History
Nike began as Phil Knight’s semester-long project to develop a small business, which included a marketing plan. This project was part of Phil Knight’s MBA course at Stanford University in the early 1960s. Phil Knight had been a runner at the University of Oregon in the late 1950s. His idea for his project was to develop high quality running shoes. He thought that high quality/low cost products could be produced in Japan and then shipped to the United States to be sold at a profit. His professor thought that Knight’s idea was interesting, but not much more than a project.
In 1963 Phil Knight went to Japan and had a meeting with a running shoe manufacturing company called Tiger. He told them that he was the representative of an American distributor that wanted to sell Tiger running shoes to runners in the United States. This was all very much a spur of the moment idea, and Knight quickly made up a name and called his company Blue Ribbon Sports. Knight started small, and he continued to work with Tigers until he reached over a million dollars in sales in the early 1970s. In 1971 came up with the name Nike along with the Swoosh trademark for his products. The winged goddess of victory from Greek mythology inspired both the name Nike and the Swoosh symbol.
In the late 1970s Blue Ribbon Sports officially became Nike and increased its sales from $10,000,000 to $270,000,000. During the 1980s and 1990s the company and sales continued to grow. In 1996, Nike was named Marketer of the Year with sales at $6.74 billion. Sales and profits have continued to grow over the years, but at what cost to those who work in Nike’s factories worldwide? http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/am483_97/projects/hincker/nikhist.html As far back as 1998, Nike was being criticized for the way their footwear was being produced. Remember that Phil Knight wanted to produce high quality footwear at a low cost.
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