Nike, Inc. (official, US /ˈnaiki/; also, non-US /ˈnaɪk/) is an
American multinational company that is
engaged in the design, development, manufacturing and worldwide marketing and
sales of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. The company is
headquartered nearBeaverton, Oregon,
in the Portland
metropolitan area. It is one of the world's largest suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports
equipment, with revenue in excess of US$24.1 billion in its fiscal year
2012 (ending May 31, 2012). As of 2012, it employed more than 44,000 people
worldwide. In 2014 the brand alone was valued at $19 billion, making it the
most valuable brand among sports businesses.
The company was founded on
January 25, 1964, as Blue
Ribbon Sports, byBill
Bowerman and Phil Knight, and
officially became Nike, Inc. on May 30, 1971. The company takes its name from Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Nike
markets its products under its own brand, as well as Nike Golf, Nike Pro,Nike+, Air Jordan, Nike Blazers, Air Force 1, Nike Dunk, Air Max, Foamposite,Nike Skateboarding, and
subsidiaries including Brand Jordan, Hurley
International and Converse. Nike also owned Bauer Hockey
(later renamedNike Bauer) between 1995 and 2008, and previously owned Cole Haan andUmbro In addition to manufacturing sportswear and
equipment, the company operates retail stores under the Niketown name. Nike
sponsors many high-profile athletes and sports teams around the world, with the
highly recognized trademarks of "Just Do It" and the Swoosh logo.
Nike, originally known as Blue
Ribbon Sports (BRS), was founded by University
of Oregon track
athlete Philip
Knight and his
coach Bill
Bowerman in
January 1964. The company initially operated as a distributor for Japanese shoe
maker Onitsuka
Tiger (now ASICS), making most sales at track meets
out of Knight's automobile.
According to Otis Davis, a student athlete whom Bowerman
coached at the University of Oregon, who later went on to win two gold medals
at the 1960
Summer Olympics, Bowerman made the first pair of Nike shoes for him,
contradicting a claim that they were made for Phil Knight. Says Davis, "I
told Tom Brokaw that I was the first. I don't care what all the billionaires
say. Bill Bowerman made the first pair of shoes for me. People don't believe
me. In fact, I didn't like the way they felt on my feet. There was no support
and they were too tight. But I saw Bowerman make them from the waffle iron, and they were mine."
In 1964, in its first year in
business, BRS sold 1,300 pairs of Japanese running shoes grossing $8,000. By
1965 the fledgling company had acquired a full-time employee, and sales had
reached $20,000. In 1966, BRS opened its first retail store, located at 3107
Pico Boulevard in Santa
Monica, California next to
a beauty salon, so its employees no longer needed to sell inventory from the
back of their cars. In 1967, due to rapidly increasing sales, BRS expanded
retail and distribution operations on the East Coast, in Wellesley,
Massachusetts.
By 1971, the relationship
between BRS and Onitsuka Tiger was nearing an end. BRS prepared to launch its
own line of footwear, which would bear the Swoosh newly designed by Carolyn Davidson. The Swoosh was first used by Nike on June
18, 1971, and was registered with the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office on
January 22, 1974.
In 1976, the company hired John
Brown and Partners, based in Seattle, as its first advertising agency. The following
year, the agency created the first "brand ad" for Nike, called
"There is no finish line", in which no Nike product was shown. By
1980, Nike had attained a 50% market share in the U.S. athletic shoe market,
and the company went public in December of that year.
Together, Nike and
Wieden+Kennedy have created many print and television advertisements, and
Wieden+Kennedy remains Nike's primary ad agency. It was agency co-founder Dan Wieden who coined the now-famous slogan "Just
Do It" for a 1988 Nike ad campaign, which was chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top five ad slogans of the
20th century and enshrined in the Smithsonian
Institution. Walt
Stack was
featured in Nike's first "Just Do It" advertisement, which debuted on
July 1, 1988.Wieden credits the inspiration for the slogan to "Let's do
it", the last words spoken by Gary
Gilmore before
he was executed.[17]
Throughout the 1980s, Nike
expanded its product line to encompass many sports and regions throughout the
world. In 1990, Nike moved into its eight-building
World Headquarters campus in Beaverton, Oregon.
