I kept scrolling through my Instagram feed to stop at a proud mother’s post. And I was moved by the video of her cute, little son deciding to give away a few pairs of his Nike Lebron sneakers to kids who don’t have any shoes (my eyes constantly looking for ways to well up during this pandemic). I started thinking about my favorite sporting moment in history and was reminded of the awe-inspiring clash between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, in the 2008 Wimbledon Grand Slams, both wearing Nike T-Shirts and the latter with a headband bearing the glorious Swoosh sign. I walked into my room and my eyes went to the dry-cleaning bag. It’s a Nike knock-off.
From Serena Williams to Kendall Jenner, from Christiano Ronaldo to Jay Z, majestically watching an NFL game in his Air Jordans, from Harvard and Stanford case-studies to the ordinary fancies of you and me that opened the floodgates for the production of knock-offs, Nike has gone from extremely humble beginnings to penetrate the deepest spaces of human occupation over half the lifetime of Phil Knight, its founder. And it’s nothing but a shoe! Or who thought; innovation could be applied at such a scale on such a product, as a shoe.
The “crazy idea” of building Nike came to Phil Knight while presenting a thesis to nonchalant classmates in an entrepreneurship class at Stanford and he decided to make it his life’s mission while jogging one fine morning. The Germans who were dominating the market with their camera technology were met with stiff competition from the Japanese and he believed that the same could be done with Shoe Technology. He was a runner himself and at that time, running or jogging used to be a nerdy business. The shoes they designed and sold, therefore, were for athletic purposes only. But Phil Knight with his extraordinary team of Shoe Dogs- his recklessly passionate and boisterous hustlers, the founding fathers of Nike created a cult and went on to make running cool.
Today, you won’t be surprised to see a paparazzi photo of Beyonce rolling in a pair of mortal (or maybe not so mortal) Nikes.
Fun Nike facts
- The name Nike came to Jeff Johnson, Employee No. 1 of the company, in a dream at the time when they had been clamoring for days amongst themselves for a name. Before that, it was called Blue Ribbon.
- Nike is the name of the temple of Athena, the Greek goddess of victory.
- When Nike was on the verge of bankruptcy once (out of the many other times), Knight was lent $8000 by the parents of one of his oldest employees, Woodell (one of the founding fathers of Nike) which was all they had in savings. Years later, when Nike went public, Woodell’s mother had problems comprehending at first, what it meant that they were millionaires now.
- Carolyn Davidson, the creator of the Swoosh was paid $35 for her work. Later on, when the company went public, she was given 500 of the company’s shares. She didn’t sell a single one of them and today, they’re worth about a million dollars.
- William (Bill) Bowerman, Phil Knight’s running coach, and the co-founder of Nike had tried to create the pioneering Waffle shoe for runners in an actual waffle-maker. Bowerman later went on to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on the Modern Athletic Shoe.
- It was a seemingly eccentric engineer named M. Frank Rudy who came to Nike with his air-cushioning technology for shoes (that was later used for the legendary Air Jordans) after being rejected by ADIDAS.
- The inspiration behind the infamous ‘Just do it’ slogan came from the last words of a notorious killer named Gary Gilmore, 1. which were “Let’s do it.”
- Even though the Swoosh, the advertising slogan and the name Nike itself are so household-famous today and have become part of contemporary pop-culture, they weren’t so specifically mulled over at that time. In fact, Phil Knight was never a big believer in advertising because of its intangible nature. Despite that, they went on to sign some of the biggest endorsement deals with legends like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Rafael Nadal, Lebron James, Maria Sharapova, Christiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams and many more.
Signing up Michael Jordan was one of the turning points in Nike’s success and in Michael Jordan’s career. A brand became a story and an athlete became a brand. Nike was never a business to its creators. And it’s not just a shoe to most customers. Owning a pair of Nike defines status for many, just like an Apple Tech. Incidentally, Nike Inc. and Apple Inc. went public the same week in 1980, and the initial offering was priced at $22 per share for both.
After all this gushing, it might disappoint you to hear that I still don’t own a pair of Nikes, just like I don’t own an iPhone. However, I’ve always fancied a pair. I think I’m at a point in life where it still feels slightly hubristic to go buy a pair of NikeCourts or Air Jordans. But I run. And one morning someday, I hope to be tying the laces on a pair of Jordans after putting them on, and to just, just do it, man!