Shoe Dog: Young Readers Edition

“Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, and I didn’t want that.”

Knight is referring to his “crazy idea” of playing as a way of life or finding a career that he loves and seems like play. He acknowledges that he has considered various careers at times, but his ultimate dream is athletics. The metaphor of competition in sports and business runs throughout the memoir, and Knight often uses phrases like getting “left on the sidelines” to describe key moments in his journey.

“I wanted to experience what the Chinese call Tao, what the Greeks call Logos, the Hindus call Jnana, the Buddhists call Dharma, What the Christians call spirit.”

When Knight approaches his father about following through with his idea to visit Japan and try to break into the running shoe business, he also expresses his interest in traveling the world while he is young. He views such a trip as a way to make a connection to the larger world so he will be able to leave his own mark on it.

“I wasn’t built for heavy doses of rejection. I’d known this about myself since high school, freshman year, when I got cut from the baseball team. A small setback, in the grand scheme, but it knocked me sideways. It was my first real awareness that not everyone in this world will like us, or accept us, that we’re often cast aside at the very moment we most need to be included.”

When Knight and Carter arrive in Hawaii and decide to stay there, they get an apartment and jobs selling encyclopedias door-to-door, and he fails at it abysmally. This is Knight’s first lesson in selling: He has to believe in the product to convey its value to others.

“In every religion, it seemed, self is the obstacle, the enemy. And yet Zen declares plainly that the self doesn’t exist. Self is a mirage, a fever dream, and our stubborn belief in its reality not only wastes life, but shortens it. Self is the bald-faced lie we tell ourselves daily, and happiness requires seeing through the lie, debunking it.” 

While in Japan, Knight begins studying the dominant religions of Buddhism and Shinto. He likes the concept of enlightenment, but it does not apply to linear thinkers like himself because of their reliance on the past and future. He points out that, according to Zen, debunking the idea of self is especially true in competition because victory only comes “when we forget the self and the opponent, who are but two halves of one whole” (27). 

“As a freshman, as a sophomore, as a junior, I lost count of how many races I ran in flats or spikes modified by Bowerman. By my senior year he was making all my shoes from scratch.”

When Knight receives his first shipment of shoes from Onitsuka, he sends two pairs to Bill Bowerman, the legendary track coach who mentored him at Oregon. Knight is motivated to do this because Bowerman is already designing his track shoes, and he knows Bowerman would have valuable insights on the samples. Bowerman’s innovations eventually make Nike shoes a success.

“I loved Bowerman. And feared him. And neither of those impulses ever went away, they were always there between us. I never stopped loving the man, and I never found a way to shed the old fear.”

Knight acknowledges that another reason he sends the shoe samples to Bowerman is because of his longing to impress his former coach. He argues that besides his father, “there [is] no man whose approval [he] crave[s] more, and besides [his] father there [is] no man who [gives] it less often” (56). The dual emotions of love and fear that he feels for Bowerman are the same emotions that govern his relationship with his father. 

“In his heart of hearts Johnson believed that runners are God’s chosen, that running, done right, in the correct spirit and with the proper form, is a mystical experience, no less than meditation or prayer, and thus he felt called to help runners reach their nirvana. I’d been around runners much of my life, but this kind of dewy romanticism was something I’d never encountered. Not even the Yahweh of running, Bowerman, was as pious about the sport as Blue Ribbon’s Part-Time Employee Number Two.”

In Chapter 4, Jeff Johnson calls Knight to reconsider the job Knight had previously offered him. Ultimately, Knight realizes that Johnson’s enthusiasm for Blue Ribbon comes down to the fact that he truly loves the sport of running and is born to be in the running shoe business. 

“Running track gives you a fierce respect for numbers, because you are what your numbers say you are, nothing more, nothing less.”

In the earliest days of Blue Ribbon, Knight has problems securing loans from his banker to acquire more shoes from Onitsuka. Because of these concerns, Knight realizes that he needs a regular job to fall back on, so he becomes an accountant with Price Waterhouse. Through this job, Knight meets a brilliant accountant named Delbert Hayes, who “[makes] accounting an art” (104). Hayes, coupled with his own background in sports, helps Knight to realize that numbers are beautiful. 

“In all the world there had never been such a sanctuary for runners, a place that didn’t just sell them shoes but celebrated them and their shoes. Johnson, the aspiring cult leader of runners, finally had his church. Services were Monday through Saturday, nine to six.” 

In Chapter 5, Knight delves more into Johnson’s work ethic and enthusiasm for Blue Ribbon. He explains that he agrees to allow Johnson to open the company’s first retail store if he meets a quota of sales during the summer. Johnson meets the quota and begins setting up a store in Santa Monica. The store, as Knight points out, is more than simply a shoe store; it is a mecca for runners, a place where they can meet and congregate. 

“He loved Blue Ribbon. He needed Blue Ribbon. He saw Blue Ribbon as the one place in the world where he fit, an alternative to the corporate quicksand that had swallowed most of our schoolmates and friends, most of our generation.”

When Knight has to return to Japan to deal with their distribution deal, he lies and claims that Blue Ribbon has an East Coast office, which means that he then has to actually set up such an office. He has no choice but to ask Johnson to transfer across the country, which creates a tense situation. Johnson first agrees but later demands to be made a full partner. This leads to a threat of quitting and negotiation with Johnson’s father. Knight cannot give in to the demands, but Johnson decides to sit with the company regardless. Knight suggests that this decision is based solely on his love and belief in the company.

“Here I was, chasing Adidas, but in a way I was still chasing Bowerman, seeking his approval, and as always it seemed highly unlikely in late 1967 that I’d ever catch either one.”

