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History of Nike

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Nike being my athletic shoe of choice, pronounced NI-KEY. Is named after the goddess of victory according to Greek mythology, she sat next to Zeus who was the Olympic pantheon ruler. This shoe entering my life in 1988 when I entered the United States Army, in 1988 is when I bought my first pair of Nike’s and since then it has been my athletic shoe of choice. Nike’s history dates back 1962 when Philip H. Knight founded Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS). BRS was a company that was to import Japanese running shoes; in 1963 BRS took its first delivery of 200 shoes from Onitsuka Tiger Co. This was the start to a multi-billion dollar business. The following year Knight would meet back up with his former University of Oregon track coach, William Bowerman, and would become partners. Bowerman(1911-1999) was a World War 2 veteran with a love for running and jogging as sports. The two men had first met in 1957,had dreams of growing their company to being a massive sporting and casual shoe line. Bowerman wanted to design a shoe that was light weight for his runners on the U. Of Oregon track team. With this common goal in mind together the men opened the company first retail store in 1966, two short years after Bowerman came up with s shoe design that would be called the Cortez, the Cortez took the United States by storm. It was not until 1972 that the brand Nike was launched! Their first marketing campaign was to seek and attach to serious well-known and up and coming athletes. Within this first year product gross was 1.96 Million and the Nike Inc. staff grew to 45 members. Nike Inc. also when International crossing over into Canada followed by Australia in 1974. Nike was a wonderful thing for the United States at that time, opening their first US plant, in Exeter New Hampshire growing the company to 250 employees. Worldwide sales where just shy of $5 Million. With the demand of the

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