Phil knight phil knight, the founder of Nike, is different from the founders of other big companies. Nate is a particularly homesick person. He still lives in Portland, Oregon, USA, where his entrepreneurial story took place for decades, instead of big cities like new york and LA.
This book tells the history of knight's entrepreneurship and the development of Nike brand.
Knight is a young man who loves running, not only deeply, but also a member of the track and field team of the University of Oregon.
After leaving the campus, running 10 km every day is his firm insistence.
In the process of starting a business, he encountered numerous problems and almost collapsed. He used to "go out and run 10 km" to calm himself down, concentrate and solve problems.
Knight went to Stanford for an MBA after graduating from college, but he didn't want to work and wanted to do something by himself. In an MBA class, the teacher assigned such an assignment: imagine a small company, describe its goals and make a marketing plan. Knight's thesis is entitled: "Can Japanese sports shoes companies challenge German sports shoes like Japanese cameras challenge German cameras?" In this article, he envisions using cheap labor in Japan at that time to produce high-quality sports shoes, which is expected to beat the German sports shoes that dominate the market. This became the theoretical basis of his later entrepreneurship.
At that time, Japanese running shoes just entered the American market. Because of his love of running, Knight wanted to be the agent of Tezuka Tiger Shoes, so he went to Japan and set up his own sports shoes company Blue Ribbon.
Ribbon), and successfully obtained the agency of the ghost burial tiger in the United States.
Knight's first partner (* * * co-founded the company) was Bill Ballman, who coached his track team at the University of Oregon.
Ballman is a well-known track and field coach in Oregon and even in the United States. He led the American track and field team to participate in the 1972 Olympic Games.
Ballman likes to study sports shoes, and often starts to modify them, and lets his athletes have tests to see if they can improve their performance. He is a typical shoe dog.
Ballman developed a series of products, such as waffle soles, when acting as an agent for Blue Ribbon Company, including the Cortez series of ghost tigers, which later became popular in the United States, all of which were made by Ballman.
An agent designs a product for a brand, so sooner or later the agent will go it alone. . . )
The first employee of Blue Ribbon Sports was Jeff Johnson. He is an enthusiastic salesman and a chatterbox. In that era when there was no Internet, Johnson could send Knight five letters a week to tell his various sales stories.
Johnson is also Knight's most trusted partner. He has done a lot of hard work, such as the first branch in the eastern United States and the first local factory.
Johnson is also a "shoe dog". He also designed some early Nike shoes.
Blue Ribbon Sports sells more and more ghost tiger shoes in the United States, and Oni Tsuka's behavior is more and more unacceptable: delayed delivery, unstable quality, supporting other agents to grab business in the United States, and intending to buy Blue Ribbon Sports.
At this time, Blue Ribbon Sports has developed to the scale of annual sales exceeding one million dollars, so Knight decided to go it alone, build his own footwear brand, and look for foundries in Japan, Taiwan Province Province and South Korea. All this happened before the contract with Oni Tsuka Company expired, which also brought a big lawsuit for the future.
The name Nike comes from a trip before Knight started his business. He traveled all over the world, as well as Nike, the goddess of victory in the Greek temple (Greek: ν? κ eta, "victory"; Nike left a deep impression on Knight and became his new brand and company name.
Frank Rudy is not a shoe dog. He used to be an aerospace engineer. He is the inventor of air cushion and the main contributor to Nike's famous air series.
When Rudy took the initiative to find Knight, Knight was not very interested in air cushions because shoes had been developed for hundreds of years and never changed. However, he changed his mind when he tried to stuff his shoes into the air cushion. Nike soon introduced air cushion shoes, but the first batch of products burst on a large scale due to design defects and were finally recalled.
It took several generations for air cushion technology to stabilize and become an epoch-making product of Nike.
Signing Jordan is definitely a genius of Nike and the masterpiece of Chief Operating Officer strasser.
At that time, Nike was still an unknown role in the NBA, and so was Jordan. Jordan's agent tried to get Adidas to sign him, but Adidas was not interested. They are chasing other famous athletes.
Nike signed Jordan for $500,000 on 1984, which was an incredible number at that time, but it later proved to be more valuable than the investment. Jordan not only pushed Nike's NBA trip to the peak, but also built Air.
Jordan, a brand that still makes shoe fans crazy.
Lawsuit 1: When Nike went solo, Oni Tsuka filed a lawsuit against Nike in Japan. The lawsuit involved fraud (Knight didn't have the Blue Ribbon Sports Company when he signed the agent's right, which was fabricated by him) and theft of business secrets (Knight stole the documents of the representative of Oni Tsuka Company and found evidence that Oni Tsuka Company was looking for other agents in the United States). Finally, with the help of strasser, an unknown lawyer, Nike won this relationship, and strasser was recruited by Knight.
