PK
Phil Knight
Nike · 1938–present
Born February 24, 1938
Co-founder of Nike. Born 24 February 1938 in Portland, Oregon, Philip Knight ran track for Bill Bowerman at Oregon and, at Stanford’s business school, wrote a 1962 paper arguing cheap Japanese running shoes could do to Adidas what Japanese cameras did to German ones. He tested the idea in Japan that year, struck a deal with Onitsuka Tiger, and in January 1964 formalized a $500-apiece handshake with Bowerman as Blue Ribbon Sports, selling shoes from the trunk of his car. The company split from Onitsuka in 1971, renamed itself Nike, and went public in 1980. Knight ran it at the edge of insolvency for most of its first fifteen years, stepped down as CEO in 2004, and retired as chairman in 2016.
Career highlights
- 1938Born 24 February in Portland, Oregon, to newspaper publisher William Knight and Lota Hatfield Knight; raised in the Eastmoreland neighborhood.
- 1959Graduated from the University of Oregon with a business degree, having run middle-distance track under coach Bill Bowerman and posted a personal-best mile of 4:13.
- 1962Wrote a Stanford Graduate School of Business paper arguing that Japanese-made running shoes could take share from German-dominated Adidas the way Japanese cameras had taken share from German camera makers, then set out on a round-the-world trip to test the idea himself, calling it his ‘Crazy Idea.’
- 1962Visited Onitsuka Co. in Kobe, Japan, in November, talked his way into a meeting over Tiger running shoes, and — asked what company he represented — invented the name ‘Blue Ribbon Sports’ on the spot to secure West Coast distribution rights.
- 1964Formalized a handshake partnership with Bowerman on 25 January, each putting up $500 to found Blue Ribbon Sports, selling imported Tiger shoes from the trunk of his green Plymouth Valiant at track meets across the Pacific Northwest.
- 1965Hired Jeff Johnson, a fellow distance runner, as Blue Ribbon Sports’ first full-time employee; Johnson ran the company’s mail-order operation and its first retail store.
- 1971Split from Onitsuka amid a breach-of-contract dispute and renamed the company Nike — a name Jeff Johnson said came to him in a dream about the Greek goddess of victory.
- 1971Paid Portland State design student Carolyn Davidson $35 for the swoosh logo, and Bowerman poured rubber into a waffle iron to develop the outsole that became the Waffle Trainer.
- 1980Took Nike public in December; the IPO made Knight, then holding roughly half the company’s shares, one of the richest people in Oregon overnight.
- 1984Signed rookie Michael Jordan to a shoe deal, launching the Air Jordan line that redefined athlete endorsement for the company.
- 1988Launched the ‘Just Do It’ advertising campaign, which became the defining slogan of the Nike brand.
- 1998Addressed the National Press Club on 12 May to answer the sweatshop-labor crisis engulfing Nike’s overseas contract factories, announcing new minimum-age and monitoring standards after years of activist pressure and boycotts.
- 2004Resigned as Nike’s CEO on 18 November, months after his son Matthew died in a scuba-diving accident in El Salvador in May; remained chairman.
- 2016Retired as Nike’s chairman on 30 June, becoming chairman emeritus as Mark Parker took the chairman role; published the memoir Shoe Dog in April.
Lessons for founders
- A great idea can start as an arbitrage, not an invention. Knight’s 1962 Stanford paper didn’t propose a new product — it proposed importing an existing one, arguing cheap, well-made Japanese running shoes could do to Adidas what Japanese cameras had done to German ones. Blue Ribbon Sports began as that trade, not as a shoe design.
- Expect to run permanently out of cash, and treat that as the actual job. Blue Ribbon Sports and early Nike grew faster than the money to pay for the next container of inventory could arrive; Knight spent much of the 1960s and 1970s juggling suppliers, bankers, and near-defaults, and Shoe Dog is explicit that the company was, by design and by necessity, chronically under-capitalized for its first fifteen years.
- Invent the company before you’re asked what it’s called. In the November 1962 Onitsuka meeting, Knight had no company name ready; pressed by the Japanese executives, he said ‘Blue Ribbon Sports’ on the spot, inventing the entity that would hold the distribution rights before it existed on paper.
