Mon 27 Jul 2009
Nike Fashion Mogul Philip Knight
Posted by Jay
$8.2 billion
Born on February 24, 1938, Philip Knight co-founded Nike in 1964 with his University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman.
Today, Nike is the largest footwear, sports apparel company in the world.
Though he resigned from Nike as CEO in 2004 he is was still named by Forbes as the 31st richest American in 2008.
A competitive distance runner in high school and college, Knight enrolled in Stanford Business school after a stint in the Army.(Last September, Knight pledged $105 million to Stanford to build the Knight Management Center.) In one class, Knight wrote a paper titled “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?”. This would be the premise in which Nike was founded.
When Knight graduated Stanford he set out for a trip around the world. At a stop in Kobe, Japan in November 1962, he discovered Tiger brand running shoes, manufactured in Kobe by the Onitsuka Co. Impressed by the quality and the cost, Knight cold called the president Mr. Onitsuka and managed to get a meeting in which he finagled Onitsuka in granting him distribution rights for the western United States for Tiger running shoes.
It would take over a year for Knight to recieve his first Tiger samples. When he did, he mailed the first 2 pairs to his old college track coach Bill Bowerman looking to get an endorsement. Instead, he got a partnership and a committment to design better shoes. On January 25, 1964, Blue Ribbon Sports was born.
In the early days of Blue Ribbon, Knight would work as an accountant by day and tool around to track meets all over the Pacific Northwest selling shoes out his green Plymouth Valiant. A friend gave Knight the idea of the name Nike, the Greek winged goddess of victory. For $35 dollars, Knight commissioned another friend to come up with the now iconic swoosh.
“I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” – Philip Knight on the Nike logo.
Today, the Nike swoosh is one of the most powerful and recognized logos in the world.
Despite a global recession, with people no longer buying new sports shoes as frequently, Nike made $18.6 billion in 2008 and picked up British soccer-wear firm Umbro for $565 million.
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