Litigation 2: When Nike's annual sales reached the level of 1000 million US dollars, Converse and other local American enterprises launched a crackdown and filed a lawsuit with the US Customs, pointing out that Nike's shoes were special commodities and had to pay high tariffs on imports, dating back to the time when it first represented Oni Tsuka, amounting to 25 million US dollars. Finally, Knight and another lawyer lobbied someone in Washington to settle the lawsuit.
In the whole process of starting a business, Knight suffered from the break of the capital chain until Nike's annual sales reached tens of millions of dollars. He started from scratch, and in the era when there was no VC (venture capital), he could only borrow short-term loans from banks. On the one hand, the overseas supply cycle is long, but payment must be made first. On the other hand, he needs to repay the loan and then borrow from the bank every month, which makes the capital turnover extremely difficult and the bank is very dissatisfied with his balance sheet. Because there is no balance in his account, all the money is used for the next batch of goods, so Knight always faces two contradictions: the rapid growth of sales and the broken capital chain at any time.
Throughout the book, the description of "lack of money" in different periods occupies a large space, even surpassing the description of making shoes, which is somewhat inconsistent with the title of Shoes and Dogs.
It was not until Knight overcame his psychological obstacles and decided to go public that everything was normal.
Villains Club is Knight's nickname for his core team. These people often get together in places far away from the city to discuss problems through arguments, accusations and even abuse. The scene is out of control, but it is an important outlet and also expresses the sincerity and frankness of the start-up team. Almost every meeting of the villain club will have important decision-making output.
1964.4—— The first batch of 300 pairs of Gezuka tigers arrived, and "Blue Ribbon" began to be sold as a distributor in the western United States;
1964.7.4 The first batch of 300 pairs was sold out.
1965-$8,000 in sales?
1966- sales amounted to $44,000.
1967- sales of $84,000.
1968- sold 150000 USD, 150000 USD.
1969- Sales of USD 300,000, RMB 300,000.
1972-sales of $3.2 million, 3.2 million.
1973- Sales of USD 4.8 million, 4.8 million.
1976- sales1400,000 USD,140,000 USD.
1977- Sales of USD 70 million, 70 million.
1979- sales 14000000 USD, 65438+400 million USD.
In 2006, the sales volume was 160000000 USD,160 billion USD.
20 17- sales of $323,200,000,000, 32.3 billion.
20 19- sales of 39 1 million dollars, 39 1 billion dollars.
In such a difficult situation, Knight spent time and energy to build a business from scratch and pull it to such a large scale. In the book, Knight apologized to his family many times, especially his eldest son, matthew knight.
Matthew didn't have a good time in the rebellious period when he was growing up. The lack of his father's company made him still rebellious as an adult, engaged in NGO career and wandering around the world. He died in a diving accident in 2004.
Knight can't forgive a series of consequences caused by his alienation from Matthew all his life, which has become a permanent pain in his heart as a successful person.
"I always seem to hire accountants and lawyers. However, this is not because I have a soft spot for accountants and lawyers. I just don't know which industries I can find talents from. "
"Most of them showed basic abilities. If you hire an accountant, you know that his computing ability is ok; If you hire a lawyer, you know he has good language skills. What can you know when you hire a marketing expert or a product developer? Don't know anything! "
Well, Pindog is mercilessly despised!
Knight's entrepreneurial story is not special, and there is no miracle, but this book is the most fascinating and vivid among many biographies I have read, and can basically be used as a movie script.
Although the book is called Shoes and Dogs, it is more about those important people and things in the process of starting a business. As countless successful people have said, talent is the most important asset, and investment is investment in people.
Although the process of making products is less described, the spirit of shoes and dogs is still impressive. It is also because of continuous innovation and good products that Nike has come to this day, paying tribute to shoes and dogs and paying tribute to craftsmen!
? The Battle of Brothers: The History of Adi and Puma: This film introduces the story that two German brothers cooperated to create Adidas and then Puma.
? The last dance: 10 documentary introduces Jordan's career. Nike is the driving force behind this drama, and also introduces the origin of Jordan and Nike.
? Golden Arch: A film about the founding history of McDonald's. Today's McDonald's is called the Golden Arch.
? Shoes and Dogs: The script of Shoes and Dogs has been bought out by Netflix, and the film is being filmed, so stay tuned.