Word: bowerman
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...sports heritage is genuine. Knight launched the company in 1964 with Bill Bowerman, his former track coach at the University of Oregon. Knight's business plan, hatched as an M.B.A. project at Stanford, was straightforward. He figured that by importing shoes made in Japan, where labor was then cheap, he could undercut the dominant player, Adidas. At first he merely imported Japanese running shoes. Then Bowerman, in the kitchen one morning, had one of those Aha! ideas. He made an outsole by pouring a rubber compound into the waffle iron. The waffle trainer was born--and Nike was ready...
...From Bowerman, a legendary coach, Knight got two things: an innovative track shoe and a relentless appetite for competition. "Every time I tour people around, I show them a picture of Phil Knight running behind Jim Grelle," says Hollister, who ran track with Knight and became one of Nike's first employees. It was Knight's customary position. Grelle was a champion, and Knight never caught him, says Hollister, but he never stopped pursuing. Another Oregon track god, Steve Prefontaine, became patriarch of the culture. "Pre," a rebellious soul and ferocious competitor, prodded Knight endlessly to improve the quality...
...were dubbed "Adidas and the Seven Dwarfs." But by the early 1980s, while West Germany's Adidas remained No. 1 outside the U.S., fast- rising Nike dominated the American market. The company was started in 1972 by current chairman Philip Knight, 52, a University of Oregon graduate, and Bill Bowerman, 78, his former track coach, who used a waffle iron to make their first soles. (The now famous Swoosh trademark on the side of the shoes was designed by an art student for $35.) Nike's sales sprinted from $270 million in 1980 to $920 million...
Soon, everyone was waffling around in Bowerman's brainchild, and--as more people picked up running--more flavors of waffles appeared...
...legend has it, these crazy red and white "waffle-soled" shoes were invented by University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman. The story goes that he melted some rubber on his wife's waffle iron, and thus gave birth to the waffle shoe--and subsequently to the huge running craze...