan , a series of shoes that go by the title of Air Jordan did wonders to their popularity.
Nike’s athlete endorsers include tennis player Ilie Nastase, track athlete Steve Prefontaine, Sebastian Cole, Carl Lewis and Michael Jordan to name a few. They rushed into football business by signing top players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Ronaldinho, Francesco Totti, Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe and many more. They still continue to sponsor top football clubs like FC Barcelona, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain and various other national teams including Brazil. In the world of tennis Nike held contracts with Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal and the likes. Tiger Woods was one other prominent sports person that endorsed Nike. Nike took over the NBA deal from Adidas in 2015 for a 8-year contract and went on to design shoes for players like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Vince Carter.
Beginning
Most of the initial innovations by Nike is owed to its co-founder Bill Bowerman, a decorated World War II hero who later took up the position of track coach in his college alma mater, University of Oregon. Phil Knight who was a friend and student to Bowerman is known to have been the first student-athlete to test the shoe invented by his coach. Bowerman, unsatisfied by the shoes in the market and having had no response for his recommendations to several footwear companies, decided to take things into his own hands. He took apart several racing shoes, learned the craft of making shoes from cobblers and bootmakers.
Olympic gold medallist at the 1960 Summer Olympics, Otis Davis claims that Bill Bowerman had created his first ever invention for him and his Olympic winning shoes were the same Bowerman original.
Nike’s ideals come from Bowerman, how he used to measure an athlete’s foot before creating a shoe that would fit comfortably and lead to efficient run.
Phil Knight formed a relationship with Onitsuka Tiger, a Japanese shoemaker in 1964 and Bowerman decided to partner with Knight, both investing 50-50 for the business of importing and selling racing shoes. Bowerman now had a playing field to sell his ideas. And Blue Ribbons Sports was born.
Road to Success
BRS sold 1300 pairs of shoes in first year and recorded a sale of $20,000 by 1965. It soon opened its first retail store in Santa Monica, California and other subsidiary stores in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
In the spring of 1965, an incident in which Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore met with an injury that led to a stress fracture, Bowerman produced his iconic Cortex shoes. The cortex was made despite objections with placement of sponge rubber in the heel and Moore went on to deliver more than 1000 miles in Bowerman’s invention. This came to be known as Tiger-Cortex in the market for which Bowerman gained patent, later in1971, BRS cut its ties with Onitsuka Tiger and emerged as a separate business identity by the brand name Nike. Nike adopted the Swoosh logo designed by Carolyn Davidson on June 18, 1971 which was registered with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on January 22, 1974. In the next six years, the company showed a gain in market share and owned 50% of the U.S athletic shoe market by the end of 1980. At this stage Nike was ready to give its Initial Public Offering.
Challenges
Nike has been caught up in controversies for using factories in various countries that violated minimum wage, overtime and used child labour. This has been documented in Naomi Klein’s book No Logo. It has also been reported that workers in the company factories in Indonesia suffered abuse from their superiors. In 2017, it was revealed that Nike used offshore companies to avoid taxes. The controversy of September, 2018 when Nike decided to create a new contract with Colin Kaepernick, the American football quarterback who kneeled on the ground during the playing of US National Anthem to protest against police brutality of unarmed black Americans, even though it created a fall in the stock for the company, it raised the product selling by 27%. Many believe it was a calculated move by the Nike marketing team to set up negative publicity and boost the sales at the cost of an initial loss in stock price.
Nike’s Vaporfly and ZoomX shoes, although extraordinarily efficient, raised further controversies with World Athletics issuing guidelines for Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The concern raised by the authorities was that athletes wearing these shoes had an unfair advantage over the others as it increased efficiency by 4.2%.
Failures
Nike brand was valued at 34.8 billion dollars as of 2020. In March 2020, Nike showed the first drop in sales due to COVID-19 outbreak. This was out shadowed by a rise in online sales during the first quarter of 2020.
Achievements
- Nike’s famous brand slogan ’Just Do it’ was created by Dan Wieden, the co-founder of Wieden+Kennedy, Nike’s primary ad agency. This slogan went on to be featured in the Smithsonian Institution and was chosen as one of the top five ad slogans of the 20th century by Advertising Age.
- Nike’s revenue is ranked first among its competitors. In Q2 2020’s revenue was $6.3B and Q1 2020’s revenue was $10.1B. In 2019, it was $10.1B, $10.3B and $10.7B during Q4, Q3, Q2 respectively.
- Nike Mag, a self lacing shoe was released in limited edition that went on for sale in auction with proceedings going to charity. Nike’s clothing line went on to become a huge success as people began considering the brand to be a status symbol.
- They produced the Nike Air Max, Air Huarache, Nike 6.0, Nike NyX and Nike SB shoes, Air Zoom Yorker and the iconic Air Jordan, a high performance basketball shoe designed with inputs from Michael Jordan. The Nike Vaporfly that gained popularity in 2017, improved run times upto 4.2% and was solely focused on long-distance running
Subsidies
- Nike Pro
- Nike Plus
- Air Jordan
- Air Max Limited
- Nike Golf
CEOs
- Philip H. Knight
- Mark Parker
- John Donahoe