HISTORY OF NIKE, INC.

Founded as an importer of Japanese shoes, NIKE, Inc. (Nike) has grown to be the

world's largest marketer of athletic footwear and apparel. In the United States, Nike

products are sold through about 20,000 retail accounts; worldwide, the company's

products are sold in about 110 countries. Both domestically and overseas Nike

operates retail stores, including NikeTowns and factory outlets. Nearly all of the items

are manufactured by independent contractors, primarily located overseas, with Nike

involved in the design, development, and marketing. In addition to its wide range of

core athletic shoes and apparel, the company also sells Nike and Bauer brand athletic

equipment, Cole Haan brand dress and casual footwear, and the Sports Specialties line

of headwear featuring licensing team logos. The company has relied on consistent

innovation in the design of its products and heavy promotion to fuel its growth in both

U.S. and foreign markets. The ubiquitous presence of the Nike brand and its Swoosh

trademark led to a backlash against the company by the late 20th century, particularly

in relation to allegations of low wages and poor working conditions at the company's

Asian contract manufacturers.

BRS BEGINNINGS

Nike's precursor originated in 1962, a product of the imagination of Philip H. Knight,

a Stanford University business graduate who had been a member of the track team as

an undergraduate at the University of Oregon. Traveling in Japan after finishing up

business school, Knight got in touch with a Japanese firm that made athletic shoes, the

Onitsuka Tiger Co., and arranged to import some of its products to the United States

on a small scale. Knight was convinced that Japanese running shoes could become

significant competitors for the German products that then dominated the American
market. In the course of setting up his agreement with Onitsuka Tiger, Knight

invented Blue Ribbon Sports to satisfy his Japanese partner's expectations that he

represented an actual company, and this hypothetical firm eventually grew to become

Nike, Inc.

At the end of 1963, Knight's arrangements in Japan came to fruition when he took

delivery of 200 pairs of Tiger athletic shoes, which he stored in his father's basement

and peddled at various track meets in the area. Knight's one-man venture became a

partnership in the following year, when his former track coach, William Bowerman,

chipped in $500 to equal Knight's investment. Bowerman had long been

experimenting with modified running shoes for his team, and he worked with runners

to improve the designs of prototype Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) shoes. Innovation in

running shoe design eventually would become a cornerstone of the company's

continued expansion and success. Bowerman's efforts first paid off in 1968, when a

shoe known as the Cortez, which he had designed, became a big seller.

BRS sold 1,300 pairs of Japanese running shoes in 1964, its first year, to gross

$8,000. By 1965 the fledgling company had acquired a full-time employee and sales

had reached $20,000. The following year, the company rented its first retail space,

next to a beauty salon in Santa Monica, California, so that its few employees could

stop selling shoes out of their cars. In 1967 with fast-growing sales, BRS expanded

operations to the East Coast, opening a distribution office in Wellesley,

Massachusetts.

Bowerman's innovations in running shoe technology continued throughout this time.

A shoe with the upper portion made of nylon went into development in 1967, and the

following year Bowerman and another employee came up with the Boston shoe,
which incorporated the first cushioned mid-sole throughout the entire length of an

athletic shoe.

EMERGENCE OF NIKE IN 1970S

By the end of the decade, Knight's venture had expanded to include several stores and

20 employees and sales were nearing $300,000. The company was poised for greater

growth, but Knight was frustrated by a lack of capital to pay for expansion. In 1971

using financing from the Japanese trading company Nissho Iwai Corporation, BRS

was able to manufacture its own line of products overseas, through independent

contractors, for import to the United States. At this time, the company introduced its

Swoosh trademark and the brand name Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. These

new symbols were initially affixed to a soccer shoe, the first Nike product to be sold.

A year later, BRS broke with its old Japanese partner, Onitsuka Tiger, after a

disagreement over distribution, and kicked off promotion of its own products at the

1972 U.S. Olympic Trials, the first of many marketing campaigns that would seek to

attach Nike's name and fortunes to the careers of well-known athletes. Nike shoes

were geared to the serious athlete, and their high performance carried with it a high

price. In their first year of distribution, the company's new products grossed $1.96

million and the corporate staff swelled to 45. In addition, operations were expanded to

Canada, the company's first foreign market, which would be followed by Australia, in

1974.

Bowerman continued his innovations in running-shoe design with the introduction of

the Moon shoe in 1972, which had a waffle-like sole that had first been formed by

molding rubber on a household waffle iron. This sole increased the traction of the

shoe without adding weight.

In 1974 BRS opened its first U.S. plant, in Exeter, New Hampshire. The company's

payroll swelled to 250, and worldwide sales neared $5 million by the end of 1974.

This growth was fueled in part by aggressive promotion of the Nike brand name. The

company sought to expand its visibility by having its shoes worn by prominent

athletes, including tennis players Ilie Nastase and Jimmy Connors. At the 1976

Olympic Trials these efforts began to pay off as Nike shoes were worn by rising

athletic stars.

The company's growth had truly begun to take off by this time, riding the boom in

popularity of jogging that took place in the United States in the late 1970s. BRS

revenues tripled in two years to $14 million in 1976, and then doubled in just one year

to $28 million in 1977. To keep up with demand, the company opened new factories,

adding a stitching plant in Maine and additional overseas production facilities in

Taiwan and Korea. International sales were expanded when markets in Asia were

opened in 1977 and in South America the following year. European distributorships

were lined up in 1978.

Nike continued its promotional activities with the opening of Athletics West, a

training club for Olympic hopefuls in track and field, and by signing tennis player

John McEnroe to an endorsement contract. In 1978 the company changed its name to

Nike, Inc. The company expanded its line of products that year, adding athletic shoes

for children.
By 1979 Nike sold almost half the running shoes bought in the United States, and the

company moved into a new world headquarters building in Beaverton, Oregon. In

addition to its shoe business, the company began to make and market a line of sports

clothing, and the Nike Air shoe cushioning device was introduced.

1980S GROWTH THROUGH INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION

AND AGGRESSIVE MARKETING

By the start of the 1980s, Nike's combination of groundbreaking design and savvy and

aggressive marketing had allowed it to surpass the German athletic shoe company

Adidas AG, formerly the leader in U.S. sales. In December 1980, Nike went public,

offering two million shares of stock. With the revenues generated by the stock sale,

the company planned continued expansion, particularly in the European market. In the

United States, plans for a new headquarters on a large, rural campus were

inaugurated, and an East Coast distribution center in Greenland, New Hampshire, was

brought on line. In addition, the company bought a large plant in Exeter, New

Hampshire, to house the Nike Sport Research and Development Lab and also to

provide for more domestic manufacturing capacity. The company had shifted its

overseas production away from Japan at this point, manufacturing nearly four-fifths of

its shoes in South Korea and Taiwan. It established factories in mainland China in

1981.

By the following year, when the jogging craze in the United States had started to

wane, half of the running shoes bought in the United States bore the Nike trademark.

