Founders/ CEO
John Donahoe
Nike CEO John Joseph Donahoe II (born April 30, 1960) is an American businessman. He began his career with Bain & Company, where he rose to become president and CEO in 1999. He also serves on the boards of directors of Nike, The Bridgespan Group, and PayPal. From 2003 to 2012, he was a member of Dartmouth College’s Board of Trustees. Donahoe was appointed Nike’s president and CEO on January 13, 2020. He attended and graduated from the New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois in 1978. Later he attended the Dartmouth College to gain his bachelor’s degree in economics and then he received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Phil Knight
Philip Hampson Knight who was born on the 24th of February 1938 is an American billionaire business. Phil Knight is a co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc. while he was serving as the CEO and chairman a while ago. In 2020, Knight was ranked as the 26th richest person in the world by Forbes with a net worth of US $39.2 billion. Laika, which is a motion film production company is also owned by Knight. He attended the Cleveland High School and the University of Oregon to gain a degree in journalism in 1959. Knight got married to Penelope “Penny” Parks on the 13th of September 1968 whom he met while working at Portland State University. He has two sons’ names as Travis Knight and Matthew. Matthew unfortunately passed away when he was involved in a scuba diving accident in 2004.
Bill Bowerman
William Jay Bowerman was born on February 19th, 1911 and passed away in December 24th, 1999 when he was 88 years old. Bowerman who is a co-founder of Nike, Inc. was an American track and field coach. He had coached 31 Olympic athletes, 51 All-Americans, 12 American record-holders, 22 NCAA champions and 16 sub-4-minute milers over his career. Bowerman attended the University of Oregon in 1929 to study journalism as well as to play football. With the suggestion of his track coach Bill Hayward, he enlisted in the track team. He taught biology and coached football at Franklin High School in Portland in 1934, after his graduation. A year later, in 1935, he moved back to Medford for football coaching and wone a state title in 1940. Bowerman got married to Barbara Young in 1936 and had two 2 sons.
History
Nike, Inc., which was initially called as Blue Ribbon Sports (1964–78), is an American sportswear company based in Beaverton, Oregon. Bill Bowerman, a track and field coach at the University of Oregon, and his former student Phil Knight formed Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964. In 1966, they opened their first store location, and in 1972, they introduced the Nike brand shoe. In 1978, the company was called Nike, Inc., and it went public two years later. By the early twenty-first century, Nike had distribution stores and dealers in over 170 countries, and the logo—a curved check mark known as the “swoosh”—was well-known around the world.
Bowerman was a running coach at the University of Oregon in the 1950s who despised the style of track shoes. Aside from imported German styles, most sneakers provided inadequate support and did not provide runners with what they needed in a pair. Bowerman experimented with his own designs, enlisting the help of a nearby tailor to teach him. In early prototypes, he used student track athlete Phil Knight as a guinea pig and tested kangaroo fur, silk, deer hide, and fish skin.
Knight began his education at the University of Oregon before transferring to Stanford in 1960. In one lesson, Knight was asked to create a business strategy. Assuming that quality sneakers could be manufactured more cheaply in Japan, he suggested a footwear brand that would be sold to high school and college athletes and would use international labor. By 1964, Knight and Bowerman had dreamed of and founded Blue Ribbon Sports, an importer of the Japanese Onitsuka Tiger track shoe. Bowerman took the products and modified them for runners, which Knight sold from his car trunk.
Nike ACG, which markets equipment for extreme sports such as snowboarding and mountain biking, was founded in 1996. Nike started marketing sports-technology accessories, such as handheld heart-rate sensors and high-altitude wrist compasses, in the early twenty-first century.
Nike’s popularity is due in part to sponsorship by athletes such as Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, Roger Federer, and Tiger Woods. The Nike Town chain stores, the first of which opened in 1990, pay homage to these and other brand spokespersons when selling a wide range of Nike items to customers.
Products
Nike Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer and seller of athletic shoes, apparel and other sports equipment. Nike, Inc. owns the brands Nike, Converse, Hurley and Jordan. The main products of Nike fall under Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike+, Air Jordan, Nike Blazers, Air Force 1, Nike Dunk, Air Max, Foamposite, Nike Skateboarding, Nike CR7, and branches including Brand Jordan, Hurley International and Converse. The initial product sold by Nike were track running shoes and with the company’s growth they sell a huge variety of products such as shoes, jerseys, shorts, cleat, baselayers for different kind of sports such as track and field, baseball, ice hockey, tennis, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, and cricket.
Net Worth
Nike, standing as the largest sportswear manufacturer in the world has a net worth estimated to be around US $35 billion with assets worth around US $23.6 billion. It is also stated that in the year 2019, Nike employed around 76,600 workers worldwide and currently in 2021, it has over 80,000 workers. Furthermore, it was found out that, in 2018, around 53.38% high income earners in the United States own Nike apparel, accessories and shoes. In the year 2021, it is recorded thar Nike has over 700 outlets around the world and office which spread throughout 45 countries excluding America.