Nike Inc - marketing masters

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Though fashion remains a matter of taste, it is undeniable that both world-class athletes and even the average aerobics enthusiast owe a debt to the innovations of Phil knight and Bill Bowerman and to the industry they inspired. Phil Knight is the founder and CEO of the athletic gear company Nike.

Knight and Nike helped start a sports business and revolution in the 1970’s changing old- fashioned tennis shoes into highly specialized equipment and promoting them as symbols of athletic prowess and success. Nike’s success made Knight one of the America’s wealthiest men. In the 1990’s he was the subject of frequent protests over allegedly poor working conditions at Nike manufacturing plants in Asia. Phil Knight was born on February 24, 1938. He is as well married. His position in Nike is Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman, Nike Inc. His educational background is Business Administration, University of Oregon (1959); M.B.A., Stanford University (1962).

His favorite personal sports are tennis, running, and golf. A co-founder of Nike and former University of Oregon miler with a personal best 4:10, Phil Knight received an MBA from Stanford University. His master’s work provided the outline for the business that would become Nike, the world’s number-one sports fitness company. His theory? High-quality running shoes could be designed in the United States, manufactured in Asia, and then sold in America at lower prices than the then-popular West German-made running shoes.

With a $500 investment matched by his co-founder and former coach Bill Bowerman, Knight began Blue Ribbon Sports (Nike progenitor) in 1964. Off to an uncertain start, he sold his shoes out of his back of a station wagon but continued to practice as a C.P.A. and teach at Portland State, Univ. until 1969.

The Cortez, the first shoe to appear under Nike brand, arrived on the athletic scene in 1972. Since then, Knight has inspired numerous innovations in the business of sports, including future-based ordering; substantial investment in long-term product research and development; national media reinforcement of performance and styling ties between product and athletes, and the creation of a customer- service program supported by a full-time technical team.

A personal statement stated by Knight is “it’s now my job to create an atmosphere of peace in the chaos of business- something I’ve learned from Asian business style.

Phil Knight is currently the 13th richest man in the world. He is worth approximately 5.8 billion dollars. Phil’s 4th quarter dividend earnings for 1997 were 80 million dollars. Additional bonus given to Knight in 1995 was $787,500. The value of Nike stock owned by knight was $4.5 billion in 1995. Some of Knights endorsements include Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and the Brazilian soccer phenom Renaldo. In 1992, The Sporting News has called him “The Most Powerful Man in Sports.”
Bill Bowerman is the co-founder of Nike as well. He was born February 9, 1911. He died on December 24, 1981 in his sleep of his Fossil, Oregon home on the third Saturday of Christmas Eve.

He was 88 years old. Bill was the person who more then anyone else started the nations jogging craze. He also was the inventor of the waffle sole for running shoes. In addition, his coaching tenure at the University of Oregon was highlighted by some of the most successful teams in the nation. He turned the college town of Eugene, Oregon into the running capital of the world, spread the gospel of jogging and fitness, and along the way, revolutionized the running shoe.

During his coaching tenure from 1949 to 1972, Bowerman produced four national collegiate championship teams, plus two more that were runners up. Individually, his interest, his athletes set 13 world and 22 American records. Among his 23 Olympic athletes was 1960 medallist Otis Davis, who won the 400 and ran the 4 x 400 relay. Besides Davis, his other top athletes reads like a Who’s Who in American distance--Dyrol Burleson, Jim Grelle, Bill Dellinger, Ken Moore, Wade Bell, and the late Steve Prefontaine (Hall of Fame member), Steve Savage and Keith Forman.

A graduate of Oregon, Bowerman became active with the Nike Shoe Company after retiring from coaching. He also coached 24 NCAA individual champions, 38 Pacific Coast Conference individual champions, 132 Northern Division individual champions, 4 NCAA team champions in 1962, 1964, 1965, and 1970, 33 Olympic team competitors, 64 All-Americans, and coached the 1972 Olympic track and field team. In 16 of his 24 years, his Oregon track team finished in the top 10 in NCAA championships. He owns 13 consecutive Northern division team championships.

His dual-meet record at the U of O was 114-20, a winning percentage of .843. He served at the helm of the NCAA track and field coaches association and NCAA track and field rules committee, and was a professor emeritus at the U of O. Bowerman not only coached the athletes, but also was a tireless worker and innovator for the sport of track and field. He was instrumental in developing rubberized asphalt runaways, developed statewide programs for high school athletes, and a instituted jogging programs throughout Oregon that led to the nationwide jogging craze. « mai multe referate din Engleza