The company was well insulated from the effects of a stagnating demand for running

shoes, however, since it gained a substantial share of its sales from other types of

athletic shoes, notably basketball shoes and tennis shoes. In addition, Nike benefited
from strong sales of its other product lines, which included apparel, work and leisure

shoes, and children's shoes.

Given the slowing of growth in the U.S. market, however, the company turned its

attention to growth in foreign markets, inaugurating Nike International, Ltd. in 1981

to spearhead the company's push into Europe and Japan, as well as into Asia, Latin

America, and Africa. In Europe, Nike faced stiff competition from Adidas and Puma,

which had a strong hold on the soccer market, Europe's largest athletic shoe category.

The company opened a factory in Ireland to enable it to distribute its shoes without

paying high import tariffs, and in 1981 bought out its distributors in England and

Austria, to strengthen its control over marketing and distribution of its products. In

1982 the company outfitted Aston Villa, the winning team in the English and

European Cup soccer championships, giving a boost to promotion of its new soccer

shoe.

In Japan, Nike allied itself with Nissho Iwai, the sixth largest Japanese trading

company, to form Nike-Japan Corporation. Because Nike already held a part of the

low-priced athletic shoe market, the company set its sights on the high-priced end of

the scale in Japan.

By 1982 the company's line of products included more than 200 different kinds of

shoes, including the Air Force I, a basketball shoe, and its companion shoe for racquet

sports, the Air Ace, the latest models in the long line of innovative shoe designs that

had pushed Nike's earnings to an average annual increase of almost 100 percent. In

addition, the company marketed more than 200 different items of clothing. By 1983--

when the company posted its first-ever quarterly drop in earnings as the running boom

peaked and went into a decline--Nike's leaders were looking to the apparel division,
as well as overseas markets, for further expansion. In foreign sales, the company had

mixed results. Its operations in Japan were almost immediately profitable, and the

company quickly jumped to second place in the Japanese market, but in Europe, Nike

fared less well, losing money on its five European subsidiaries.

Faced with an 11.5 percent drop in domestic sales of its shoes in the 1984 fiscal year,

Nike moved away from its traditional marketing strategy of support for sporting

events and athlete endorsements to a wider-reaching approach, investing more than

$10 million in its first national television and magazine advertising campaign. This

followed the 'Cities Campaign,' which used billboards and murals in nine American

cities to publicize Nike products in the period before the 1984 Olympics. Despite the

strong showing of athletes wearing Nike shoes in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic

games, Nike profits were down almost 30 percent for the fiscal year ending in May

1984, although international sales were robust and overall sales rose slightly. This

decline was a result of aggressive price discounting on Nike products and the

increased costs associated with the company's push into foreign markets and attempts

to build up its sales of apparel.

Earnings continued to fall in the next three quarters as the company lost market share,

posting profits of only $7.8 million at the end of August 1984, a loss of $2.2 million

three months later, and another loss of $2.1 million at the end of February 1985. In

response, Nike adopted a series of measures to change its sliding course. The

company cut back on the number of shoes it had sitting in warehouses and also

attempted to fine-tune its corporate mission by cutting back on the number of

products it marketed. It made plans to reduce the line of Nike shoes by 30 percent

within a year and a half. In addition, leadership at the top of the company was

streamlined, as founder Knight resumed the post of president--which he had

relinquished in 1983--in addition to his duties as chairman and chief executive officer.

Overall administrative costs were also reduced. As part of this effort, Nike also

consolidated its research and marketing branches, closing its facility in Exeter, New

Hampshire, and cutting 75 of the plant's 125 employees. Overall, the company laid off

about 400 workers during 1984.

Faced with shifting consumer interests (i.e., the U.S. market move from jogging to

aerobics), the company created a new products division in 1985 to help keep pace. In

addition, Nike purchased Pro-form, a small maker of weightlifting equipment, as part

of its plan to profit from all aspects of the fitness movement. The company was

restructured further at the end of 1985 when its last two U.S. factories were closed

and its previous divisions of apparel and athletic shoes were rearranged by sport. In a

move that would prove to be the key to the company's recovery, in 1985 the company

signed basketball player Michael Jordan to endorse a new version of its Air shoe,

introduced four years earlier. The new basketball shoes bore the name 'Air Jordan.'

In early 1986 Nike announced expansion into a number of new lines, including casual

apparel for women, a less expensive line of athletic shoes called Street Socks, golf

shoes, and tennis gear marketed under the name 'Wimbledon.' By mid-1986 Nike was

reporting that its earnings had begun to increase again, with sales topping $1 billion

for the first time. At that point, the company sold its 51 percent stake in Nike-Japan to

its Japanese partner; six months later, Nike laid off ten percent of its U.S. employees

at all levels in a major cost-cutting strategy.

Following these moves, Nike announced a drop in revenues and earnings in 1987, and

another round of restructuring and budget cuts ensued, as the company attempted to

come to grips with the continuing evolution of the U.S. fitness market. Only Nike's
innovative Air athletic shoes provided a bright spot in the company's otherwise erratic

progress, allowing the company to regain market share from rival Reebok

International Ltd. in several areas, including basketball and cross-training.

The following year, Nike branched out from athletic shoes, purchasing Cole Haan, a

maker of casual and dress shoes, for $80 million. Advertising heavily, the company

took a commanding lead in sales to young people to claim 23 percent of the overall

athletic shoe market. Profits rebounded to reach $100 million in 1988, as sales rose 37

percent to $1.2 billion. Later that year, Nike launched a $10 million television

campaign around the theme 'Just Do It' and announced that its 1989 advertising

budget would reach $45 million.

In 1989 Nike marketed several new lines of shoes and led its market with $1.7 billion

in sales, yielding profits of $167 million. The company's product innovation

continued, including the introduction of a basketball shoe with an inflatable collar

around the ankle, sold under the brand name Air Pressure. In addition, Nike continued

its aggressive marketing, using ads featuring Michael Jordan and actor-director Spike

Lee, the ongoing 'Just Do It' campaign, and the 'Bo Knows' television spots featuring

athlete Bo Jackson. At the end of 1989, the company began relocation to its newly

constructed headquarters campus in Beaverton, Oregon.

MARKET DOMINANCE IN THE EARLY TO MID-1990S

In 1990 the company sued two competitors for copying the patented designs of its

shoes and found itself engaged in a dispute with the U.S. Customs Service over

import duties on its Air Jordan basketball shoes. In 1990 the company's revenues hit

$2 billion. The company acquired Tetra Plastics Inc., producers of plastic film for
shoe soles. That year, the company opened NikeTown, a prototype store selling the

full range of Nike products, in Portland, Oregon.

