Nike

COMPANY:

Nike Inc. (USA)

HISTORY:

Nike was founded on January 25, 1964, as Blue Ribbon Sports, by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight,[1] and officially became Nike, Inc. on May 30, 1971

Bill Bowerman, a nationally respected track and field coach at the University of Oregon was looking for ways to give his athletes a competitive advantage especially with running shoes. Ignored by footwear manufacturers of the 1950s he began cobbling shoes for his runners.

Phil Knight, a middle-distance runner from Portland, enrolled at Oregon in the fall of 1955 and competed for Bowerman's track program. Upon graduating from Oregon, Knight earned his MBA in finance from Stanford University. He made a cold-call on the Onitsuka Comapny in Kobe, Japan, and persuaded the manufacturer of Tiger shoes to make Knight a distributor of Tiger running shoes in the United States. When the first set of sample shoes arrived, Knight sent several pairs to Bowerman, hoping to make a sale. Instead, Bowerman stunned Knight by offering to become his partner, and to provide his footwear design ideas to Tiger.

The last piece of the puzzle is when Jeff Johnson, whom Knight had met at Stanford. A runner himself, Johnson became the first full-time employee of Blue Ribbon Sports in 1965, and quickly became an invaluable utility man for the start-up company creating the first product brochures, print ads and marketing materials, and even shot the photographs for the company's catalogues. He established a mail-order system, opened the first BRS retail store (located in Santa Monica, Calif.) and managed shipping/receiving. He also designed several early Nike shoes, and even conjured up the name Nike in 1971.

STYLES

Athletic Supporters

As far as I'm aware, the only jock Nike produced was the Pro Combat Hyperstrong Compression Jock Jockstrap for football but it doesn't seem to be on the market anymore.

EXTERNAL LINKS:

Click here for the Nike website

YOUR JOCKSTRAPS PHOTOS: NIKE