In Greek mythology, Nike was a winged goddess of victory.
She was in good shape, her clothes were flowing, and she always followed the victory everywhere she went. However, Nike does not have any other special abilities than amazing speed, so the victory she symbolizes mainly refers to success in the field of competitive sports.
In 1971, Phil Knight renamed his fledgling company "NIKE."
Is it possible for a "shoe dog" to shake up the running shoe market?
In 1958, Phil Knight was an ordinary college student at the University of Oregon, with a featureless mass face, blonde hair and gray eyes, and a medium build. In addition to his ordinary appearance, his personality is also very introverted and not good at talking. It is difficult for students at the University of Oregon to equate the ordinary "white mole" with today's hundreds of billionaires.
The only characteristic of the young Phil Knight is his love of sports, and although unfortunately he is not good at it, his love has allowed this man to keep the habit of morning running for a lifetime. Before the first rays of the morning sun hit, even when the birds were still asleep, Phil Knight would put on loose shorts and sweatshirts and tie up his favorite green running shoes.
After leaving the door, I ran along the road that was still a little cold in the depths of the morning fog, and it was quiet all around, and all I could hear was the sound of the man running his shoes and stepping on the ground and the sound of shortness of breath. The atmosphere made him comfortable, he breathed in the somewhat humid air before the city woke up, felt the muscles stretch and contract, and kept popping crazy ideas out of his head.
After graduating from college, Phil Knight chose to go to Stanford University for further studies. Phil Knight, who is good at observation, loves running, and is obsessed with running shoes, often thinks: "If Japanese cameras can beat German cameras in the Us market with cheap prices, what will happen if the camera is replaced by sneakers?" So he wrote a paper: "The Possibility of Japanese Running Shoes Shaking the American Running Shoe Market."
Perhaps back then, Phil Knight's "Japanese fantasy" had sprouted. In 1962, as soon as Phil Knight received his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Stanford University, he began his graduation trip to Japan.
He kept his running shoes in mind. In 1964, Phil Knight hired ballman, his running coach at the University of Oregon, and the two of them each invested $500 each to start Blue Ribbon Sports TIGER SHOES (former nike). The company started out as simple, with Bauerman designing the shoes and Phil Knight running the business.
At a footwear trade fair, Phil Knight met the object of his "Japanese fantasy", the shoemaker Onizuka Torashi, a shrewd Japanese who was overjoyed after seeing the design drawings of their new sneakers, and the two sides immediately signed a contract, just as Phil Knight envisioned in his Stanford paper: designed and distributed by the United States and manufactured in Japan.
A year later, Onizuka sent 200 pairs of sneakers from Japan, and Le Cordon Bleu officially opened its doors. During the day, Phil Knight was a salaried accountant at PwC, like his conformist appearance; after work, fanatical ambitions were allowed to sprout, and he would put on his black sunglasses and go to a college campus or sports field stall to sell their sneakers imported from Japan.
Due to the lack of funds, Le Cordon Bleu did not have a fixed office or business office in the early days of its business, the house was the store, and the sales car was the office. In order to save rent, they chose to open a storefront near the garbage dump; the packaging fee was too expensive, and they bought old wrapping paper from the waste recycling station for packaging.
In 1969, Phil Knight sold 1 million pairs of Jersey-made sneakers made in Japan with the blue ribbon logo.
Le Cordon Bleu is gradually on track. Just as Phil Knight was dreaming of how to surpass the best-selling Adidas sneakers and other brands at the time, the shrewd Onizuka Tiger sent someone to the United States to offer to buy 51% of the company's shares and take two seats in the five directors, and if this request was not granted, the Japanese side would immediately stop supplying. The "unequal treaty" of the Japanese merchants made Bauerman and Knight intolerable, and they categorically rejected this unreasonable demand.
In 1971, Phil Knight renamed the company NIKE and used $35 to design the "Swoosh" trademark. Both of these symbols mean victory and brilliance, but Nike, without a supply, is still in a major crisis.