By 1991 Nike's Visible Air shoes had enabled it to surpass its rival Reebok in the U.S.

market. In the fiscal year ending May 31, 1991, Nike sales surpassed the $3 billion

mark, fueled by record sales of 41 million pairs of Nike Air shoes and a booming

international market. Its efforts to conquer Europe had begun to bear fruit; business

there grew by 100 percent that year, producing more than $1 billion in sales and

gaining the second place market share behind Adidas. Nike's U.S. shoe market had, in

large part, matured, slowing to five percent annual growth, down from 15 percent

annual growth from 1980 and 1988. The company began eyeing overseas markets and

predicted ample room to grow in Europe. Nike's U.S. rival Reebok, however, also saw

potential for growth in Europe, and by 1992 European MTV was glutted with athletic

shoe advertisements as the battle for the youth market heated up between Nike,

Reebok, and their European competitors, Adidas and Puma.

Nike also saw growth potential in its women's shoe and sports apparel division. In

February 1992 Nike began a $13 million print and television advertising pitch for its

women's segment, built upon its 'Dialogue' print campaign, which had been slowly

wooing 18- to 34-year-old women since 1990. Sales of Nike women's apparel lines

Fitness Essentials, Elite Aerobics, Physical Elements, and All Condition Gear

increased by 25 percent in both 1990 and 1991 and jumped by 68 percent in 1992.

In July 1992 Nike opened its second NikeTown retail store in Chicago, Illinois. Like

its predecessor in Portland, the Chicago NikeTown was designed to 'combine the fun

and excitement of FAO Schwartz, the Smithsonian Institute and Disneyland in a space
that will entertain sports and fitness fans from around the world' as well as provide a

high-profile retail outlet for Nike's rapidly expanding lines of footwear and clothing.

Nike celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1992, virtually debt free and with company

revenues of $3.4 billion. Gross profits jumped $100 million in that year, fueled by

soaring sales in its retail division, which expanded to include 30 Nike-owned discount

outlets and the two NikeTowns. To celebrate its anniversary, Nike brought out its old

slogan 'There is no finish line.' As if to underscore that sentiment, Nike Chairman

Philip Knight announced massive plans to remake the company with the goal of being

'the best sports and fitness company in the world.' To fulfill that goal, the company set

the ground plans for a complicated yet innovative marketing structure seeking to

make the Nike brand into a worldwide megabrand along the lines of Coca-Cola,

Pepsi, Sony, and Disney.

Nike continued expansion of its high-profile NikeTown chain, opening outlets in

Atlanta, Georgia, in the spring of 1993 and Costa Mesa, California, later that year.

Also in 1993, as part of its long-term marketing strategy, Nike began an ambitious

venture with Mike Ovitz's Creative Artists Agency to organize and package sports

events under the Nike name--a move that potentially led the company into

competition with sports management giants such as ProServ, IMG, and Advantage

International.

Nike also began a more controversial venture into the arena of sports agents,

negotiating contracts for basketball's Scottie Pippin, Alonzo Mourning, and others in

addition to retaining athletes such as Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley as company

spokespersons. Nike's influence in the world of sports grew to such a degree that in

1993 Sporting News dubbed Knight the most powerful man in sports.
Critics contended that Nike's influence ran too deep, having its hand in negotiating

everything in an athlete's life from investments to the choice of an apartment. But

Nike's marketing executives saw it as part of a campaign to create an image of Nike

not just as a product line but as a lifestyle, a 'Nike attitude.'

Nearly everyone agreed, however, that Nike was the dominant force in athletic

footwear in the early to mid-1990s. The company held about 30 percent of the U.S.

market by 1995, far outdistancing the 20 percent of its nearest rival, Reebok. Overseas

revenues continued their steady rise, reaching nearly $2 billion by 1995, about 40

percent of the overall total. Not content with its leading position in athletic shoes and

its growing sales of athletic apparel--which accounted for more than 30 percent of

revenues in 1996--Nike branched out into sports equipment in the mid-1990s. In 1994

the company acquired Canstar Sports Inc., the leading maker of skates and hockey

equipment in the world, for $400 million. Canstar was renamed Bauer Nike Hockey

Inc., Bauer being Canstar's brand name for its equipment. Two years later Bauer Nike

became part of the newly formed Nike equipment division, which aimed to extend the

company into the marketing of sport balls, protective gear, eyewear, and watches.

Also during this period, Nike signed up its next superstar spokesperson, Tiger Woods.

In 1995, at the age of 20, Woods agreed to a 20-year, $40 million endorsement

contract. The golf phenom went on to win an inordinate number of tournaments, often

shattering course records, and to become only the second golfer in history to win three

'majors' within a single year, more than validating the blockbuster contract.
LATE 1990S SLIPPAGE

For the fiscal year ending in May 1997, Nike earned a record $795.8 million on

record revenues of $9.19 billion. Overseas sales played a large role in the 42 percent

increase in revenues from 1996 to 1997. Sales in Asia increased by more than $500

million (to $1.24 billion), while European sales surged ahead by $450 million. Back

home, Nike's share of the U.S. athletic shoe market neared 50 percent. The picture at

Nike soon turned sour, however, as the Asian financial crisis that erupted in the

summer of 1997 sent sneaker sales in that region plunging. By fiscal 1999, sales in

Asia had dropped to $844.5 million. Compounding the company's troubles was a

concurrent stagnation of sales in its domestic market, where the fickle tastes of

teenagers began turning away from athletic shoes to hiking boots and other casual

'brown shoes.' As a result, overall sales for 1999 fell to $8.78 billion. Profits were

falling as well--including a net loss of $67.7 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal

1998, the company's first reported loss in more than 13 years. The decline in net

income led to a cost-cutting drive that included the layoff of five percent of the

workforce, or 1,200 people, in 1998, and the slashing of its budget for sports star

endorsements by $100 million that same year.

Nike was also dogged throughout the late 1990s by protests and boycotts over

allegations regarding the treatment of workers at the contract factories in Asia that

employed nearly 400,000 people and that made the bulk of Nike shoes and much of

its apparel. Charges included abuse of workers, poor working conditions, low wages,

and use of child labor. Nike's initial reaction--which was highlighted by Knight's

insistence that the company had little control over its suppliers--resulted in waves of

negative publicity. Protesters included church groups, students at universities that had
apparel and footwear contracts with Nike, and socially conscious investment funds.

Nike finally announced in mid-1998 a series of changes affecting its contract

workforce in Asia, including an increase in the minimum age, a tightening of air

quality standards, and a pledge to allow independent inspections of factories. Nike

nonetheless remained under pressure from activists into the 21st century. Nike, along

with McDonald's Corporation, the Coca-Cola Company, and Starbucks Corporation,

among others, also became an object of protest from those who were attacking

multinational companies that pushed global brands. This undercurrent of hostility

burst into the spotlight in late 1999 when some of the more aggressive protesters

against a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle attempted to storm a

NikeTown outlet.

