As I made my way from Kyoto to Narita Airport, I couldn’t stop counting NIKE’s - a young boy’s shirt, a women’s shoes on the train. I was midway through the book Shoe Dog, a memoir by Phil Knight about the early history of Nike. A brand I had been vaguely aware of suddenly was at the forefront of my consciousness. I couldn’t unsee it.
Phil’s story was that gripping. It begins when Phil graduates from business school. He started as the American distributor of a Japanese line of shoes, the Tiger. Faced with the possibility that Tiger will cut him off, he started to produce his own line of shoes.
The most striking thing to me was how NIKE is Phil’s identity. There are moments where his company nearly fails - his bank declaring they will not be his creditor, the demise of his relationship with Tiger, a lawsuit. Despite this, he risks his family’s financial well being and their future to keep pursuing that dream. Along that journey, the motley crew he gathered, “the Buttfaces,” become his comrades. They were his people, and defined the culture of the company. His love to athelticism, his ambition to win become core to the company he built. In the end, he asks us to find our calling. He looks at the buildings of NIKE, the “temples” he calls them, and wonders at the divine providence that might have been at play for his life.
I couldn’t understand early on his sacrifices of personal financial stability. How can this bet feel worth it to him? But later on, as I saw the culture he defined through his crew and the core principles that drives him, I understood.
I can’t look at a NIKE logo the same way again. But there are so many other things too. Business school class the same way again, nor financing for startups, nor sports, nor the idea of being honest.