
How Nike sold its first shoes - harrydry
https://marketingexamples.com/direct/how-nike-sold-first-shoes
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zarriak
Shoe dog is a great book. It was really interesting to read him talk about his
issues with liquidity and him lamenting the lack of VC funding at the time. Of
course he doesn't really address the downsides of VC funding but the local
bank he works with is a quaint reminder of how far things have come. A good
story and a great reminder that choice of founder partner is crucial to your
success.

It contributes to my belief that there are way too many technical founders
working on absolutely horrible ideas that would be able to the foundation for
a great company but don't have the skill set to determine what that is. I
think after the impending recession when VC money dries up this skill will be
in high demand.

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johnohara
_A good story and a great reminder that choice of founder partner is crucial
to your success._

Let's not forget Bill Bowerman.

His wife Barbara's waffle iron is in the same league of corporate lore as
Hewlett-Packard's one-car garage.

And the reason Nike's address is One Bowerman Way, Beaverton, Oregon.

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defen
Dude is a legend. One of my favorite parts in _Wild Wild Country_ is when
they're interviewing "local rancher" Jon Bowerman. Paraphrasing, but there's a
part where he's talking about his father and it goes something like: "He
fought in the war...went behind enemy lines in Italy and convinced the German
8th Army to surrender. Then he led the Ducks to 4 national championships and
became US Olympic coach, but retired heartbroken after Munich. Then one day he
was in the garage and melted some old retreat rubber with a waffle iron and
glued it to an old worn out shoe. The result became...uh...Nike""

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johnohara
You would have liked Arthur Lydiard as well.

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vmurthy
Can't resist a little gem from "Shoe Dog".

Nike wanted to introduce a shoe during the 1968 Olympics being held at Mexico
City. In honour of the location, they initially called it the "Aztec". But
Adidas already had a shoe called "Azteca Gold" and naturally threatened to
sue. Bowerman asked "Who was the guy who kicked the shit out of the Aztecs?" .
Phil replied Cortez and the iconic Nike Cortez was born :-)

Edit: It seems that Bowerman asked the question. Corrected!

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harrydry
haha! I remember reading this. Made me smile

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pombrand
Shoe dog is a great book - about how you can afford to be a terrible business
person if you have rich parents who bail you out and can live out of their
garage. I don't see why people are so impressed by it? Nike shoes aren't even
that good today.

How to mistreat your allies (Jeff Johnson)

How to mislead your suppliers and almost lose in court.

Do the marketing methods they used, which is perhaps the impressive part, even
work today? Do you show up to track meets with shoes from an unknown brand? I
don't think so. Do things that don't scale, but not the exact same things that
worked decades ago.

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wiradikusuma
I love reading anecdotes like this, they inspire me to do similar "non-
scalable, good old personal approach".

But sometimes I wonder if they no longer work because we live in different
(modern) times?

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westiseast
Sports is probably very specific. Amateurs will mostly buy what professionals
recommend, or what their coach wears. These days you see sports stars and
brands through social media and on TV, but in those days less so. Going to
clubs, track meets, talking to the professionals/enthusiasts/hardcore fans, he
would’ve been talking to the equivalent of Instagram influencers today.

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EugeneOZ
Numbers are impressive, really. But with all of that activity on mailing list
and personal visits I wonder if he had enough time for life (rest, family).

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harrydry
Indeed. Life's a trade off and Johnson did indeed get divorced. Shoes were his
love.

Was it all worth it? Who knows!

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mtw
I like the story. What about product development though? If you come up to
athletes, head coches and parents in track events with an average shoe, I
don't think this would have worked. I'd love to hear the story how he
developed a superior product.

Or is it that in 1964, there was no real track shoe at all.

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westiseast
I did wonder, what other brands existed at the time? I have no idea.

Was coming to a track meet with branded, fashionable shoes in 1964 the
equivalent of turning up in 1998 with an awesome animated Flash website?

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mikestew
_I did wonder, what other brands existed at the time?_

The Japanese brand Tiger, for one (later becoming Asics). IIRC, though cannot
quickly find a reference, it's the brand Phil Knight was selling out of the
trunk of his car before starting Nike with Bowerman.

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randomlogin
I can't help by wonder what his commission was?

And was it some company honor system that prevented him from starting his own
shoe business instead of being the employee? (since he could obviously sell
from scratch)

I don't have any idea if a non-compete would be a standard part of the
contract in that time.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Well, you could probably ask the same question of any good salesperson today.
The answer is likely that people stick to what they want to do and what
they're good at. If you want to build a company, you build a company. If you
want to sell, you find a product you can sell and you excel at that.

I'd hazard a guess that Johnson was really great at doing what he did to
create Blue Ribbon when he had the backing of an established company behind
him, but starting from absolute zero might not have been his cup of tea.

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achingtooth
I've been having a hard time getting people to sign up for my service, I found
that it's easiest to get to know a person then shill them your product. I
guess that's the equivalent of what Jeff Johnson was doing. It's a lot of work
for little return, especially for a social media site. A shoe has a lot bigger
profit margin compared to a website (per user). I'm still learning though, the
site has a lot of other useful examples

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rootsudo
From LinkedIn to here. Hmm.

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techntoke
I didn't see anything about how Nike willingly enabled child labor and human
rights violations?

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harrydry
thats cause they didn't "enable child labor" or "violate human rights" to sell
their first 50,000 shoes

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FAKEDETECTOR
But it is part of the Nike history and should have been mentioned. It is
disgusting to read that kind of fanboy publication, deeply bowing before a
company that helped to construct the modern international slavery system.

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westiseast
Personally, it’s a great example of amazing sales and how to build a brand.

There’s no reason why brands today couldn’t learn from Nike’s sales/branding
story without having to emulate their manufacturing sins.

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techntoke
Learn what? Create a cult of people that buy subpar quality for expensive
prices.