Seeking to recapture the growth of the early to mid-1990s, Nike pursued a number of

new initiatives in the late 1990s. Having initially missed out on the trend toward

extreme sports (such as skateboarding, mountain biking, and snowboarding), Nike

attempted to rectify this miscue by establishing a unit called ACG&mdash⁄ort

for 'all-conditions gear'--in 1998. Two years later, the company created a new division

called Techlab to market a line of sports-technology accessories, such as a digital

audio player, a high-altitude wrist compass, and a portable heart-rate monitor. Both of

these initiatives were aimed at capturing sales from the emerging Generation Y

demographic group. In early 1999 Nike began selling its shoes and other products

directly to consumers via the company web site. Nike announced in September of that

year that it would buy about ten percent of Fogdog Inc., which ran a sporting goods e-

commerce site, in exchange for granting Fogdog the exclusive online rights to sell the

full Nike line. The company finally earned some good publicity in 1999 when it

sponsored the U.S. national women's soccer team that won the Women's World Cup.
With its record of innovative product design and savvy promotion and an aggressive

approach to containing costs and revitalizing sales, Nike appeared likely to stage an

impressive comeback in the early 21st century.

Principal Subsidiaries: Cole Haan Holdings Incorporated; Nike

Team Sports, Inc.; Nike IHM, Inc.; Bauer Nike Hockey Inc.

Principal Competitors: adidas-Salomon AG; Callaway Golf Company; Converse Inc.;

Deckers Outdoor Corporation; Fila Holding S.p.A.; Fortune Brands, Inc.; Fruit of the

Loom, Ltd.; FUBU; HI-TEC Sports USA Inc.; Levi Strauss & Co.; Nautica

Enterprises, Inc.; New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.; Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation;

Puma AG; R. Griggs Group Limited; Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, Inc.;

Reebok International Ltd.; Rollerblade, Inc.; Russell Corporation; Sara Lee

Corporation; Skechers U.S.A., Inc.; Spalding Holdings Corporation; The Stride Rite

Corporation; The Timberland Company; Timex Corporation; Tommy Hilfiger

Corporation; VF Corporation; Wolverine World Wide, Inc. Read more:

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NIKE, INC.

Nike, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design,

development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing and sales of footwear,

apparel, equipment, accessories, and services. The company is headquartered near

Beaverton, Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area. It is the world's largest supplier

of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment, with

revenue in excess of US$37.4 billion in its fiscal year 2020 (ending May 31, 2020).

As of 2020, it employed 76,700 people worldwide. In 2020 the brand alone was
valued in excess of $32 billion, making it the most valuable brand among sports

businesses. Previously, in 2017, the Nike brand was valued at $29.6 billion. Nike

ranked 89th in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by

total revenue. The company was founded on January 25, 1964, as "Blue Ribbon

Sports", by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, and officially became Nike, Inc. on May

30, 1971. The company takes its name from Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Nike

markets its products under its own brand, as well as Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike+, Air

Jordan, Nike Blazers, Air Force 1, Nike Dunk, Air Max, Foamposite, Nike

Skateboarding, Nike CR7, and subsidiaries including Jordan Brand and Converse.

Nike also owned Bauer Hockey from 1995 to 2008, and previously owned Cole Haan,

Umbro, and Hurley International. In addition to manufacturing sportswear and

equipment, the company operates retail stores under the Niketown name. Nike

sponsors many high-profile athletes and sports teams around the world, with the

highly recognized trademarks of "Just Do It" and the Swoosh logo.

Nike, originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS), was founded by University of

Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach, Bill Bowerman, on January 25, 1964.

The company initially operated in Eugene, Oregon as a distributor for Japanese shoe

maker Onitsuka Tiger, making most sales at track meets out of Knight's automobile.

According to Otis Davis, a University of Oregon student-athlete coached by

Bowerman and Olympic gold medalist at the 1960 Summer Olympics, his coach

made the first pair of Nike shoes for him, contradicting a claim that they were made

for Phil Knight. According to Davis, "I told Tom Brokaw that I was the first. I don't

care what all the billionaires say. Bill Bowerman made the first pair of shoes for me.

People don't believe me. In fact, I didn't like the way they felt on my feet. There was
no support and they were too tight. But I saw Bowerman made them from the waffle

iron, and they were mine".

In its first year in business, BRS sold 1,300 pairs of Japanese running shoes grossing

$8,000.[14] By 1965, sales had reached $20,000. In 1966, BRS opened its first retail

store at 3107 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. In 1967, due to increasing

sales, BRS expanded retail and distribution operations on the East Coast, in

Wellesley, Massachusetts.

By 1971, the relationship between BRS and Onitsuka Tiger came to an end. BRS

prepared to launch its own line of footwear, which was rebranded as Nike, and would

bear the Swoosh newly designed by Carolyn Davidson. The Swoosh was first used by

Nike on June 18, 1971, and was registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

on January 22, 1974. In 1976, the company hired John Brown and Partners, based in

Seattle, as its first advertising agency. The following year, the agency created the first

"brand ad" for Nike, called "There is no finish line", in which no Nike product was

shown. By 1980, Nike had attained a 50% market share in the U.S. athletic shoe

market, and the company went public in December of that year.

Wieden+Kennedy, Nike's primary ad agency, has worked with Nike to create many

print and television advertisements, and Wieden+Kennedy remains Nike's primary ad

agency. It was agency co-founder Dan Wieden who coined the now-famous slogan

"Just Do It" for a 1988 Nike ad campaign, which was chosen by Advertising Age as

one of the top five ad slogans of the 20th century and enshrined in the Smithsonian

Institution. Walt Stack was featured in Nike's first "Just Do It" advertisement, which

debuted on July 1, 1988. Wieden credits the inspiration for the slogan to "Let's do it",

the last words spoken by Gary Gilmore before he was executed.

Throughout the 1980s, Nike expanded its product line to encompass many sports and

regions throughout the world. In 1990, Nike moved into its eight-building World

Headquarters campus in Beaverton, Oregon. The first Nike retail store, dubbed

Niketown, opened in downtown Portland in November of that year.

Phil Knight announced in mid-2015 that he would step down as chairman of Nike in

2016. He officially stepped down from all duties with the company on June 30, 2016.

In a company public announcement on March 15, 2018, Nike CEO Mark Parker said

Trevor Edwards, a top Nike executive who was seen as a potential successor to the

chief executive, was relinquishing his position as Nike's brand president and would

retire in August.

In October 2019, John Donahoe was announced as the next CEO, and succeeded

Parker on January 13, 2020. In November 2019, the company stopped selling directly

through Amazon, focusing more on direct relationships with customers. On June 24,

2021, during an earnings call with investors, CEO John Donahoe stated that "Nike is a

brand that is of China and for China", in response to a question about competing

against Chinese brands.

