How one man built a Billion-Dollar Brand called Nike!

Nike is the world’s most popular and biggest sportswear company. In just over 50 years one man’s dream of better shoes turned into a global Corporation worth over a hundred billion dollars today.

Let’s go back to the earliest days of Nike to find out how the magic that happened to get this success.

The year is 1962 and Phil Knight had just graduated from Stanford as any business graduate can tell you becoming an entrepreneur is difficult. If you don’t have any good ideas, but Phil had one he was a distance runner back in University and in one of his business classes, he had written a paper proposing the following idea Phil had seen how Japanese cameras had replaced the dominant German cameras in the American market and he wondered whether Japanese shoes.

But back to fill after writing that paper in graduating Phil became obsessed with his idea about bringing Japanese shoes to the USA. Of course. He didn’t actually own any Japanese running shoes and a few he had seen were brought Stateside by soldiers who had been stationed in

Japan during the occupation after the second World War.

This lack of exposure only reassured fill that he had stumbled upon a great opportunity.

He kneels it to take advantage of it. He’d have to establish contact with a Japanese company

and negotiates the import their goods to America both of which were actions.

He had exactly zero experience with but as is befitting of the man who later create Nike he went ahead and just did it in November 1962 he flew over to Japan like a tourist and just Exploring in the beautiful city of Kobe.

He stumbled upon a shoe store that caught his eye had belonged to a company called only took a tiger in the shoes.

He presented himself as an American shoe distributor and arranged a meeting with the company’s founder Phil made up a company name on the spot and offered to become onizuka’s distributor in America Oprah.

Bosal which probably to his surprise the owner actually accepted with nothing more than his confidence Phil had become the exclusive distributor for only took a tiger in the USA.

He received his first shipment of 12 pairs of tiger shoes in 1963, and he started selling them out of the back of his car at every running track. He could drive to obviously though his strategy wasn’t scalable.

So he went to the only person he knew who understood more about running shoes than he did.

He liked the tiger shoes so much that he wanted to partner up the sand January 1964 Bill and Phil Incorporated Blue Ribbon Sports, each investing five hundred dollars into it.

They spent all that money on their first order which at three dollars and 33 I sense a pair amounted to 300 pairs of shoes. The shipment came through in April 1964 and thanks to Bill’s connections.

It was sold out by July in their first year BRS sold eight thousand dollars worth of shoes. And with that money Phil started hiring salesman for his company in 1965 their revenue had increased to twenty thousand dollars pretty soon.

They opened their very own store in Santa Monica. But while Phil was handling the business side of the operation, And the actual Innovation was coming from Bill.

He was the guy who single-handedly brought jogging to America in 1966. He wrote a book about it that sold over a million copies. And of course his company was among the first to start marketing the tiger shoes for jogging Bowerman was all about Innovation and with every new shipment from onizuka heat could open a few shoes to see how they were made and he’d always try to improve by for example adding to the cushion.

And or using more lightweight materials heat constantly sent his note to Japan requesting changes. He was effectively designing only took his shoes for them. It was one of bills designs that catapulted the heiress into the mainstream the Cortezhas he called it became one of the best-selling shoes in 1968, undoubtedly. Thanks to the 1968 Olympics held in Mexico.

Thanks to the Cortez BRS sold $300,000 worth of shoes in. 9 but they had a big problem.

They received sold out faster than the one before but onizuka kept sending them at the same.

Glacial Pace, what only took a were actually doing was satisfying their local demand in Japan first and then sending whatever was left to America Phil and Bill knew that to expand.

The Cortez was bowerman’s designed. So as soon as their contract with only took expired they were free to start making it for themselves.

Luckily for them. Their contract would end in 1972 just before the Olympics in Munich. Thus Phil had plenty of time to prepare for his big move in 1971.

Nike after the Greek goddess of Victory then fill needed a logo so he went to a nearby University snatched the first graphic design student.

He got this the swoosh in hindsight that was money.

Established a network of subcontractors across Japan with production under his control Phil could finally spread his wings. You can see in this graph of Nikes sales exactly when Phil started importing shoes from his Japanese subcontractors, and yes, he started before his contract could even expired

The ascent of Nike is a story every bit as interesting is the early days of film night, but don’t take my word for it Phil Knight himself release his autobiography in 2016.