The World'S First Sports Brand, Nike'S History Of Entrepreneurship

Speaking of Nike, it is not only the first sports brand, but also extends beyond sports, including clothing, fashion, culture and other industries. It is no longer a simple sport Brand Company. Nike now has a market value of about 133 billion 200 million dollars, while the second sports brand Adidas has a market capitalization of only 44 billion 600 million dollars, and Nike is nearly three times of Adidas's.

The history of Nike's entrepreneurship can be divided into three stages.

One, the predecessor of Nike.

Perhaps many people do not know, Nike in the beginning of eight years, are actually half a Japanese company.

Phil Nate, the founder of Nike, was born in 1938. When he first started his business ideas, he was only a 24 year old business school graduate. At that time knight was a shy, especially shy person. He was a long-distance runner in University and always interested in running shoes. At that time, the best sneakers were in Germany, the largest manufacturer was Adidas, and at the same time, the running shoes of Japan gradually revealed signs. Phil Nate was very real. At first, he didn't think of subverting the world immediately, but was thinking of introducing Japanese running shoes to the United States.

With the idea, Phil Knight flew to Tokyo, when he saw a Japanese sports shoe company named "ghost hill" company. What's interesting is that the ghost hill company is still alive and living very well. It has one or two shoes and even a burst of money. It's very popular, but its scale is totally out of line with Nike's. At that time, Phil Nate took all the trouble to get the agent of the company in the United States, and set up a company called blue ribbon sports company, whose main business was selling the running shoes of the ghost company.

Because Nate is a long-distance runner, he is born, so selling running shoes can be said to be familiar with the road, and the business is bigger and bigger. After eight years of cooperation, the mound company began to fear that the development of the blue ribbon sports would be too great, and in turn threatened itself, so he proposed to buy 51% of the blue ribbon sports or else the agent right would be recovered. At this time, like a great entrepreneur, Phil Nate did not shrink back and decided to go on his own and set up his own brand.

Two, the real birth

Phil Nate and his team first found a new shoemaking factory. Then we should consider the brand, the first task is to design a striking Logo. At the time, Knight's idea was that the Logo must be separated from the designs of Adidas and ghosts. He found a young girl who had been making a brochure and posters to their company. The name was Caroline Davidson.

Like many other party members, Phil Nate didn't know what he wanted. He just asked Logo to give people a special sense of movement. So Davidson came back with a pile of design sketches two weeks later.

This is the origin of Nike's classic Logo. Later, the design cost to Davidson was $35, which was much cheaper than designing a Logo of NeXT company for 100 thousand dollars by Jobs.

Later, the operation of the company was not a smooth sailing, but rather difficult. In four words, it was "always short of money". In 1970, 6 years after the establishment of the company, Phil Nate was still worried about twenty thousand dollars in cash. By 1975, he had been unable to pay wages for several weeks.

In fact, for the entity business, we often face the problem of capital turnover. Because upstream payment is made to material suppliers, the downstream retailers and stores often do not pay in time. Therefore, capital is a big problem, and the better the business, the greater the financial pressure.

In addition, when the venture capital industry had not yet formed, the only way for Nike was to lend to banks, but the banks were very conservative at that time. So Nike has been having a very hard time, even when the creditors collectively come to collect debts.

By 1980, the listing of Nike was an inevitable task. Their business was very strong. In North America, they surpassed Adidas for the first time, reaching 50% share, but they were still short of money. In fact, Phil Nate did not want the company to go public, because he said, as a shy person, he felt headache when he thought of the process of listing, so he still had to do it for the company.

In his book "dog and dog", he described it as follows: "I slept for hours. After waking up, it was cold and it was raining. I walked to the window and saw that the leaves were dripping. Everything was misty. The whole world is no different from yesterday. Nothing has changed, including myself. Although I am worth 178 million dollars. I took a shower, ate breakfast, drove to work, and I arrived earlier than anyone else.

Three, two milestones

After the listing of Nike, it eased the pressure of capital and continued to expand. It also experienced many setbacks and finally became the world's largest sports brand. The story in the middle is very wonderful, but there are two important events, most representative.