Phil Knight announced in
mid-2015 that he is planning to step down as chairman of Nike in 2016.
Acquisitions
Nike has acquired several
apparel and footwear companies over the course of its history, some of which
have since been sold. Its first acquisition was the upscale footwear company Cole Haan in 1988, followed by the purchase of Bauer Hockey in 1994. In 2002, Nike bought
surf apparel company Hurley
International from
founder Bob
Herley. In
2003, Nike paid US$309 million to acquire Converse, makers of the Chuck Taylor All-Stars line of sneakers. The company acquired Starter in 2004 and Umbro, known as the manufacturers of the England national football team's Equipment's,
in 2008.
In order to refocus on its core
business lines, Nike began divesting of some of its subsidiaries in the 2000s. It sold Starter in 2007 and Bauer Hockey in 2008. The company sold Umbro in 2012 and Cole Haan in 2013. As of 2013, Nike owns two key subsidiaries: Converse Inc. and Hurley International.
Finance
Nike Inc. will buy back $8
billion of Nike's class B stock in 4 years after the current $5 billion buyback
program is completed in second quarter of fiscal 2013. Up to September 2012,
Nike Inc. has bought back $10 billion of stock.
On December 19, 2013, Nike
Inc's quarterly profit rose as a result of global orders for merchandise for
delivery by April increased 13 percent. Future orders of shoes or clothes for
delivery between December and April, rose to $10.4 billion. Nike shares (NKE)
rose 0.6 percent to $78.75 in extended trading.
Products
A Nike
brand athletic shoe
A pair
of Nike Air Jordan I basketball shoes
Nike produces a wide range of
sports equipment. Their first products were track running shoes. They currently
also make shoes, jerseys, shorts, cleats,
baselayers, etc. for a wide range of sports, including track and field,
baseball, ice hockey, tennis, association
football (soccer), lacrosse,
basketball, and cricket. Nike Air Max is a line of shoes first released by Nike,
Inc. in 1987. Additional product lines were introduced later, such as Air
Huarache, which debuted in 1992. The most recent additions to their line are
the Nike 6.0, Nike NYX, and Nike SB shoes, designed for skateboarding. Nike has recently introduced
cricket shoes called Air Zoom Yorker, designed to be 30% lighter than their
competitors'. In 2008, Nike introduced the Air Jordan
XX3, a high-performance basketball shoe designed with the environment in mind.
Nike sells an assortment of
products, including shoes and apparel for sports activities like association
football, basketball, running, combat sports, tennis,American football,
athletics, golf, and cross
training for men, women, and children. Nike also
sells shoes for outdoor activities such as tennis, golf, skateboarding, association football,
baseball, American football, cycling,
volleyball, aquatic activities, auto racing, and other athletic and
recreational uses. Nike is well known and popular in youth culture, chav culture and hip hop culture for their supplying of urban fashion clothing. Nike recently teamed up with Apple
Inc. to produce the Nike+ product that monitors a runner's
performance via a radio device in the shoe that links to the iPod nano. While
the product generates useful statistics, it has been criticized by researchers
who were able to identify users' RFID devices from 60 feet (18 m) away using
small, concealable intelligence motes in a wireless sensor network.
In 2004, Nike launched the SPARQ Training Program/Division.
Some of Nike's newest shoes
contain Flywire and Lunarlite Foam to reduce
weight.
On July 15, 2009, the Nike+
Sports Band was released in stores. The product records distance run and
calories expended, keeps time, and also gives runners new programs online they
could try running.
The 2010 Nike Pro Combat jersey
collection were worn by teams from the following universities: Miami, Alabama,
Boise State University, Florida, Ohio State, Oregon State University, Texas
Christian University, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and Pittsburgh. Teams will
wear these jerseys in key matchups as well as any time the athletic department
deems it necessary.
