From a Car Trunk to a $140 Billion Empire: The Phil Knight and Nike Story

The origin story of Nike is the story of a shy accounting student, a brilliant track coach, and a pair of Japanese running shoes. It is a story that begins in 1962, when Phil Knight, fresh from Stanford Business School, traveled to Japan and walked into the offices of Onitsuka Tiger, a small shoe manufacturer in Kobe. Knight told the executives — somewhat improbably — that he represented a company called Blue Ribbon Sports and wanted to import their running shoes to the American market. Blue Ribbon Sports did not exist. Knight had made it up on the spot. But the Onitsuka executives were impressed by his enthusiasm and knowledge of the running market, and they agreed to send him samples.

Knight returned to Portland, Oregon, and began selling Tiger running shoes from the trunk of his green Plymouth Valiant at track meets across the Pacific Northwest. His former track coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman, became his partner. Bowerman was a legendary figure in the running world — a demanding, innovative coach who was constantly tinkering with shoe designs, famously pouring rubber into a waffle iron to create a new type of sole that provided better traction on track surfaces. Together, Knight handled the business while Bowerman handled the product.

For the first decade, Blue Ribbon Sports was essentially a distribution company, importing Japanese shoes and selling them to runners. But tensions with Onitsuka Tiger led Knight and Bowerman to create their own brand. In 1971, they hired a Portland State University graphic design student named Carolyn Davidson to create a logo. She produced the Swoosh — a simple, dynamic checkmark shape — and was paid $35. It would become one of the most recognized symbols in the world.

The company officially became Nike, Inc. in 1978, named after the Greek goddess of victory. Growth was rapid but fraught. Knight nearly went bankrupt multiple times in the early years, struggling with cash flow, inventory management, and the demands of rapid expansion. His relationship with banks — particularly the First National Bank of Oregon, which repeatedly threatened to call his credit line — was a source of constant anxiety that Knight described vividly in his memoir, Shoe Dog.

The transformative moment came in 1984, when Nike signed a rookie basketball player named Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal. Other shoe companies had passed on Jordan — he was talented but unproven. Nike offered him a signature shoe line, the Air Jordan, with an unprecedented royalty structure. The Air Jordan 1 launched in 1985 and was an instant cultural phenomenon. The NBA initially banned the shoe for violating uniform rules, and Nike paid the fines — the controversy only increased demand. Air Jordan became the most successful athlete endorsement in history, generating billions of dollars in revenue and establishing Nike's dominance in basketball culture.

The "Just Do It" campaign, launched in 1988, cemented Nike's position as more than a shoe company. Created by the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy (also based in Portland), the three-word slogan became a global rallying cry for athletic aspiration. The campaign's genius was its universality — it spoke not just to elite athletes but to anyone who had ever hesitated before a workout, a challenge, or a goal. Combined with advertising featuring athletes like Bo Jackson, Andre Agassi, and later Tiger Woods, "Just Do It" elevated Nike from a sports brand into a cultural institution.

Knight's strategic expansion into soccer in the 1990s demonstrated his willingness to invest for the long term. Nike had no credibility in the world's most popular sport, which was dominated by Adidas. Knight invested hundreds of millions in sponsoring national teams (most notably Brazil), signing star players, and developing soccer-specific footwear. The payoff took years, but by the 2010s, Nike had become the world's largest soccer brand by revenue, a feat that seemed impossible when the initiative launched.

Phil Knight stepped down as CEO in 2004 and as chairman in 2016, having built Nike from a $1,000 investment into a $140 billion company. His memoir, Shoe Dog — published in 2016 to critical acclaim — revealed the full story of Nike's early years: the sleepless nights, the near-bankruptcies, the broken relationships with Japanese suppliers, the bet-the-company decisions that could have gone either way. It is one of the most honest and compelling business memoirs ever written, and it reveals that even the most iconic success stories are built on a foundation of uncertainty, fear, and stubborn refusal to quit.