Phil Knight recalls in his autobiography Shoe Dogs: "I sat down, held my face in my hands, and looked at our orange pyramid. I think of the pyramid complex in Giza. I only traveled there 10 years ago, riding a camel through the desert like an Arab, how free. Now, I'm in Chicago, in debt, managing a precarious shoe company and launching a shoddy brand with a crooked trademark.
Hundreds of sales reps crowded the booths, large and small, and I heard them screaming at other new shoes that debuted. If we were to tinker, we wouldn't have time to introduce the flawed shoes. To make matters worse, we had to sell these flawed shoes to the salesperson.
I was on the verge of collapse and almost gave up. Then I saw that Johnson and Woodell had lost their minds and I realized I couldn't afford to lose. Like Penny, their panic attacks in front of me. 'Look, guys, this will be the worst shoes we've ever made and will get better and better in the future, so if we can sell these... We're going to be on the right track.'" I said. ”
Phil Knight was not what Marx called "simply a merchant of surplus value"; he preferred to call himself a "shoe dog", a believer who was obsessed with running shoes. So, shoddy products make Phil Knight so bottomless, he once said, "All this is not just business, it will never be." If one day it does become pure business, it means that the business is very bad. ”
Phil Knight realized that his "Japanese fantasies" had to be reorganized.
Phil Knight designed a strategy for the company to "virtualize production": using its own trademark, design and development capabilities, to mass-produce in areas with low labor costs under special licenses, while the company focused all its resources on researching athlete needs, designing products and marketing.
At first, Phil Knight was concerned about the huge profit difference between Japan's cheap labor and production costs, so the ultimate purpose of departure remained unchanged, and the positioning area could be transferred, so he set his sights on South Korea, the Philippines, China and other regions.
It is precisely because of this strategy that until 2018, Nike did not have a factory of its own in the United States, and Nike's "outsourcing" method of centralizing advantages and saving management costs was later imitated by the industry and even the entire business community.
In 1972, the new Nike shoes were officially launched. That year, Nike's sales revenue was $3.2 million, and in the next 10 years, Nike's profits doubled every year. In 1980, Nike beat Adidas to become the leader of the U.S. sports industry. This "shoe dog" realized his dream of defeating the "running shoe king" Adidas at that time, which took only 8 years.
Picasso in advertising?
The development history of Nike can be said to be the history of the development of running in the United States and even in the world.
In the 1970s and 1980s, running flourished in the United States. Nike's sales have doubled every year.
Phil Knight gradually became known as a "genius entrepreneur and visionary strategist", not only because he created a fast-growing sporting goods company, but also because the Nike company he led has widely influenced people's sports concepts and healthy lifestyles in the United States and even the world, and Nike's products have gradually got rid of the "small profits and quick sales" business model and become a symbol of identity and status.
If it is defined by color, Adolf Dassler portrays Adidas as low-key but luxurious, then the elegant blue can symbolize the former king of sneakers. Unlike Adidas, Phil Knight's Nike gives people the impression of a flamboyant personality and a strong sense of existence, even with a hint of trespassing, like a very domineering red.
Most of the athletes Nike invited to speak for themselves are personal, aggressive and even controversial. Examples include American athletics legend Steve Prifontaine, and John McEnroe, known as the emperor of tennis. The distinct personality of these spokespersons themselves and the heroic colors of those individualists echo the meaning of the wings of freedom represented by the victory of "Nike" and the "hook", injecting Nike with a very personalized brand culture and successfully winning the attention of young consumer groups.
In 1984, Phil Knight invited basketball star Michael Jordan to endorse Nike's products and debuted the Air Jordan 1, a game-cushioned basketball shoe. The shoe was originally banned by the NBA for violating the dress code, but the controversial nature of the topic and Jordan's own traffic aura gave the brand a great opportunity to be exposed, selling 400,000 pairs in the United States in just one month.