- Athlete endorsement is product development, not marketing. Bowerman’s waffle sole came out of coaching runners, not a marketing brief, and the 1984 Michael Jordan deal shaped the Air Jordan silhouette around a specific athlete’s needs rather than bolting a celebrity face onto an existing shoe.
- Hire people who believe in the mission before they believe in the paycheck. Jeff Johnson, employee #1, ran the mail-order desk and the first retail store on evangelical conviction rather than experience in footwear; Knight’s early hires — Johnson, Bob Woodell, Bill Hayes — were what he called misfits with no formal industry background but obsessive loyalty.
- A logo is not the brand — the brand is built by what people do wearing it. The swoosh cost $35 from a design student in 1971 and Knight initially disliked it; it acquired meaning only after a decade of athletes winning in it and the 1988 ‘Just Do It’ campaign, not from the design itself.
- A supplier relationship is not a company — build your own distribution before you need it. Nike existed only because Onitsuka held the actual manufacturing; the 1971 split, triggered by a contract dispute over exclusivity, forced Knight to build Nike’s own supply chain from scratch rather than remain permanently dependent on one Japanese manufacturer.
- When a crisis threatens the brand’s legitimacy, answer it in public and change the substance, not just the messaging. Facing years of boycotts and reporting on sweatshop conditions in overseas contract factories, Knight gave a direct address at the National Press Club on 12 May 1998 announcing new minimum working-age rules and independent factory monitoring, rather than treating the crisis as a PR problem to be managed away.
On the Founders podcast3×
Read about them4
Written by Nike’s first advertising manager and a Los Angeles Times reporter, this 1993 outsider account covers the Onitsuka split, the swoosh, and Nike's early corporate culture in more operational detail than Shoe Dog does. source ↗
A memoir-history by one of Blue Ribbon Sports’ earliest employees, who built Nike's sports-marketing and Olympic programs from the inside — a running-culture counterpart to the business narratives. source ↗
Katz spent 17 months embedded with Nike’s senior management in the early 1990s; the resulting portrait of Knight and his executives covers the high-pressure decision-making behind Nike’s marketing during a turbulent stretch of the company’s history. source ↗
A biography of Bill Bowerman by an Olympic marathoner who ran for him at Oregon; covers the waffle sole and the Blue Ribbon Sports handshake from Bowerman’s side of the partnership. source ↗
In their own words1
Knight’s own account of Blue Ribbon Sports and Nike's first two decades, published in 2016 — the single most important source on his life and the origin of nearly every fact in this entry. source ↗
What they recommend5
"In Shoe Dog, Knight channels Churchill’s wartime speech to define Blue Ribbon’s purpose: “victory, victory at all costs… without victory, there is no survival.”" source ↗
Quoted at length in Shoe Dog"“No brilliant idea was ever born in a conference room,” he assured the Dane. “But a lot of silly ideas have died there,” said Stahr." source ↗
Quoted in Shoe Dog"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few." source ↗
Quoted at length in Shoe Dog"Perfection in the art of swordsmanship is reached… when the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one’s own sword and how to wield it.… All is emptiness: your own self, the flashing sword, and the arms that wield it." source ↗
Quoted in Shoe Dog"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." source ↗
Similar taste
Founders who share the most book recommendations with Phil:
Sources10
- Phil Knight — Wikipedia
- Nike founder Phil Knight retires as company’s chairman — Sports Illustrated
- Nike Cofounder And Chairman Phil Knight Officially Retires From The Board — Forbes
- Shoe Dog (Open Library edition record) — Internet Archive
- Swoosh: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There — Internet Archive
- Out of Nowhere (Open Library edition record) — Internet Archive
- Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World — Internet Archive
- Bowerman and the Men of Oregon by Kenny Moore — Penguin Random House
- Shoe Dog — Leadership Library — Thrive Street Advisors
- Excerpts from "Shoe Dog: A memoir by the creator of Nike" by Phil Knight — Premnath (blog)