Phil Knight

Phil Knight brought the commercial architecture to Nike. After running track at the University of Oregon under Bill Bowerman, he studied business at Stanford, where he developed a plan to import Japanese running shoes into the United States and challenge higher-priced European brands. Knight worked as an accountant and taught accounting while building Blue Ribbon Sports, which gave the young company unusual financial discipline for a founder-led consumer startup. His early job was practical and uncomfortable: negotiating with suppliers, managing cash, selling shoes from his car, and turning a fragile distributor relationship into a real business. Knight's contribution was not shoe design; it was the decision to own the brand, build athlete-led marketing, scale outsourced manufacturing, and treat sport as an emotional market rather than a narrow equipment niche.

Nike began in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports in Eugene, Oregon. Its two founders were Bill Bowerman, the track and field coach at the University of Oregon, and Phil Knight, who had run for him. Bowerman was preoccupied with making shoes lighter, because he believed every ounce saved meant less effort over a race. Knight had recently graduated from Stanford Business School, where he wrote a paper arguing that Japanese running shoes could do to the German brands Adidas and Puma what Japanese cameras had done to German cameras: match the quality at a lower price. He travelled to Japan and obtained the US distribution rights for Onitsuka Tiger shoes. The two started with a $1,200 investment, and Knight sold shoes from the trunk of his green Plymouth Valiant at track meets. In 1971 they split from Onitsuka to make their own shoes. Bowerman poured liquid rubber into his wife's waffle iron to make a light sole with better grip. They paid a Portland State student $35 for the Swoosh logo and took the name Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory.