Shoe Dog

Shoe Dog is the autobiography of Nike’s founder Phil Knight, who at last decided to share the story of how he founded one of the most iconic, profitable and world-changing brands in the world.

Phil Knight has always loved sports. He loved following them and he loved doing sports. As a kid he once had a summer job tabulating the day’s sports scores for a newspaper during the night shift, which would then be published in the next day’s paper. Every morning after work, he ran home – seven miles.

After later graduating college, Phil entered Stanford Graduate School of Business. One of his professors described the character of an entrepreneur, and Phil instantly recognized himself. As the class required writing a business plan to pass, Phil wrote a paper called  “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?”

Even though nobody was all that impressed with the paper, Phil became obsessed with the idea. He wanted to sell Japanese, high-end, low-cost running shoes in the US. On his post-graduation trip around the world, he made a stop in Japan. There, in Kobe, he discovered the Tiger brand, made by Onitsuka (you know, the ones Uma Thurman wears in Kill Bill), and fell in love with it.

Figuring he was already there, young, and had nothing to lose, he made a cold call to the CEO, Mr. Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him – and gave him the distribution rights for the western United States to sell Onitsuka Tiger shoes. Startled by his own success, Phil randomly blurted out “Blue Ribbon,” when Onitsuka asked him for the name of his company.

And just like that, he was in business.

It sure doesn’t happen often this way, but when you’re young, don’t know what else to do, you might as well go for broke and give your craziest idea a shot – it just might work.

While sealing the initial deal had been as simple as showing up at Mr. Onitsuka’s door, getting the initial samples wasn’t. The first 300 pairs took over a year to be delivered, during which Phil worked as an accountant. When Phil finally got the shoes, one of the first people he mailed two pairs to was Bill Bowerman. Bill was his former running coach at the University of Oregon. Phil hoped to get a sale and a powerful testimonial. To Phil’s surprise, Bill didn’t stop at that. He offered to become his partner and take care of product design. Having his mentor now as a partner and seeing that he too believed in Phil’s idea was one of the things that gave Phil the confidence to…