INTRODUCTION
Nike Incorporated is a multinational company that deals with the designing, development, marketing and selling of footwear, apparels, equipment, accessories and services. The company is located at Beaverton, Oregon somewhere near the Portland metropolitan area. The word Nike stands for Winged Goddess of War. Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight are two important figures that with their abilities came up with the brilliant idea of Nike. Bill Bowerman is a field coach at the University of Oregon. He is always trying to come up with methods to give his athletes the competitive advantage over their competitors. He will examined and experiment the track surfaces, energy drinks and of course the most important one would be the innovation of the running shoes. For example , how to make the shoes lighter so that the athletes can run faster. Bill always has this passion for making his running shoes the best but then manufacturers keep on ignoring him. So, Bill has no choice but to cobbler his own shoes. Moving on, Phil Knight also plays an influential part of the development of Nike. Phil Knight is a runner who competed under Bowerman. Phil graduated from Stanford University with a MBA in finance. He wrote a paper about running shoes that could be manufactured in Japan that will provide serious competition with household German brands. Firstly, he sent an offer letter to Japan and Asia manufactures only to get the cold shoulder treatment. So, he took a big risk and look for Onitsuka Co. to strike up a deal with them. Knight managed to persuade them to let him be the distributor of Tiger running shoes. When they sent over the first set of shoes to Knight, Knight thought he could make some sales by selling them to Bowerman. But little did he know that this is going to be a key moment of a successful business relationship. Bowerman offered Knight to become his partner and he will provide his footwear design to Onitsuka Co.
Knight and Bowerman started their own...