Headquarters
Nike's world headquarters are
surrounded by the city of Beaverton, but are within unincorporated Washington County. The city attempted to
forcibly annex Nike's headquarters, which led to a lawsuit by Nike, and lobbying by the company that ultimately ended in
Oregon Senate Bill 887 of 2005. Under that bill's terms, Beaverton is
specifically barred from forcibly annexing the land that Nike and Columbia Sportswear occupy in Washington County for 35 years,
while Electro Scientific Industries and Tektronix receive the same protection for 30 years.
Advertising
In 1982, Nike aired its first
national television ads, created by newly formed ad agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), during the
broadcast of the New
York Marathon. The Cannes Advertising Festival has named Nike its Advertiser of
the Year in 1994 and 2003, making it the first company to receive that honor
twice.
Nike also has earned the Emmy Award for best commercial twice since the award
was first created in the 1990s. The first was for "The Morning
After," a satirical look at what a runner might face on the morning of
January 1, 2000 if every dire prediction about the Y2K problem came to fruition. The second was for a 2002
spot called "Move," which featured a series of famous and everyday
athletes in a variety of athletic pursuits.
Beatles song
Nike was criticized for its use
of the Beatles song "Revolution" in a 1987
commercial against the wishes of Apple
Records, the Beatles' recording company. Nike paid US$250,000 to Capitol Records Inc., which held the North American
licensing rights to the recordings, for the right to use the Beatles' rendition
for a year.
Nike 6.0
As part of the 6.0 campaign,
Nike introduced a new line of T-shirts that include phrases such as
"Dope", "Get High" and "Ride Pipe" – sports lingo
that is also adouble entendre for drug use. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino expressed his objection to the shirts after
seeing them in a window display at the city's Niketown and asked the store to remove the
display. "What we don't need is a major corporation like Nike, which tries
to appeal to the younger generation, out there giving credence to the drug
issue," Menino told The
Boston Herald. A company official stated the shirts were meant to pay homage
to extreme sports, and that Nike does not condone the illegal use of drugs. Nike was forced to replace the shirt line.
Sponsorship
Nike
sponsors Mario Götze and many other players and clubs in
football
Nike pays top athletes in many
sports to use their products and advertise their technology and design.
Nike's first professional
athlete endorser was Romanian tennis playerllie Nastase. The first track
endorser was distance runner Steve Prefontaine.
Prefontaine was the prized pupil of the company's co-founder, Bill Bowerman, while he coached at the
University of Oregon. Today, the Steve Prefontaine Building is named in his
honor at Nike's corporate headquarters.
Nike has also sponsored many
other successful track
and field athletes over the years, such
as Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Sebastian Coe. The signing of basketball
player Michael Jordan in 1984, with his subsequent promotion of
Nike over the course of his career, with Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon,
proved to be one of the biggest boosts to Nike's publicity and sales.
Nike has been the official kit
sponsor for the Indian cricket team since 2005.
Nike is a major sponsor of the
athletic programs at Penn
State University and
named its first child care facility after Joe Paterno when it opened in 1990 at the company's
headquarters. Nike originally announced it would not remove Paterno's name from
the building in the wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal. After the Freeh
Report was released on July 12, 2012, Nike CEO Mark Parker announced the name
Joe Paterno would be removed immediately from the child development center. A
new name has yet to be announced.
Nike also sponsored soccer
players such as Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Neymar,Zlatan Ibrahimovi, Mario Balotelli, Wesley Sneijder, Wayne Rooney, Landon Donovan among others.
In January 2013, Nike signed Rory Mcllroy, the then No 1 golfer in the
world to a 10-year sponsorship deal worth $250 million. The deal includes using
Nike's range of golf clubs, a move Nick Faldo previously described as
"dangerous" for McIlroy's game.
On February 21, 2013, Nike
announced it suspended its contract with Oscar Pistorius, due to his being charged
with premeditated murder.
In January 2014, it was widely
reported that Nike had entered negotiations with Manchester United F.C. over a "billion dollar" kit
manufacturing deal, extending their current contract beyond 2015.
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