1.The Company Background

I. The History

1. A slow and unusual beginning…

Nike began in the trunk of Phil Knight’s car, as unusual as it can be; it was there that the Nike Athletic Machine which was at this period a small distributing outfit began.

The company emanated from two persons:

* Bill Bowerman who was there for more durable racing shoes, he was the coach of the track of the University of Oregon where Phil Knight ran in 1959. Bowerman wanted to improve the quality of the running shoes and consequently asked to Knight to do it.

* Phil Knight who was responsible to search in a way to make a living without having to give up his love of Athletics.

The story began like this; Knight got his MBA at Stanford University in the early 60’s where he had to do a long term project with the goal to devise it, including a marketing plan. Strong of its friendship with Bowerman, he worked on this project on a firm which would produce good quality running shoes but this made at a low cost because made in Japan and then shipped to the US for the distribution. The project received a good grade but nothing more.

In 1963, Phil Knight travelled to Japan on a tour about professional life, during this trip; he had scheduled an interview with a Japanese running shoe manufacturer named Tiger which was a subsidiary of the Onitsuka Company. He told to this guy that he was a representative of an American Distributor interested in selling Tiger shoes to American runners. He said that he was very interested in this product and placed his first order for Tigers.

In 1964, he had sold $ 8 000 worth of Tigers and placed another order. He worked with Bowerman and they decided to hire a full time salesman Jeff Johnson.

In 1971, the turnover was $ 1 million it is a real success, but they decided to call the company Nike and trademark Swoosh as the symbol of the company.

At the end of the 70’s, Blue Ribbon Sports became Nike (it was the company which