Nike made a name for itself. In 1985, the sneakers named after Jordan alone earned the company $2.5 billion in profits. Since then, Phil Knight has subversively modified the laws of sports marketing, and celebrity endorsements have become the classic model of sports marketing.
In 1988, Phil Knight found 80-year-old long-distance runner Walter Stark to star in the first "Just Do It" series. In the ad, 80-year-old Walter, wearing a mischievous newsboy hat and confidently exposing his old but still muscular body, ran across the Golden Gate Bridge with a smile on his face.
Today, the slogan "Just do it" has become Nike's iconic slogan.
With the original intention of "making shoes seriously" and the operating model and marketing methods of Phil Knight Maverick Company, Nike's growth has been accumulating quantitative changes and qualitative changes at an alarming rate. In 1997, Nike finally became an industry giant, controlling 40% of the U.S. footwear market. Nike's creativity and innovation continue.
In 2004, in the track and field of the Greek Olympic Games, in the moment when Liu Xiang became the champion of the 110-meter hurdles, Nike immediately set its sights on the Chinese market and launched a series of new advertisements.
On TV is this picture: starting line, ready action, Asian skin color calves. With a series of starting actions, the subtitles are played: Law 1, Asians are not explosive enough muscles? Law 2, can Asians become the world's trapeze artists? Law 3, Asians lack the momentum to win? Then, the camera pulls away, and Liu Xiang leads the way, leaving his opponent behind. Subtitles play again: the law is used to be broken.
The ad was immediately a huge success in China.
Nike's advertising has repeatedly become a classic in the history of advertising. Phil Knight asked the company's advertising ideas not to appeal to products and sales, but to strive for spiritual communication with consumers. In more than three decades of consistent advertising campaigns, Nike has become a materialized sportsmanship, a symbol of humanity's conquest of nature and transcendence of the self. Nike's "Swoosh", which represents speed and victory, has also become a symbol of exuding incredibly positive energy and strong competitiveness.
According to the authoritative website HIGHSNOBIETY statistics, as of 2015, Nike's market value reached 86.2 billion US dollars, which has been 5 times that of Adidas; in 2016, Nike's market value exceeded 105.6 billion, equivalent to half of the annual GDP of oregon (194.7 billion US dollars). In March 2019, Phil Knight ranked 26th on the 2019 Forbes Global Billionaires List with a fortune of $33.4 billion.
Although Phil Knight was once evaluated by his college classmates as an ordinary "white mole", it is not difficult to see that he has a wild and restless heart under his quiet and introverted appearance. Phil Knight always likes to wear a pair of black sunglasses, he likes everything super "cool", so he was able to build Nike into a very personal brand, this brand was even successful, Nike once became a cool endorsement.
It can be said that the maverick Phil Knight is nike's marketing promoter, he with a strong sense of market smell and very personalized business means, successfully pushed Nike's brand culture to the whole world, the concept of sneakers was brought into the fashion field for the first time, the "Nike Kingdom" sneaker concept is also rooted in the spirit of American sports for the first time, Phil Knight himself was also called "Picasso in the advertising world" by the American media.
He is a "shoe dog", he is also an artist who has successfully built a brand, and he is a businessman with dreams.
In 2019, Nike ranked 343rd in the Fortune Global 500 list, and in the apparel and fashion industry, Nike ranked second after the luxury brand Dior.
Today, the 81-year-old Phil Knight has achieved fame, but he still adheres to the habit of daily morning running and the pursuit of a sports and fashion lifestyle, and his love and dedication have laid too deep a brand on the Nike brand. He always adheres to the original concept: the growth of digital numbers and the accumulation of wealth are more important in the sense of added value, rather than deliberately seeking, and clinging to dreams is the core spirit of him and Nike.
Like "Just do it" Slogan, "Just do it."
"Cowards never set out,
The weak die on the road.
Only we are left to move forward,
Can't stop all the way. ”
- Phil Knight, "Shoe Dog"