Shoe Dog - Phil Knight

Reviewer’s Note:

I have some fond memories when it comes to Nike. Everyone in their childhood has a pair of shoes they desire. For me, it was Nike. I still remember the day; my mom brought me my first pair. A grey shoe, with grey laces and a blue swoosh on it, from the moment I saw it, I was in love with that shoe. Since that pair, Nike has always had a special place in my collection. Shoe Dog is the memoir of Nike founder Phil Knight and how he started Nike and built it from the ground up. After reading this story, I feel even more love for my pair of shoes and Nike as a brand. I hope this story does the same for you.

Book Review/Summary:

Phil Knight had recently graduated from Stanford Business School when he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do in his life. He kept going back to a paper he had published in school about how Japanese Cameras had created a dent in the Camera market dominated by Germans. He thought, what if the same could be done with Japanese shoes. He was thinking about this question when he decided he wanted to travel the world and figure out what he wanted to do. So he set out on a journey, visiting Greece, Calcutta, and many other places. He saw and learned things in these places that he would remember for life. For the last destination in his trip, he went to Japan, with a thought of trying out his idea and set up a meeting with a shoe manufacturer, Onitsuka. Little did Phil know that everything was going to change for him once he took the meeting.

The meeting went through; Onitsuka was happy and wanted Phil to be their distributor in America. Thus, they asked him what the name of his company was. As Phil didn’t have a company, he just said the first words which came to his mind, and thus “Blue Ribbon” became the first distributor of Onitsuka’s Tiger shoes in America.

After going back to the States, Phil met with his running coach from college, Bill Bowerman, and asked him if he would like to be his partner in this business. Bill agreed, and they together co-founded Blue Ribbon. For the first year, Phil sold the Tiger Shoes from the trunk of his car and made a profit of $8000. He reinvested this in the company. In the second year, the company’s profits doubled, and the process continued for successive years.

As business started to grow, Blue Ribbon started to employ people. Most of the initial employees of the company were runners or athletes and thus were just as passionate about shoes as Phil and Bill. This made it the perfect team. A lot of credit for the success of Blue Ribbon and Nike goes to these employees who worked day and night passionate for the company. Not only did the employees work there, some of them even helped set up offices in various other cities, some took care of manufacturing when they needed to, some contributed to the design and some stored inventory in their houses when there were storage problems.

However, even as business was booming, there were cash problems as Phil invested all the money he got back in the business. This was causing him trouble with the banks. For several years after starting Blue Ribbon, he even worked as an Accountant so that there was a permanent source of income for him to support his family.

As sales grew, Onitsuka grew greedy and started looking for other distributors in America. At that point, Phil decided to start a shoe company of his own, instead of importing shoes from others, and that was the birth of Nike. Phil initially wanted to name the company “Dimension Six”. However, the employees were not happy, and thus, they forced him to choose the name, Nike. Even the iconic logo, the Swoosh, was designed by an Art student studying at a local college. Phil was not sure about the logo, however, he didn’t have time as the shoes needed to be manufactured with a logo, and thus he choose to go with the Swoosh. And that’s how Nike and the Swoosh took birth.

This book and this story is one of the most exciting ones I have read in recent times. Phil Knight has gone in detail to explain how his company developed every single year since its founding. The article gives a mere glimpse of the great journey Nike has been on. I feel every single one should read this book. Athletes, sneakerheads, entrepreneurs, designers, and students, each and everyone will enjoy reading it. So do give it a read.

Happy Reading.