If you are reading this article, there is a good chance that you have rocked a Nike brand before.
But what you probably aren’t familiar with is the story of how the man behind the popular brand started from the back of his green Plymouth Valiant; the boot of a car, to building Nike; the world’s biggest maker of athletic shoes and sports apparel with more than 1,000 stores worldwide.
Today, Phil Knight is ranked no 24th with an estimated net worth of $50.5 billion as today, 20th, April 2022 on the Bloomberg billionaire list as the Beaverton, Oregon-based company continues to thrive, recording a revenue of $44.5 billion as of May 2021.
Building the Nike brand
The American billionaire businessman was born in 1938 in Portland to William and Lola Knight. He got admitted to the University of Oregon in 1955, where he was a member of the college track team. Upon graduating with a Master’s of business administration from Stanford Business School in 1962, Knight took a one year tour around the world; a journey that changed his life ever since as he discovered Tiger brand running shoes and secured distribution rights for the western United States.
Upon his return, he started out with a job as an accountant in Portland whilst still expecting the first Tiger samples which took more than a year to be shipped. Knight shared his business idea with Bill Bowerman, his former college track coach and together they created athletic footwear distributor, Blue Ribbon Sports (as Nike was called then) in 1964.
The enterprenuer started by selling sneakers at weekend track meets from the back of his green Plymouth Valiant automobile and dedicated himself full time to his shoe business in 1968.
In 1972, the billionaire changed the company’s name to Nike and sold shares in a public offering eight years later as the brand continued to grow becoming the most popular sports apparel brand in the world.
The company signed star athletes; Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods and helped create brands around each of them to market its fashionable shoes and other sportswear.
84-year-old Knight stepped down as Nike’s chief executive officer in 2004 and as chairman in 2016.
What you should know
- According to Bloomberg, Philip Knight owns about 230 million shares through holding company Swoosh, while Knight owns a further 35 million shares in his own name and his son Travis Knight has about 41 million shares through a trust and its subsidiary.
- Shares held by Swoosh and family members are credited to Philip Knight to reflect his status as the founder and family patriarch.
- He got married to Penelope Parks in 1968 and lost his first son Mathew Knight in a scuba diving accident in El Salvador in 2004.
- Knight is said to have pledged over $500 million in donations to both the University of Oregon and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, his alma maters.