ACQUISITIONS

Nike has acquired and sold several apparel and footwear companies over the course of

its history. Its first acquisition was the upscale footwear company Cole Haan in 1988,

followed by the purchase of Bauer Hockey in 1994. In 2002, Nike bought surf apparel

company Hurley International from founder Bob Hurley. In 2003, Nike paid US$309

million to acquire sneaker company Converse. The company acquired Starter in 2004

and soccer uniform maker Umbro in 2007. In order to refocus its business lines, Nike
began divesting itself of some of its subsidiaries in the 2000s. It sold Starter in 2007

and Bauer Hockey in 2008. The company sold Umbro in 2012 and Cole Haan in

2013. As of 2020, Nike owns only one subsidiary: Converse Inc. In February 2021,

Nike acquired Datalogue, a New York based company focused on digital sales and

machine learning technology.

FINANCE

Nike was made a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2013, when it

replaced Alcoa. On December 19, 2013, Nike's quarterly profit rose due to a 13

percent increase in global orders for merchandise since April of that year. Future

orders of shoes or clothes for delivery between December and April, rose to $10.4

billion. Nike shares (NKE) rose 0.6 percent to $78.75 in extended trading. In

November 2015, Nike announced it would initiate a $12 billion share buyback, as

well as a two-for-one stock split, with shares to begin trading at the decreased price on

December 24. The split will be the seventh in company history. In June 2018, Nike

announced it would initiate a $15 billion share buyback over four years, to begin in

2019 upon completion of the previous buyback program.

For the fiscal year 2018, Nike reported earnings of US$1.933 billion, with annual

revenue of US$36.397 billion, an increase of 6.0% over the previous fiscal cycle.

Nike's shares traded at over $72 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at

over US$114.5 billion in October 2018. In March 2020, Nike reported a 5% drop in

Chinese sales associated with stores' closure due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It was

the first decrease in six years. At the same time, the company's online sales grew by

36% during Q1 of 2020. Also, the sales of personal training apps grew by 80% in

China.
PRODUCTS

SPORTS APPAREL

Nike produces a wide range of sports equipment and apparel. Their first products

were track running shoes. Nike Air Max is a line of shoes first released by Nike, Inc.

in 1987. Additional product lines were introduced later, such as Air Huarache, which

debuted in 1992. The most recent additions to their line are the Nike 6.0, Nike NYX,

and Nike SB shoes, designed for skateboarding. Nike has recently introduced cricket

shoes called Air Zoom Yorker, designed to be 30% lighter than their competitors'. In

2008, Nike introduced the Air Jordan XX3, a high-performance basketball shoe

designed with the environment in mind. Nike's range of products include shoes,

jerseys, shorts, cleats, baselayers, etc. for sports activities such as association football,

basketball, track and field, combat sports, tennis, American football, athletics, golf,

ice hockey, and cross training for men, women, and children. Nike also sells shoes for

activities such as skateboarding, baseball, cycling, volleyball, wrestling, cheerleading,

lacrosse, cricket, aquatic activities, auto racing, and other athletic and recreational

uses. Nike recently teamed up with Apple Inc. to produce the Nike+ product that

monitors a runner's performance via a radio device in the shoe that links to the iPod

nano. While the product generates useful statistics, it has been criticized by

researchers who were able to identify users' RFID devices from 60 feet (18 m) away

using small, concealable intelligence motes in a wireless sensor network. In 2004,

Nike launched the SPARQ Training Program/Division. Some of Nike's newest shoes

contain Flywire and Lunarlite Foam to reduce weight. The Air Zoom Vomero running

shoe, introduced in 2006 and currently in its 11th generation, featured a combination
of groundbreaking innovations including a full-length air cushioned sole, an external

heel counter, a crashpad in the heel for shock absorption, and Fit Frame technology

for a stable fit.

NIKE VAPORFLY

Nike Vaporfly cut in half to show the different layers that make up the base of the

shoe. The dark grey line shows the carbon fiber plate.

NIKE CLEAT

The Nike Vaporfly first came out in 2017 and their popularity, along with its

performance, prompted a new series of running shoes. The Vaporfly series has a new

technological composition that has revolutionized long-distance running since studies

have shown that these shoes can improve run times up to 4.2%. The composition of

the sole contains a foamy material, Pebax, that Nike has altered and now calls it

ZoomX (which can be found in other Nike products as well). Pebax foam can also be

found in airplane insulation and is "squishier, bouncier, and lighter" than foams in

typical running shoes. In the middle of the ZoomX foam there is a full-length carbon

fiber plate "designed to generate extra spring in every step". At the time of this

writing Nike had just released its newest product from the Vaporfly line, the Nike

ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT%, which was marketed as "the fastest shoe we’ve ever

made" using Nike's "two most innovative technologies, Nike ZoomX foam and

VaporWeave material".

The Nike brand, with its distinct V-shaped logo, quickly became regarded as a status

symbol in modern urban fashion and hip-hop fashion due to its association with

success in sport. Beginning in the 1980s, various items of Nike clothing became
staples of mainstream American youth fashion, especially tracksuits, shell suits,

baseball caps, Air Jordans, Air Force 1's, and Air Max running shoes with thick, air

cushioned rubber soles and contrasting blue, yellow, green, white, or red trim.

Limited edition sneakers and prototypes with a regional early release were known as

Quickstrikes, and became highly desirable items for teenage members of the

sneakerhead subculture. By the 1990s and 2000s, American and European teenagers

associated with the preppy or popular clique began combining these sneakers,

leggings, sweatpants, crop tops, and tracksuits with regular casual chic street clothes

such as jeans, skirts, leg warmers, slouch socks, and bomber jackets. Particularly

popular were the unisex spandex Nike Tempo compression shorts worn for cycling

and running, which had a mesh lining, waterproofing, and, later in the 2000s, a zip

pocket for a Walkman or MP3 player.

From the late 2000s into the 2010s, Nike Elite basketball socks began to be worn as

everyday clothes by hip-hop fans and young children. Originally plain white or black,

these socks had special shock absorbing cushioning in the sole plus a moisture

wicking upper weave. Later, Nike Elite socks became available in bright colors

inspired by throwback basketball uniforms, often with contrasting bold abstract

designs, images of celebrities, and freehand digital print to capitalise upon the

emerging nostalgia for 1990s fashion. In 2015, a new self-lacing shoe was introduced.

Called the Nike Mag, which are replicas of the shoes featured in Back to the Future

Part II, it had a preliminary limited release, only available by auction with all

proceeds going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. This was done again in 2016. Nike

have introduced a premium line, focused more on streetwear than sports wear called

NikeLab. In March 2017, Nike announced its launch of a plus-size clothing line,

which will feature new sizes 1X through 3X on more than 200 products. Another
significant development at this time was the Chuck Taylor All-Star Modern, an

update of the classic basketball sneaker that incorporated the circular knit upper and

cushioned foam sole of Nike's Air Jordans.

