According to the company, when phil knight founded Nike at 1964 for $500, he never dreamed that it would become the largest brand of sports shoes in the world. This paper will reveal the mystery of Nike's growth process, and focus on the key to Nike's brilliance in the 1990s-new product development strategy. 1972, Knight and Ballman finally invented a kind of shoes and decided to make them themselves. They contracted production tasks to Asian factories with cheap labor and named the shoes Nike, which was named after the Greek god of victory. At the same time, they also invented a unique logo Swoosh (meaning "whoosh"), which is extremely eye-catching and unique. Every product of Nike has this logo. In short, Swoosh is the initial stage of Nike logo creation: the history of Nike mentioned in the 1960s and 1970s must be traced back to 1958. At that time, founder phil knight was only a track team player at Oregon State University, and he often complained to coach Bowerman during practice that the United States never produced a really good pair of sports shoes. Knight majored in accounting and returned to China to teach in Portland after graduation. 1964, Knight and his coach borman each invested $500 to set up a sports shoes company named Nike, which comes from Greek and means "victory". In the early days of the company, Knight used his relationship in sports to shuttle back and forth in various track and field venues and set up stalls to sell his running shoes. At that time, all the products were purchased from Japan, and he often thought that American-designed sports shoes must have unlimited potential. In the early 1970s, Knight began to implement his own idea of designing shoes. At the same time, after careful research and investigation, he found that the market demand was enough to support him to establish his own production line. But in the end, I decided to learn from Japanese production experience. 1972, Knight signed the first contract with Japan to formally produce Nike sports shoes completely designed in the United States. In the following years, the yen continued to appreciate and the labor cost was high, which made the cost of producing shoes in Japan higher and higher. At this time, Nike has accumulated stable overseas production experience and extended its reach to manufacturers in more countries. In order to reduce the production cost, Nike moved the Japanese production line to South Korea and Taiwan Province Province with relatively low labor costs on 1975. After the cost is greatly reduced, Nike has more abundant resources to engage in R&D and marketing activities. Nike expanded its OEM business from countries with low labor costs, which was a revolutionary move in the industry at that time. Nike knows that the production of shoes must inject intensive labor, so it is bound to seek overseas low-cost OEM, and there is no room for change. Nevertheless, there are still risks in overseas OEM, and the distance and cultural differences between different countries increase the difficulty of quality control. Therefore, when Nike places a large-scale order with a foundry, it often goes through a very careful evaluation process to ensure that the finished product can meet Nike's quality standards. During this period, Nike's strategic focus is completely focused on: 1. Establish the best overseas production and operation mode; 2. Explain new designs and styles for original equipment manufacturers; 3. It is difficult to maintain quality standards and strive for revival: In the early 1980s, Nike made a fortune and continued to play the role of a professional manufacturer of sports shoes in the United States, but it did not have any production plants in the United States. Soon, the number one competitor Reebok followed. Founded in 198 1, under the leadership of its founder and CEO Paul Farman, it has sprung up suddenly, launched sports shoes with novel design and strong momentum, and successfully swept some markets. By the mid-1980s, Reebok had been able to compete with Nike in the fierce competition. 1987, Reebok by going up one flight of stairs topped the sports shoes market with sales of 99 10/00000 USD and 30% share, followed by Nike with 597 million USD and 18% share. In the struggle between Nike and Reebok, the problems and opportunities lie entirely in the changeable target market and the essence of design orientation. In other words, young people (teenagers and young adults) buy not only sports shoes, but also the "fashion sense" represented by the shoes themselves. Both shoe giants realize that if they want to expand the market scale, they must transfer the original concept of professional sports shoes to a broader "fashion-seeking" youth and young adults market. Reebok Cave took the lead in entering this gold market, and gave Nike a heavy blow with superior products and aggressive public relations activities. Filmon, CEO of Reebok, once publicly criticized Nike: "Knight is just a shoemaker and always thinks he is a great athlete." . Knight responded contemptuously: "I hate Reebok, because its research and development system is simply a cottage." In order to counter Reebok's provocation, Nike made up its mind to invest heavily in the research and development of new products. The most popular classic product is Nike air shoes in the late 1980s. John Horan, a critic, once expressed his views on Nike air shoes in the special issue of American Sports Industry: "In fact, it is an easy-to-understand shoe-making technology, which only needs to inject air into the sole to form an elastic insole, and that's all." Nike pneumatic shoes were not officially launched until the early 1990 s and achieved unprecedented success. Therefore, the 1980s was an era when Nike faced difficulties and made great efforts. During this period, Nike suffered fierce market competition, which established the strategic theme of new product development and design in the future. Top: Nike Air Cushion Shoes went on the market with great fanfare in the 1990s, and spent millions of dollars to hire NBA superstar Michael Jordan as the product spokesperson to engage in various marketing and advertising activities, which set a new high in the sponsorship price of sporting goods in history and made the whole world admire it. The attraction of advertising is linked with Nike's air-cushion shoes, Jordan's image and almost magical basketball skills. Since then, Nike has gradually recovered its lost ground in the market. Reebok, forced by the situation, hastily launched "Reebok pumps", with shaquille o'neal, the second red star in the NBA, as the spokesperson, but the general trend has gone. At this time, the share of Nike increased from 25% in 1989 to 28% in 1990, and Reebok decreased from 24% to 2 1%. The surprising success of this counterattack made Nike deeply realize that promotion is indeed the most powerful magic weapon for the brand. Therefore, in the following years, Nike continuously increased its investment in this area. For example, in 1995, Nike spent as much as $654.38 billion on sports marketing, while Reebok was close to $400 million. Following Michael Jordan's sponsorship activities, Nike's sports marketing signed tiger woods, a golf superstar, at sky-high prices, and signed a contract with Brazil's football team at a price of 1996 of $200-400 million, setting a historical record of the highest sponsorship activities in the world football, including the purchase of the TV broadcasting rights of five world-class events of Brazil's national team. Since then, the Nike hook logo has appeared on the TV of many world golf championships, 1998 World Cup and 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Sports marketing is the main force of Nike, but it also attaches great importance to brand communication. From 1980s to 1990s, Nike firmly grasped the pulse of the target market-youth, individuality and teenagers who challenged reality. All Nike products highlight its "hook" brand logo and develop the communication theme of "Just Do It". With the advertising slogan "Win in your way", endorsed by the world's top sports stars, it quickly captured the hearts of young people around the world. Nike's products are not cheap. In America, the price of a pair of sports shoes can be as high as $65,438+000. This high-priced strategy has made great contributions to Nike, but it has also brought great trouble. Some American civil organizations protested, forcing Nike to raise the wages of shoemakers in overseas factories. Although Nike is not heartless, business is still business, and phil knight has no intention of giving in. After the air cushion shoes achieved unprecedented success in the market, Nike increased the research and development of new products. In just one year, there are more than 300 new styles on the American market. Nike declared: "Scientific product research and development is one of the key factors for Nike's success, and we spare no effort to develop new shoemaking materials, fibers and modern designs". To put it another way, the motivation for Nike to concentrate on the research and development of new products still lies in the behavior and attitude of target consumers seeking innovation and change. In fact, Nike is not the only company in the industry that pays special attention to new product research and development. In order to catch young people's pursuit of fashion, many well-known brands have no choice but to constantly innovate their products. During the 1990s, the backbone of Nike's marketing, the depth and breadth of market research for teenagers, were beyond the reach of other brands in the sports shoes market, which made Nike's share increase continuously, reaching 43% in 196 (Reebok 16%), and the sales in the US market alone exceeded $3 billion.