Nike: Phil Knight and the Crazy Idea ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

A few days ago, I read Phil Knight’s memoir — the aptly named Shoe Dog — during a red-eye flight from Japan. As a rabid basketball fan and recovering sneakerhead, my wallet and I have been acquainted with Phil Knight’s Nike, Inc. for many years. In fact, out of the over sixty pairs of sneakers I have collected in the past decade, more than fifty percent have been part of the Nike brand.

Nike History

In my mind, I thought of Nike and Phil Knight as an invincible behemoth — a titan of culture and commerce. Little did I know that this book would push back the curtain, and reveal its humble beginnings as Blue Ribbon, when Knight had to work as an accountant by day just to (essentially) be a reseller of Onitsuka Tigers. Even more surprising was discovering that the first Nikes ever produced were manufactured is less than a hundred miles from my apartment in southern Japan.

The Phil Knight Story

Before all of that, we must first go back to where it all started — The Crazy Idea.

Phil Knight as a Coach

Most people now know Phil Knight as the Founder of Nike, a master of innovation, a leader, and entrepreneur. Few people today have had the privilege to know Phil Knight as Buck Knight, a gangly Portland kid running track under decorated Olympic coach, Bill Bowerman. Although he’d graduated with an MBA from Stanford, Buck Knight’s Shoe Dog is a love letter to Portland and his undergrad alma mater, the University of Oregon.

It was during his time in the University of Oregon that he developed the habit of running as a way to clear his mind and narrow his focus, and it is here that he formed a deep and abiding admiration for Coach Bill Bowerman, who would later start Blue Ribbon with him for five hundred dollars. After graduating from the University of Oregon and Stanford, Buck did what few people of those days did — he took a gap year. While gap years have become more commonplace in the 21st Century, it was almost unheard of in 1962. After reading the memoir, it becomes clear that it wasn’t just so he could relax for a year before becoming a respectable member of society (a goal that his father set for him). Buck simply had a Crazy Idea, and in writing his memoir, refers to it as such numerous times.

“The Upanishads say, Lead me from the unreal to the real. So I fled the unreal.” — Phil Knight, Excerpt from Shoe Dog (2016)

He had the idea to visit post-war Japan, and attain the exclusive rights to sell and market an innovative Japanese shoe brand in North America. After visiting Tokyo, he was directed to Kobe, which is where he began a successful partnership with Onitsuka.

Onitsuka Tigers today are almost as common as the likes of Nike and Adidas, but in the 60s, they essentially didn’t exist outside of Japan. Despite his introverted nature, Buck had no shortage of ambition and guile, and — on the spot — he claimed that he had a company called Blue Ribbon Sports in Oregon, and that he was willing to place an order for a shipment of Tigers as soon as he returned to the States. By 1964, Buck could be credited with being the man to bring a renowned Japanese brand into America, overcoming post-war tensions for the sake of innovating track shoes. If he had decided to rest on his laurels at that point, he would have probably earned a place in history, yet he would still be Buck Knight, and he would not be remembered as a creator.

In the late 60s, Buck, Bob Woodell, and Jeff Johnson discover that Onitsuka was planning on breaking their lucrative partnership in favor of other North American distributors. With the help of Nissho Iwai, one of their financers, Buck produced the first Nike shoes in Japan, which meant that his Crazy Idea had come full circle.

“In Kurume, just outside Beppu, in the southern islands, we visited a factory […] called Nippon Rubber. It was the biggest shoe factory I’d ever seen, a kind of Shoe Oz, capable of handling any order, no matter how big or complicated.” Phil Knight, Excerpt from Shoe Dog (2016)

The creation of his own shoes — with designs from Bill Bowerman and Jeff Johnson — spurned the change from Blue Ribbon Sports to Nike, Inc., which came from Jeff Johnson’s dream of the Greek Goddess of Victory. This, too, felt like a full circle moment, as Buck had visited the Temple of Nike in Greece during his gap year.