On July 23, 2019, a pair of Nike Inc. running shoes sold for $437,500 at a Sotheby's

auction. The so-called "Moon Shoes" were designed by Nike co-founder and track

coach Bill Bowerman for runners participating in the 1972 Olympics trials. The buyer

was Miles Nadal, a Canadian investor and car collector, who had just paid $850,000

for a group of 99 rare of limited collection pairs of sport shoes. The purchase price

was the highest for one pair of sneakers, the previous record being $190,373 in 2017

for a pair of signed Converse shoes in California, said to have been worn by Michael

Jordan during the 1984 basketball final of the Olympics that year. Nike's world

headquarters are surrounded by the city of Beaverton but are within unincorporated

Washington County. The city attempted to forcibly annex Nike's headquarters, which

led to a lawsuit by Nike, and lobbying by the company that ultimately ended in

Oregon Senate Bill 887 of 2005. Under that bill's terms, Beaverton is specifically

barred from forcibly annexing the land that Nike and Columbia Sportswear occupy in

Washington County for 35 years, while Electro Scientific Industries and Tektronix

receive the same protection for 30 years. Nike is planning to build a 3.2 million

square foot expansion to its World Headquarters in Beaverton. The design will target

LEED Platinum certification and will be highlighted by natural daylight, and a gray

water treatment center.

Nike has contracted with more than 700 shops around the world and has offices

located in 45 countries outside the United States. Most of the factories are located in

Asia, including Indonesia, China, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan,

Philippines, and Malaysia. Nike is hesitant to disclose information about the contract
companies it works with. However, due to harsh criticism from some organizations

like CorpWatch, Nike has disclosed information about its contract factories in its

Corporate Governance Report.

SWEATSHOPS

MAIN ARTICLE: NIKE SWEATSHOPS

In the 1990s, Nike received criticism for its use of sweatshops. Later on that year,

many protests occurred in big cities such as in Washington, DC and Boston in order to

show public outcry for Nikes use of child labor and sweatshops. Nike has been

criticized for contracting with factories (known as Nike sweatshops) in countries such

as China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico. Vietnam Labor Watch, an activist group,

has documented that factories contracted by Nike have violated minimum wage and

overtime laws in Vietnam as late as 1996, although Nike claims that this practice has

been stopped. The company has been subject to much critical coverage of the often

poor working conditions and exploitation of cheap overseas labor employed in the

free trade zones where their goods are typically manufactured. Sources for this

criticism include Naomi Klein's book No Logo and Michael Moore documentaries.

Campaigns have been taken up by many colleges and universities, especially anti-

globalisation groups, as well as several anti-sweatshop groups such as the United

Students Against Sweatshops. As of July 2011, Nike stated that two-thirds of its

factories producing Converse products still do not meet the company's standards for

worker treatment. A July 2011 Associated Press article stated that employees at the

company's plants in Indonesia reported constant abuse from supervisors.

During the 1990s, Nike faced criticism for the use of child labor in Cambodia and

Pakistan in factories it contracted to manufacture soccer balls. Although Nike took

action to curb or at least reduce the practice, they continue to contract their production

to companies that operate in areas where inadequate regulation and monitoring make

it hard to ensure that child labor is not being used. In 2001, a BBC documentary

uncovered occurrences of child labor and poor working conditions in a Cambodian

factory used by Nike. The documentary focused on six girls, who all worked seven

days a week, often 16 hours a day.

On November 5, 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents

relating to offshore investment, revealed that Nike is among the corporations that used

offshore companies to avoid taxes. Appleby documents detail how Nike boosted its

after-tax profits by, among other maneuvers, transferring ownership of its Swoosh

trademark to a Bermudan subsidiary, Nike International Ltd. This transfer allowed the

subsidiary to charge royalties to its European headquarters in Hilversum, Netherlands,

effectively converting taxable company profits to an account payable in tax-free

Bermuda. Although the subsidiary was effectively run by executives at Nike's main

offices in Beaverton, Oregon—to the point where a duplicate of the Bermudan

company's seal was needed—for tax purposes the subsidiary was treated as Bermuda.

Its profits were not declared in Europe and came to light only because of a mostly

unrelated case in US Tax Court, where papers filed by Nike briefly mention royalties

in 2010, 2011 and 2012 totaling $3.86 billion. Under an arrangement with Dutch

authorities, the tax break was to expire in 2014, so another reorganization transferred

the intellectual property from the Bermudan company to a Dutch commanditaire

vennootschap or limited partnership, Nike Innovate CV. Dutch law treats income
earned by a CV as if it had been earned by the principals, who owe no tax in the

Netherlands if they do not reside there.

COLIN KAEPERNICK

In September 2018, Nike announced it had signed former American football

quarterback Colin Kaepernick, noted for his controversial decision to kneel during the

playing of the US national anthem, to a long-term advertising campaign. According

to Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports, Kaepernick and Nike agreed to a new contract

despite the fact Kaepernick has been with the company since 2011 and said that

"interest from other shoe companies" played a part in the new agreement. Robinson

said the contract is a "wide endorsement" where Kaepernick will have his own

branded line including shoes, shirts, jerseys and more. According to Robinson,

Kaepernick signed a "star" contract that puts him level with a "top-end NFL player"

worth millions per year plus royalties. In response, some people set fire to their own

Nike-branded clothes and shoes or cut the Nike swoosh logo out of their clothes, and

the Fraternal Order of Police called the advertisement an "insult"; others, such as

LeBron James, Serena Williams, and the National Black Police Association, praised

Nike for its campaign. The College of the Ozarks removed Nike from all their athletic

uniforms in response.

During the following week, Nike's stock price fell 2.2%, even as online orders of

Nike products rose 27% compared with the previous year. In the following three

months, Nike reported a rise in sales. In July 2019, Nike released a shoe featuring a

Betsy Ross flag called the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July trainers. The trainers

were designed to celebrate Independence Day. The model was subsequently

withdrawn after Colin Kaepernick told the brand he and others found the flag
offensive because of its association with slavery. Nike's decision to withdraw the

product drew criticism from Arizona's Republican Governor, Doug Ducey, and

Texas's Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Nike's decision was praised by others due to

the use of the flag by white nationalists, but the Anti-Defamation League's Center on

Extremism has declined to add the flag to its database of "hate symbols."

On January 31, 2020, the World Athletics issued new guidelines concerning shoes to

be used in the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympics. These updates came in response to

criticisms concerning technology in the Nike Vaporfly running shoes, which had been

submitted beginning around 2017–2018. These criticisms stated that the shoes

provided athletes with an unfair advantage over their opponents and some critics

considered it to be a form of technology doping. According to Nike funded research,

the shoes can improve efficiency by up to 4.2% and runners who have tested the shoe

are saying that it causes reduced soreness in the legs; sports technologist Bryce Dyer

attributes this to the ZoomX and carbon fiber plate since it absorbs the energy and

"spring runners forward". Some athletes, scientists, and fans have compared this to

the 2008 LAZR swimsuit controversy.

