The story when Nike was just a startup

Nike is the biggest sportswear company that reached a $100B company over 50 years, but wait do u know how the company started how a small idea to sell a sports shoes ended up with a large company? Let's know about it.

It was the time of 1961 and Phil Knight who was the founder of Nike was just graduated from Stanford University with a great idea which was going to change his life.

He was a distance runner in his early life and have an idea that what should be the sports should be like and he gradually saw that how the Japanese camera replaced the German cameras so he thought that the same thing can be done with shoes like Puma and Adidas which are extremely popular at that time.

But he has 2 major problems to go on this idea neither he had any connections in Japan nor the experience of how to start a company. For that idea also he has to import shoes from Japan to America but he has no experience in it.

But he can’t through his idea, he goes to Japan as a tourist and the interesting thing we have seen that after search a lot of areas he found a company in the city of Kobe named Onitsuka tigers with great quality. He introduced himself as an American distributor and think a name blue ribbon sports and met the companies owner on the spot and according to the price the owner actually agreed to sell his shoes.

Now he was the exclusive seller of Onitsuka shoes in America. He got the 1^st shipment in 1963 and then tried to sell them in the market in more or less where ever a sports event was being conducted and he can drive there and he tried to sell those shoes in the backside of his car.

But he always knows that his strategy will not last much so he showed up to one person who knows much more about the sports shoes and his coach Bill Bowerman, the man who have already trained many Olympic athletes.

Bowerman was so impressed that he wanted a partnership in it. On 1964 both invested $500 and got the second shipment of 300 pair of shoes each costing $3.33 and it was billed connections as all the shoes sold out in 2 months and that more than $6 each on that money Phil started hiring salesman for his company soon they have a revenue of $20,000 and they opened their own shop with that.

Now Phil and Bill were the two people who brought jogging to America in 1966 Phil also wrote a book about and which 1 million copies got sold.

Bill was totally on innovation in every new sample of shoes he tried to improve it and designing it for Onitsuka tigers that how they should make a new and modified verity of shoes. And the shoes named CORTEZ was the best seller.

These are the reason the company was able to sell shoes in the Olympics and get $3,00,000 in 1969 in Mexico.

The biggest problem they faced that the shipment was very slow as the owner of Onitsuka tiger was first fulfilling the demand of Japan then was exported to America. But they could not do much about it as they have a contract till 1972.

Now to expand Phil started the to think more and more ideas and in 1971 he started developing the company, not like a distributor but as a brand and as the contract was going to expire so it gives Phil Plenty of time to play his more before the next Olympic.

The 1^st employee suggested that they should give the name a Nike in the name of a goddess. And Phil went to the university and create a logo with Nike’s sign that attracts many people.

After that Phil conducted a meeting in Japan with all the shoe manufacturers and took the production command in his hand.

After that Nike never look back and goes ahead with ease. If you want to know the 2^nd part of the story, please click the link down below.

Nike story of success