If the story had ended year, then Buck would have firmly solidified his reputation as a visionary, an innovator, and a creator. But was he a leader? Up to this point, Buck had shown himself to be a reluctant leader and employer at best, eschewing direct communication with the overzealous Jeff Johnson, and even expressing great reluctance over opening stores. Of course, other factors — namely financial reasons — contributed to his overall reluctance, but in a way, his fear and insecurity as a businessman could have been traced back to his introverted nature and fear of rejection.

Throughout his life, Phil Knight would find comfort in zen or Buddhist sayings, as well as famous quotes from generals, presidents, and other historical figures. In the book, these quotes are referenced most frequently during the 60s — the period in his life most filled with uncertainty and lack of self. Interestingly, the scarcity of these quotes coincide with the growth of Nike, but most importantly, the growth of his self and his community. In the fondly termed Buttfaces, he created an inner circle out of the most unlikely of individuals to run his company. Woodell was a paralyzed former athlete, Hayes was a gregarious ball of phobias, Johnson was an obsessive bibliophile, and Phil himself wasn’t exactly a loud, commanding presence. Without much context, it would have been rather difficult to imagine Phil as the lion tamer of this chaotically productive circus act in the early 70s.

“Hayes, Strasser, Woodell, Johnson, each would have been the smartest guy in any room, but none believed it of himself, or the next guy. Our meetings were defined by contempt, disdain, and heaps of abuse.” — Phil Knight, Excerpt from Shoe Dogs (2016)

Phil became a true leader when it came time to decide the future of the company in two momentous occasions. The first was when Nike’s bank not only dropped their account, but reported them to the FBI for fradulent activities. The second was when Nike competitors in North America had lobbied with Congress to use an obscure Customs law to unfairly charge the company millions of dollars in unpaid taxes retroactively.

In the first situation, Phil was able to succeed not through his aforementioned ambition and guile, but through transparency and earnestness. After losing their bank, Phil had no choice but to ask for even more money from Nissho Iwai, who then asked to check their books to confirm if there was any fraudulent activity. While they did find that Nike had created a new factory overseas using their funding unbenownst to them, they confirmed that there were no illegal activities, and they supported Phil and his fledgling company against the bank and the FBI. To this day, you can visit the Nissho Iwai Garden at the Nike Headquarters in Oregon.

In the second situation, Phil launched a successful counterattack against the Customs of the US, risking his livelihood and his own personal freedom. He even managed to avoid a hefty twenty-five million dollar fine, and further strengthened Nike’s foothold in the shoe and apparel industry of North America along the way.

There are many leaders, but how many of those leaders have faced the same tests? In the face of the government, the bank, the Onitsuka lawsuit (that deserves its own article), and the financial and personal upheaval of his own life, Phil survived and thrived.

By the time Nike, Inc. had become a publicly traded company in the early 80s, Buck had become Phil Knight, and the world would never be the same.

When discussing a memoir or autobiography, it must be acknowledged that the majority of these books are written by — or with the help of — a ghost writer. Since I’ve been recommending this book nonstop, I’ve been asked by every single person if it was written by a ghost writer. My answer is always the same: I don’t know. I would like to add a question.

Does it matter?

Whether or not it was written by a ghost writer or with the help of one, the pages of Shoe Dog are immersed in the sentimentality and sincerity of an older man reflecting on his past. While some memoirs recount the events of their illustrious pasts in a dry, matter-of-fact way, Phil writes them as if you were reading a tense thriller. In his retelling of his early years, we feel just as awkward and shy as young Buck Knight must have felt. In his righteous anger against Onitsuka, we feel the same fury burning in our veins.

I am reminded of the Beatles song, In My Life, which holds a deep and ultimately unfulfilled yearning for bygone days that it never fails to stir emotions within me. When asked about his regrets, Phil’s greatest regret is that he can’t do it all over again.

By writing this memoir, he was able to relive these memories, but the true gift of Phil Knight and his Crazy Idea is not a ‘Swoosh’ mark on our shoes. It is the lesson that we should know when to quit, and when not to quit, and most importantly, live a life you want to relive.