Nike, Inc. (NYSE: NKE), headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, is the largest and most successful brand of nike shoes, sports equipment, clothing, and controlling more than 60% of the market and becoming a pop culture icon. One might say that the Greek Goddess of Victory for which Nike was named is actually the Goddess of nike shoes. Nike may be one of the youngest of the major brands, but it is the dominant brand around the world.
. Operating under the name Blue Ribbon Sports, Bowerman and Knight began to sell the Japanese Onitsuke Tiger (now known as ASICS) running nike shoes.Click here to see a picture of the Blue Ribbon Sports location in the present day. This store is no longer in existence, but the address remains. Jeff Johnson, a former rival of Knight, joins the company in 1965 as their first full-time salesperson and sells nike shoes from the back of his van at local and regional track meets until opening Blue Ribbon Sports' first retail outlet at 3107 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica California. In 1963-1964 when University of Portland track coach, Bill Bowerman, and Phil Knight, a mid-distance runner joined forces to import and provide low-cost, high tech running nike shoes from Japan in order to provide alternatives to the German-dominated athletic shoe market By 1964, Knight had sold $8,000 worth of Tigers and placed an order for more. Coach Bowerman and Knight worked together, but ended up hiring a full-time salesman, Jeff Johnson. After cresting $1 million in sales and riding the wave of the success, Knight et. al. devised the nike shoes name and trademark Swoosh in 1971. By the late '70s, Blue Ribbon Sports officially became nike shoes and went from $10 million to $270 million in sales. Katz (1994) describes the success via nike shoes's placement within the matrix of the fitness revolution: 'the idea of exercise and game-playing ceased to be something the average American did for fun,' instead Americans turned to working out as a cultural signifier of status. Clearly, the circumstances surrounding the shift are not this simple; it is one of the aims of this project to discover other generators of popular attention to health. If nike shoes didn't start the fitness revolution, Knight says, "We were at least right there. And we sure rode it for one hell of a ride" (Katz, 66). The 80s and 90s would yield greater and greater profits as nike shoes began to assume the appearance of athletic juggernaut, rather than the underdog of old. "Advertising Age" named nike shoes the 1996 Marketer of the Year, citing the "ubiquitous swoosh...was more recognized and coveted by consumers than any other sports brand--arguably any brand" (Jensen, 12/96). That same year nike shoes's revenues were a staggering $6.74 billion. Expecting $8 billion sales in fiscal 1997, nike shoes has targeted $12 billion in sales by the year 2000. Blue Ribbon Sports officially incorporates in 1967 and does business under this name until approximately 1970 when Bowerman's desire to improve on the shoe designs of Onitsuke Tiger and Knight's ambition to do more than simply import and resell running nike shoes. Inspiration must have struck Bill Bowerman over breakfast one morning because he borrowed the family waffle iron and pour rubber into to create the prototype for the now famous Nike Waffle Outsole. This invention led Bowerman and Knight to begin designing other nike shoes, and the company's new name, Nike, Inc. was born when Jeff Johnson, dreams of the Greek goddess of victory, Nike. A succession of nike shoes, many based on the waffle outsole follows. Some of the most famous are the Waffle Racer, Air Force One, Air Max 93, Max 95, and Air Max 97. The Nike Shox nike shoes were the product of a sixteen years of research in the Nike Labs. In the fall of 2000, the Nike Shox system was revealed to the world. Nike unveiled this top secret line of nike shoes to the world in 3 models, the Nike Shox (running shox), Nike Shox BB4 (basketball shox), and the Nike Shox XTR (cross-training shox). How did the system work? It was actually very simple - the Shox would absorbs energy from impact (kinetic energy) of the wearer heel and then returns the stored energy (potential energy) as he moves forward. The Nike Shox technology does a better job of returning the energy transfered to it than the Air Max nike shoes. The Shox nike shoes were very cutting edge using a super high density polyurithane hollow foam columns as the shock absorbers in combination with a TPU heel counter to ensure equal distribution of the energy from impact. The Nike Shox R4 running shoe has been the most successful shoe in the Nike Shox lineup. The shoe was available in a variety of colors and was also available on Nike ID. The R4 has been released several times and is the only shoe in the original lineup to have been released several times.
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