At a glance
- Founded
- Blue Ribbon Sports, begun on 25 January 1964 to import Japanese running shoes into the United States.5
- Founded by
- Phil Knight, a middle distance runner, and Bill Bowerman, his university track coach, who shaped a sole on a waffle iron.5
- Home
- Beaverton, Oregon, on a campus in unincorporated Washington County outside Portland.5
- Owned by
- Public since December 1980 and listed in New York, with Mark Parker as executive chairman and Phil Knight chairman emeritus.5
- Size
- Revenue of $46.4 billion in the year to May 2026, flat as reported and down 2 per cent currency-neutral.1
Who runs itAs of 2026-09-24. Press a person to read more
How it got herePress a year
1964
1 of 12
Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman start Blue Ribbon Sports on 25 January, distributing shoes for the Japanese maker Onitsuka Tiger.5
The identity
Carolyn Davidson drew the Swoosh as a design student in February 1971, and Nike paid her $35 for it.4 Knight was not sure. “Well, I don't love it, but it will grow on me,” he told her.4 It went on the first Nike shoe, a black football boot, and two American runners wore it home near the front of the next Boston Marathon.4
The mark can stand alone now. On most product it appears with no word beside it, which very few sports brands dare to try, and it still reads as Nike on a pitch, a pavement or a phone screen. What paid for that is advertising, not design: between 1988 and 1998 the slogan and the mark together took Nike's North American shoe share from 18 per cent to 43 per cent.6 Treat the Swoosh as the receipt rather than the cause.
The Swoosh
A single curved stroke drawn to suggest motion, used with no wordmark beside it on most product.4
Just Do It
Three words from 1988, written by Dan Wieden, and still the frame around almost every Nike campaign.6
Visible Air
A window cut into the midsole so the air bag shows, first sold as the Air Max in 1987.5
Air Jordan
A signature line built around a player who signed in 1984, which grew into a label with its own name.5
The waffle sole
A grid of rubber studs shaped on a waffle iron, sold on the Waffle Trainer from 1974.5
Campaigns and facesPress one to read it
How it positions itself
Nike does not sell shoes at the top of the market and it does not sell them at the bottom. It sells the middle, at volume, and it defends that ground by renting other people's fame. The method has not changed since Jordan: pay the person everyone is already watching, put the mark on them, and let the shoe ride along on the attention. Then the shoe was dull. Revenue fell 10 per cent in the year to May 2025 and net income fell 44 per cent.2
The bigger mistake was structural. Nike decided its own app and stores should replace the retailers who had built its distribution, and it pulled product out of them. Rivals took the shelf space, and Nike has spent the years since buying it back. Under Elliott Hill the flow reversed, and in the year to May 2026 wholesale revenue rose 6 per cent while Nike Direct fell 6 per cent.1 You can own the customer relationship and still lose the aisle.
The other lesson came harder: a brand you do not manufacture is still a brand you answer for. Through the 1990s the Swoosh became shorthand for other people's factory conditions, and in May 1998 Knight told the National Press Club that the product had become synonymous with slave wages and arbitrary abuse.7 He then raised the minimum working age, brought in outside monitoring, and in 2005 published the full factory list, a first in the industry.7 Nobody made him. The disclosure cost less than the silence had.
Three things to take from it
- 01
Pay for the story, not the logo
Nike paid Carolyn Davidson $35 for the Swoosh and then spent decades making it mean something.4 The mark did not carry the brand. Advertising did, and the mark collected the credit. If your budget is small, put it into one repeated idea rather than a rebrand, because a logo only stores value you have already created somewhere else.
- 02
Do not fire your shops to win your app
Nike leaned on its own app and stores and let wholesale partners drift, and unwinding that took a change of chief executive.3 In the year to May 2026 wholesale grew 6 per cent while Nike Direct shrank.1 Your own store gives you margin and data. The shop next door gives you a customer who was not looking for you, which no amount of retargeting will match for a brand nobody has heard of yet. Keep both.
- 03
Say the bad thing before the reporter does
Knight stood at the National Press Club in May 1998 and repeated the accusation against his own company in his own words.7 It was late. The reporting had run for years.7 Still, the admission gave Nike somewhere to move from, and by 2005 it was publishing the full factory list nobody had asked it to publish.7 Write down the thing about your business you hope nobody asks about, then answer it on your own site before someone else frames the question for you.
Read next in the Library
Sources
- 1NIKE, Inc. Reports Fiscal 2026 Fourth Quarter and Full Year ResultsNIKE, Inc. · 30 June 2026 · about.nike.com
- 2NIKE, Inc. Reports Fiscal 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year ResultsNIKE, Inc. · 26 June 2025 · investors.nike.com
- 3NIKE, Inc. Announces Return of Long-Time Nike Veteran Elliott Hill as President & CEONIKE, Inc. · 19 September 2024 · about.nike.com
- 4The Nike Swoosh Logo: From Humble Beginnings to Global IconNIKE, Inc. · about.nike.com
- 5Nike, Inc.Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- 6Just Do ItWikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- 7How Nike solved its sweatshop problemThe World · 30 July 2016 · theworld.org
Every fact above links to one of these. Checked against them on 2026-09-24.
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