1 the origin of the slogan "Just Do It".

In the 80s of last century, although Nike's momentum rose rapidly, the whole sports brand market still played a role. Adidas has always been a long-term competitor, and many local brands, such as Reebok, are also catching up.

By the year 1985, there was a trend in the United States, that is, women began to pay attention to fitness and sports. While Reebok has been playing the leading role in the female market, it has ushered in a big opportunity, and the sales volume of products has increased greatly. But Nike's gene has always been the main male consumer, so in this position, Nike missed the whole trend of fashion. Only two or three years later, by 1987, Reebok had overtaken Nike and became the first sports brand in the United States.

After being overturned, Nike was very nervous. In the midst of crisis, it found W+K, a famous advertising agency, commissioned them to design advertising slogans, hoping to expand brand influence, especially to impress women consumers who just started participating in fitness. Later, there was the classic "Just Do It" in this slogan.

The source of this slogan is also very dramatic. This is not a gorgeous and tender story. It is rather strange and even absurd, because the slogan actually comes from a murderer. At that time, there was a murder in the United States. A 35 year old American named Gary Kilmer was sentenced to prison for robbery and murder of two lives.

After being released from prison, Kilmer once again brutally robbed and murdered two ordinary people. When the first crime was committed, the Supreme Court of the United States stopped the death penalty, and Kilmer escaped. When he committed the second crime, the death penalty just recovered. This time he finally escaped. Kilmer became the first person to be executed after the death penalty was restored in the United States, and the social concern of the case was very high. When the execution was executed, the executioners asked Kilmer what his last words were, and his reply was very simple. He said "Let`s do it", which means, come on.

Later, W+K, who was responsible for Nike's advertising design and Dan Weeden, was also the founder of advertising companies. He said she was shocked and liked when she saw this sentence, especially do it, which was cool and very sportsmanlike, and changed to "Just Do It".

In 1988, the slogan was officially launched, and Nike also made a whole new image and new advertisement around this slogan. This round of launch was immediately welcomed, and also rapidly promoted Nike's brand awareness and performance. Later, "Just Do It" is known as "one of the best advertising slogans in the twentieth Century", and the sports spirit and life philosophy contained in it are also popularized by Nike to the whole world.

2 cooperation with Jordan

It can be said that the cooperation between Michael Jordan and Nike can be regarded as one of the most important cooperation not only in the history of Nike, but also in the history of commercial endorsement. It has been said that Nike's market was engulfed by Reebok from 1983 to 1984, and the contract with Jordan took place in 1984.

The price of signing Jordan Nike was 5 years and 2 million 500 thousand dollars, which was a sky high price contract at that time, and other brands may be less than 1/10, and Jordan was only a college student at that time. More importantly, Nike pioneered the stock of Jordan Nike, and an unprecedented treatment, using Jordan's name on shoes. This is also the origin of the so-called signature shoes. Now, this model has been used by almost all sports Brand Company.

In classic stories, there is usually a misfortune to miss history. In this story, bad luck is Adidas. At that time, Jordan even wanted to sign Adidas. He openly said he was a fan of ADI, but Adidas was not cold at this time.

In 1985, the first generation of Jordan shoes was born, and immediately after the launch, they were well received. How much reward did Nike bring?

In 1984, Nike's global sales volume was $more than 900 million, and by 1997, when Jordan hit his last championship, Nike's sales volume was $9 billion 200 million. Therefore, the cooperation with Jordan not only saved Nike's achievements, but also defined the industry standard of celebrity athletes endorsement, and also said "NO" to racism. It can be said to be an epoch-making business cooperation.

For Jordan himself, this amazing cooperation is also a gain of fame and wealth. With this set of figures, Jordan earned a total of 93 million dollars in the whole basketball career. Because of the existence of Jordan's brand, Jordan has retired more than ten years, but the annual sales share has exceeded 100 million dollars. In other words, after Jordan retired, Jordan shoes earned more than any salary he earned in his lifetime.