Nike

Interview with Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight
Creators of Nike
1.) The design for the “moon shoe”, Nike’s first shoe, was an accident can you tell us how that came about?

BB: Well we had tried other ways to make the shoes have a better grip of the track while running and I just happened to look at the waffle iron and see it had a distinctive patter. So I turned it on and put a piece of rubber on it, the patter actually did give the shoes better grip and that’s how the “moon shoe” was born.
2.) The basic business plan for Nike was your idea how did that come about?

PK: Well in college my senior paper was entitled, “Can the Japanese Shoe do to the German shoe (adidas) What the Japanese camera did to the German Camera?” After graduation I set off to tour the world, when I stopped in Kobe, Japan I came across the Tiger Shoe Company whose shoes were nice and cheap I convinced them to let me be their distributor throughout the United States. My first order of Tigers came about a year later. I actually sent them to Bill hoping he would buy some. Throughout college he was my track coach and I knew he was always looking for lighter shoes for his runners. He actually ordered multiple pair then hit me with an offer to start our own shoe company using the distribution deal that I had made in Japan.
3.) The Blue Ribbon Sports Group was the original name of the company, how did it become Nike?
PK: Well while BRS was in the early stages I hooked up with Jeff Johnson who I ran track with at Stanford, well he came up with the name Nike, which in Greek mythology is the winged goddess of victory. Later while I was working as an accounting teacher at Portland State University, I met Carolyn Davidson a young artist that I decided to ask her take on Nike and design what she came up with. She brought us the “swoosh” and we loved it. We actually on gave her $35 dollars initially for the idea.
BB: Later after Nike took off, I think it was 1983, we had a company lunch and gave her a diamond ring with a swoosh embedded in it and company in the stock, now that I think about it art is where it’s at $35 for a drawing and now she’s a millionaire she only had to stop drawing and creating our symbols early because we got so big we hired an ad agency to do it for her.