The origin and history of Nike
Nike, originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS), was founded by University of Oregon track
athlete Philip Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman in January 1964. The company initially operated as
a distributor for Japanese shoe maker Onitsuka Tiger (now ASICS), making most sales at track meets
out of Knight's automobile.
According to Otis Davis, a student athlete whom Bowerman coached at the University of Oregon, who
later went one to win two gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics, Bowerman made the first pair of
Nike shoes for him, contradicting a claim that they were made for Phil Knight.
The company's profits grew quickly, and,
shox discount shoes in 1967, BRS opened its first retail store, located on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, California.
The Swoosh was first used by Nike on June 18, 1971, and was registered with the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office on January 22, 1974. The first shoe sold to the public to carry this design was a
soccer shoe named Nike,
shox Australiawhich was released in
the summer of 1971. In February 1972, BRS introduced its first line of Nike shoes, with the name
derived from the Greek goddess of victory. In 1978, BRS, Inc.nike
shox r4 officially renamed itself to Nike, Inc. Beginning with Ilie N?stase, the first
professional athlete to sign with BRS/Nike, the sponsorship of athletes became a key marketing tool
for the rapidly growing company.
The company's first self-designed product was based on Bowerman's "waffle" design. By 1980, Nike had
attained a 50% market share in the U.S. athletic shoe market, and the company went public in
December of that year . Its growth was due largely to "word-of-foot" advertising (to quote a Nike
print ad from the late 1970s), rather than television ads. Nike's first national television
commercials ran in October 1982, during the broadcast of the New York Marathon. The ads were created
by Portland-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, which had formed several months earlier in
April.
Together, Nike and Wieden+Kennedy have created many print and television advertisements, and Wieden
+Kennedy remains Nike's primary ad agency. It was agency co-founder Dan Wieden who coined the now-
famous slogan "Just Do It" for a 1988 Nike ad campaign,cheap
shox which was chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top five ad slogans of the 20th century
and enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution. Walt Stack was featured in Nike's first "Just Do It"
advertisement, which debuted on July 1, 1988. Wieden credits the inspiration for the slogan to "Let
’s do it", the last words spoken by Gary Gilmore before he was executed.
Throughout the 1980s, Nike expanded its product line to encompass many sports and regions throughout
the world.
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