Some of the major changes in the guidelines that have come about as a result of these

criticisms include that the "sole must be no thicker than 40mm" and that "the shoe

must not contain more than one rigid embedded plate or blade (of any material) that

runs either the full length or only part of the length of the shoe. The plate may be in

more than one part but those parts must be located sequentially in one plane (not

stacked or in parallel) and must not overlap". The components of the shoes are not the

only thing that had major changes; starting April 30, 2020, "any shoe must have been

available for purchase by any athlete on the open retail market (online or in store) for

a period of four months before it can be used in competition". Prior to these new
guidelines World Athletics reviewed the Vaporfly shoes and "concluded that there is

independent research that indicates that the new technology incorporated in the soles

of road and spiked shoes may provide a performance advantage" and that it

recommends further research to "establish the true impact of technology."

LIL NAS X SATAN SHOES

On March 29, 2021, American rapper Lil Nas X partnered with New York-based art

collective MSCHF to release a modified pair of Nike Air Max 97s called Satan Shoes.

The shoes are black and red with a bronze pentagram, featuring the Bible verse Luke

10:18 and are filled with "60cc and 1 drop of human blood." Only 666 pair were

created and were sold at a price of $1,018. Nike immediately iterated that they were

uninvolved in the creation and promotion of the shoes and did not endorse the

messages of Lil Nas X or MSCHF. Nike filed a trademark lawsuit against MSCHF

with the New York federal Court, in an effort to stop the distribution of the shoes. On

April 1, a federal judge ordered a temporary restraining order blocking the sale and

distribution of the shoes pending a preliminary injunction. Since 1993, Nike has

worked on its Reuse-A-Shoe program. This program is Nike's longest-running

program that benefits both the environment and the community by collecting old

athletic shoes of any type in order to process and recycle them. The material that is

produced is then used to help create sports surfaces such as basketball courts, running

tracks, and playgrounds.

A campaign that Nike began for Earth Day 2008 was a commercial that featured

basketball star Steve Nash wearing Nike's Trash Talk Shoe, which had been

constructed in February 2008 from pieces of leather and synthetic leather waste from

factory floors. The Trash Talk Shoe also featured a sole composed of ground-up
rubber from a shoe recycling program. Nike claims this is the first performance

basketball shoe that has been created from manufacturing waste, but it only produced

5,000 pairs for sale. In July 2011, environmental group Greenpeace published a report

regarding water pollution impacting the Yangtze River emitted from a major textile

factory operated by Nike supplier Youngor Group. Following the report, Nike, as well

as Adidas, Puma, and a number of other brands included in the report announced an

agreement to stop discharging hazardous chemicals by 2020. However, in July 2016

Greenpeace released a follow-up report which found that Nike "does not take

individual responsibility" for eliminating hazardous chemicals, stating that Nike had

not made an explicit commitment to riding itself of perfluorinated compounds, and

that "Nike does not ensure its suppliers report their hazardous chemical discharge data

and has not made a commitment to do so".

Nike was criticized for its use of the Beatles song "Revolution" in a 1987 commercial

against the wishes of Apple Records, the Beatles' recording company. Nike paid

US$250,000 to Capitol Records Inc., which held the North American licensing rights

to the recordings, for the right to use the Beatles' rendition for a year. That same year,

Apple Records sued Nike Inc., Capitol Records Inc., EMI Records Inc. and Wieden

Kennedy for $15 million. Capitol-EMI countered by saying the lawsuit was

"groundless" because Capitol had licensed the use of "Revolution" with the "active

support and encouragement of Yoko Ono, a shareholder and director of Apple

Records." Nike discontinued airing ads featuring "Revolution" in March 1988. Yoko

Ono later gave permission to Nike to use John Lennon's "Instant Karma" in another

advertisement. In late June 2005, Nike received criticism from Ian MacKaye, owner

of Dischord Records, guitarist/vocalist for Fugazi and The Evens, and front man of

the defunct punk band Minor Threat, for appropriating imagery and text from Minor
Threat's 1981 self-titled album's cover art in a flyer promoting Nike Skateboarding's

2005 East Coast demo tour.

On June 27, Nike Skateboarding's website issued an apology to Dischord, Minor

Threat, and fans of both and announced that they have tried to remove and dispose of

all flyers. They stated that the people who designed it were skateboarders and Minor

Threat fans themselves who created the advertisement out of respect and appreciation

for the band. The dispute was eventually settled out of court between Nike and Minor

Threat. As part of the 6.0 campaign, Nike introduced a new line of T-shirts that

include phrases such as "Dope", "Get High" and "Ride Pipe" – sports lingo that is also

a double entendre for drug use. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino expressed his

objection to the shirts after seeing them in a window display at the city's Niketown

and asked the store to remove the display. "What we don't need is a major corporation

like Nike, which tries to appeal to the younger generation, out there giving credence

to the drug issue," Menino told The Boston Herald. A company official stated the

shirts were meant to pay homage to extreme sports, and that Nike does not condone

the illegal use of drugs. Nike was forced to replace the shirt line.

SPONSORSHIP

Nike sponsors top athletes in many sports to use their products and promote and

advertise their technology and design. Nike's first professional athlete endorser was

Romanian tennis player Ilie Năstase. The first track endorser was distance runner

Steve Prefontaine. Prefontaine was the prized pupil of the company's co-founder, Bill

Bowerman, while he coached at the University of Oregon. Today, the Steve

Prefontaine Building is named in his honor at Nike's corporate headquarters. Nike has

only made one statue of its sponsored athletes and it is of Steve Prefontaine. Nike has
also sponsored many other successful track and field athletes over the years, such as

Sebastian Coe, Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Michael Johnson and Allyson Felix.

The signing of basketball player Michael Jordan in 1984, with his subsequent

promotion of Nike over the course of his career, with Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon,

proved to be one of the biggest boosts to Nike's publicity and sales. Nike is a major

sponsor of the athletic programs at Penn State University and named its first child

care facility after Joe Paterno when it opened in 1990 at the company's headquarters.

Nike originally announced it would not remove Paterno's name from the building in

the wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal. After the Freeh Report was released on

July 12, 2012, Nike CEO Mark Parker announced the name Joe Paterno would be

removed immediately from the child development center. A new name has yet to be

announced. in the early 1990s Nike made a strong push into the association football

business making endorsement deals with famous and charismatic players such as

Romário, Eric Cantona or Edgar Davids. They continued the growth in the sport by

signing more top players including: Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Francesco Totti, Thierry

Henry, Didier Drogba, Andrés Iniesta, Wayne Rooney and still have many of the

sport's biggest stars under their name, with Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimović,

Neymar, Harry Kane, Eden Hazard and Kylian Mbappé among others.

Nike has been the official ball supplier for the Premier League since the 2000–01

season. In 2012, Nike carried a commercial partnership with the Asian Football

Confederation. In August 2014, Nike announced that they will not renew their kit

supply deal with Manchester United after the 2014–15 season, citing rising costs.

