Word: nike
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fatigue is one problem all will face, but each man has his special fears. Richard Konkolski, 37, a rugged, bearded Czech, feels that the ice and fog encountered in rounding Cape Horn will be the most difficult challenge for him and his 44-ft. sloop Nike II. Britain's Richard Broadhead, at 29 the youngest contender, thinks that going over the side of his 52-ft. cutter Perseverance of Medina in the tropics would be the worst thing that could happen. "In the rough southern ocean you wouldn't last a minute," is his bleak forecast...
...Nike's well-heeled empire started in 1958, when Knight was an undergraduate business student at the University of Oregon. A miler of some accomplishment, Knight came to know Bill Bowerman, Oregon's famed track coach and a sometime designer of running shoes. Bowerman complained that American companies turned out a heavy, clumsy product; no runner hoping to set a record would wear them...
...Nike Inc. essentially grew from there pushed along mainly by Knight's marketing savvy. Knight and Bowerman came out with a shoe they had designed in time for the 1972 Olympic trials that were held in Eugene, Ore. They got marathoners to wear them and proudly advertised that Nikes were on the feet of "four of the top seven finishers." Nike's ads neglected to mention that runners wearing West Germany's Adidas shoes placed first, second and third...
Soon new products were coming along. One day in 1975, Bowerman got a piece of rubber and stuffed it into his wife's waffle iron. He wrecked the appliance, but he created Nike's famous waffle sole. When Americans of every age took to running in the mid-1970s, Nike was ready with products for the new market. "We are just a bunch of guys selling sneakers," says Knight. Among those guys is Neil Goldschmidt, Secretary of Transportation under Jimmy Carter and a former Portland mayor. Goldschmidt is now Nike's vice president in charge of international...
...line up new suppliers. He recently added several factories in China to a list of manufacturers in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Knight has revived a bit of the American shoe industry by establishing plants in Exeter, N.H., and Saco, Me. He expects that Nike sales will continue moving as fast as the champion runners in his shoes...