The Force Behind The Nike Empire / Success story

The Nike boss wasn't a big fan of advertising, but the company's flair for promotion launched an athletic-shoe revolution.

In 1993, the man whom The Sporting News voted “the most powerful person in sports” wasn’t an athlete, a manager or a team owner. He was Philip H. Knight, the dynamic iconoclast who for nearly 30 years has shod the feet of sports legends and “weekend warriors” alike. In less than a decade, his marketing savvy and uncompromising competitiveness had transformed the athletic-shoe industry and made Nike one of the most successful and widely recognized brand names in the world.

Knight first came up with the blueprint for what would become the world’s No. 1 athletic-shoe company while working on his master’s degree at Stanford University. Assigned to write a term paper on starting a small business in an area he knew well, the former University of Oregon track star naturally chose running. He outlined a plan for breaking the stranglehold Adidas had on the running-shoe market by using cheap Japanese labor to manufacture a cheaper, better-quality running shoe.

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