Since the start of the 2015–16 season, Adidas has manufactured Manchester United's

kit as part of a world-record 10-year deal worth a minimum of 750 million. Nike still

has many of the top teams playing in their uniforms, including: FC Barcelona, Paris
Saint-Germain and Liverpool (the latter from the 2020–21 season), and the national

teams of Brazil, France, England, Portugal and the Netherlands among many others.

Nike has been the sponsor for many top ranked tennis players. Brand's commercial

success in the sport went hand in hand with the endorsement deals signed with the

biggest and the world's most charismatic stars and number one ranked players of the

subsequent eras, including John McEnroe in the 1980s, Andre Agassi and Pete

Sampras in the 1990s and Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and Maria

Sharapova with the start of the XXI century.

Nike has sponsored Tiger Woods for much of his career, and remained on his side

amid the controversies that shaped the golfer's career. In January 2013, Nike signed

Rory McIlroy, the then No 1 golfer in the world to a 10-year sponsorship deal worth

$250 million. The deal includes using Nike's range of golf clubs, a move Nick Faldo

previously described as "dangerous" for McIlroy's game. Nike was the official kit

sponsor for the Indian cricket team from 2005 to 2020. On February 21, 2013, Nike

announced it suspended its contract with South African limbless athlete Oscar

Pistorius, due to his being charged with premeditated murder. Nike consolidated its

position in basketball in 2015 when it was announced that the company would sign an

8-year deal with the NBA, taking over from the league's previous uniform sponsor,

Adidas. The deal required all franchise team members to wear jerseys and shorts with

the Swoosh logo, beginning with the 2017/18 season. After the success of partnership

with Jordan, which resulted in the creation of the unique Air Jordan brand, Nike has

continued to build partnership with the biggest names in basketball. LeBron James

was given the Slogan "We are All Witnesses" when he signed with Nike. Similar to

"Air Jordan", LeBron's brand became massively popular. The slogan was an

extremely accurate way to describe the situation LeBron was heading into in the NBA
he was expected to be the new king of the NBA. Some have had signature shoes

designed for them, including Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and more

recently LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Paul George, among others. A news report

originating from CNN reported that Nike spent $11.5 billion, nearly a third of its

sales, on marketing and endorsement contracts in the year 2018. Nike and its Jordan

brand sponsored 85 men's and women's basketball teams in the NCAA tournament.

Nike maintains strong ties, both directly and through partnerships with Phil Knight,

with the University of Oregon. Nike designs the University of Oregon football

program's team attire. New unique combinations are issued before every game day.

Tinker Hatfield, who also redesigned the university's logo, leads this effort. More

recently, the corporation donated $13.5 million towards the renovation and expansion

of Hayward Field. Phil Knight has invested substantial personal funds towards

developing and maintaining the university's athletic apparatus. His university projects

often involve input from Nike designers and executives, such as Tinker Hatfield.

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, leaving 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.

HISTORY OF NIKE

After founding Blue Ribbon Sports, Knight tested the waters for his imported shoes,

initially selling them out of his car when he came back to the States. It quickly

became clear that a demand existed for these cheaper but still high-quality alternatives

to the Adidas (ADDYY) and Pumas (PUMSY) that dominated the market. In 1965,

the ever-inventive Bowerman proposed a new shoe design to the Tiger shoe company,

one that sought to provide the right support for runners with a cushioned innersole,

soft sponge rubber in the forefoot and top of the heel, hard sponge rubber in the

middle of the heel, and a firm rubber outsole. This design would turn out to be both a

major success and source of conflict between Blue Ribbon and its Japanese supplier.
Dubbed the Tiger Cortez, the shoe dropped in 1967 and became an instant hit for its

comfortable, sturdy, and stylish design. Around the time of its success, though,

relations soured between Blue Ribbon and Tiger. Knight claims that the Japanese

company was seeking a way out of its exclusivity deal with Blue Ribbon and sought

to sink the company. Tiger claims to have discovered Blue Ribbon Sports selling their

own version of the Tiger Cortez under a new line of shoes they called "Nike." Either

way, the two formally split in 1971 with a lawsuit from Tiger following. A judge

eventually settled that both companies could sell their own versions of the model,

leading to the only sneaker to become a best-selling model for two different shoe

companies as the Nike Cortez and the Tiger Corsair (now sold by Tiger's modern

incarnation, Asics). Following the split with Tiger, Blue Ribbon Sports fully

rebranded itself as Nike. Phil Knight initially wanted to call the company "Dimension

6," but Jeff Johnson, thankfully, got the inspiration for Nike after seeing the Greek

goddess of victory's name in a dream. Before this though, the new brand needed its

own logo. They reached out to a design student at the nearby Portland State

University, Carolyn Davis, to provide sketches. Phil Knight reluctantly settled on a

swoosh design, reportedly saying, "Well, I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on

me." Davis charged $2/hour and received a total of $35 for the logo. In 1983 Phil

Knight, apparently having come around to the logo, held a party for Davidson and

awarded her 500 shares of stock, speculated to be worth roughly $1 million today.

After coming into existence proper on May 30, 1971, Nike, Inc. continued the success

of Blue Ribbon Sports, helped first by the success of the Tiger Cortez and then by

Bowerman's innovative "Waffle" sole design. While thinking over breakfast on a way

to give running shoes more traction, the coach saw the grooves in the waffle his wife

made him and wondered what it would look inverted. Not one to pass on an idea,
Bowerman poured melted urethane into his waffle iron. Unfortunately, he forgot to

add any anti-stick agent onto the iron and it glued shut. But nevertheless, the idea had

taken root, and with the help of another waffle iron and presumably a good spray, he

designed his ideal sole and the iconic "Waffle Trainer" was born. 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.
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.

COLIN KAEPERNICK

On Labor Day of 2018, Nike made a huge splash, tweeting a photo of NFL player

Colin Kaepernick as the new face of its brand. The 49ers quarterback had become a

lightning rod for controversy after being the first football player to take a knee during

the national anthem in protest of police brutality toward black Americans. He

received a mix of support and backlash from the public, with some calling him a hero

and others criticizing his actions as "un-American." This controversy only intensified

with Donald Trump making criticism of the protest Kaepernick started a central

talking point in his campaign and, later, presidency. 49ers management consequently

did not renew Kaepernick's contract and no other NFL team signed him. Fittingly, the

ad overlay of the black-and-white photo of Kaepernick's face with the text, "Believe

in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything," and the classic Nike slogan,

"Just Do It." below. The ad garnered a predictable mix of support and controversy.

Some, seeing Nike's endorsement of Kaepernick as a betrayal of patriotic values,

chose to quite publicly announce their boycott of Nike by posting videos of

themselves burning their Nike shoes. This proved largely ineffectual, with most

people mocking Nike boycotters on social media, and the company's stock soaring,

increasing by over $6 billion less than a month after the campaign began. Some on the

left also took issue with the ad, citing it as an example of "commodity activism,"

whereby corporations co-opt a social movement for profits.