Nike At A Balance Essay

Nike at a Glance Society, as we know it today, would not be able to continue without the everyday use of shoes and clothes. This fact alone puts companies such as Nike in a pretty powerful and much needed position. It is very unlikely to go anywhere without seeing the Nike Swoosh somewhere. However, Nike has not always had the reputation that they have today. In fact before 1971, Nike was not even heard of. It was instead known as the Blue Ribbon Shoe Company, which was founded by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight. Bowerman was the track coach at the University of Oregon, later to be the birth place of Nike. He knew of Knight through track and field, and they both had the idea of starting and developing a new athletic shoe. Phil Knight in a Stanford research paper said that “low-priced, high-performance, well-merchandized exports from Japan could replace Germany’s domination of the United States athletic shoe industry.” Knight did not know how right he would later become.

In 1962, Knight traveled to Japan and talked to Onitsuka Tiger Company and convinced them that their shoes

Shares of Nike stock also sell for nearly forty dollars a share. Nike, however, does not accomplish this by manufacturing their shoes here in the United States, where they would be forced to pay American wages. Instead, they send their shoes over seas where they can be produced as cheaply as possible. By doing this Nike is able to maximize their profits, making shoes cheaply and being able to sell them at a high price. Based on the prices in last months East bay catalog, Nike shoes can range in price anywhere from thirty dollars to one hundred and fifty dollars. Imagine the amount of money made when these shoes can be made for just a couple of dollars. This is why Nike can afford to pay their top executives millions of dollars a