After Bowerman helps Onitsuka design the new training shoe, the Cortez, Adidas threatens to sue because they have a shoe named the Azteca Gold, so the name is altered to the Cortez. Additionally, when Bowerman’s book on running is published, Knight is shocked at a passage in which Bowerman indicates that any shoes and athletic gear are fine for runners. This makes Knight wonder how seriously Bowerman believes in him and Blue Ribbon.

“I wanted to dedicate every minute of every day to Blue Ribbon. I’d never been a multitasker, and I didn’t see any reason to start now. I wanted to be present, always. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered. If my life was to be all work and no play, I wanted my work to be play.”

Knight is working six days a week as an accountant at Price Waterhouse, but in 1968, he quits his day job to focus solely on Blue Ribbon. However, knowing that Blue Ribbon cannot support him, he knows that he will need to find some sort of employment, so he turns to teaching and gets a job as an assistant professor at Portland State University. This allows him to pay his bills while also leaving ample time to dedicate to Blue Ribbon. 

“The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say good-bye.”

In Chapter 7, Knight describes meeting Penny, his future wife, at Portland State and their courtship. Just before leaving on a long business trip to Japan, he proposes to her, and they plan to marry when he returns. Knight explains that he “ha[s] never said good-bye to a true partner, and it [feels] massively different” (165). 

“Suddenly, a whole new cast of characters was wandering in and out of the office. Rising sales enabled me to hire more and more reps. Most were ex-runners, and eccentrics, as only ex-runners can be.”

In the fall of 1968, Knight and Penny are married just as Blue Ribbon begins to see its sales and profits drastically increase. This allows Knight to expand the company a great deal by hiring more employees, and those that he hires are inspired to be part of Blue Ribbon because most are ex-runners who believe in his vision. 

“The world’s two biggest athletic shoe companies—run by two German brothers who despised each other—had chased each other like Keystone Kops around the Olympic Village, jockeying for athletes. Huge sums of cash, often stuffed in running shoes or manilla envelopes, were passed around.”

In Chapter 8, Knight discusses Bowerman’s experience of serving as an assistant coach for the American team at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Blue Ribbon had a booth in the Olympic Village, and plenty of athletes used their Tigers for training, but overall, they failed to generate any interest because they had no money to spend on endorsement deals. In the passage, Knight refers to Adidas and Puma as the shoe companies fighting for athletes’ endorsements.

“A recent survey showed that 70 percent of all American runners owned a pair of Tigers.”

Just before Christmas, Knight has to return to Japan to find out whether or not he will have a new contract with Onitsuka. While he wants a new five-year contract, he is given a three-year deal. Knight points out that he expected the longer contract because he knew that Blue Ribbon was largely responsible for Onitsuka’s successful year. 

“For seven years we’d devoted ourselves to Tiger shoes. We’d introduced them to America, we’d reinvented the line. Bowerman and Johnson had shown Onitsuka how to make a better shoe, and their designs were now foundational, setting sales records, changing the face of the industry.”

Knight is outraged because he has discovered that Kitami and Onitsuka are in the process of trying to find new distributors in the United States. When Kitami comes to Portland and visits the home office, Knight steals the documents from his briefcase and finds a list of potential distributors that he is planning to visit when he leaves. This confirms his suspicion and makes him realize that Kitami cannot be trusted. 

“The company, my company, born from nothing, and now finishing 1971 with sales of $1.3 million, was on life support.”

During Kitami’s visit to Portland, he does with Knight to First National and insults the bankers who Knight relies on for credit. The fallout from this, coupled with Knight’s already shaky terms with the bank, result in a termination of the relationship. Knight is told that First National will no longer issue him credit and that he will need to find another bank. 

“And in the years that followed the picking of our name, the business operated at two extremes: terrific and on the edge of disaster. Often these two extremes existed at the same time.”

In Chapter 11, Knight details the years 1972-1980, a period in which his business is regularly doubling sales totals but still frequently in debt because of high operating costs. Blue Ribbon has just become Nike and is no longer in partnership with Onitsuka, so they are now going to succeed or fail on their own terms.

“In 1972 no wearer of Nike shoes made the Olympic team. In the first event of 1976, all three qualifiers, led by Frank Shorter, wore Nike shoes.”

In both 1972 and 1976, the US Olympic Trials are held in Eugene, Oregon. In the former event, plenty of athletes train in Nikes, but few compete in them, and no competitors wearing them make the team. Four years later, however, the results are quite different as runners wearing Nikes dominate the distance events. 

“Unlike the Western world, where every athlete made his own deal, the Chinese government negotiated endorsement deals for all its athletes. So, in an old Shanghai schoolhouse, in a classroom with seventy-five year-old furniture under a huge portrait of Chairman Mao, Strasser and I met with the ministry representative.”

In 1980, Knight and associates travel to China to negotiate an endorsement deal for the Chinese Olympic track team. A deal is struck within hours, and four years later, the Chinese team competes in the Olympics for the first time in 25 years, and they do so wearing Nike shoes and warm-ups (259-60). This is important for the future of the company as China will go on to become its second largest market. 

“I woke up the next morning to a cold and rainy day. I went to the window. The trees were dripping water. The world was the same as it had been the day before, and yet I was rich.”

Knight is referring to his decision in 1980 to make a public offering for Nike. By offering two different classes of stock, he discovers a way to do so without losing control of the company. Working with the investment bank Kuhn and Loeb, he sets the price at $22 per share, and a deal is finally reached. 

“I think of that phrase ‘it’s just a business.’ It’s never just a business. It never will be. If it does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.” 

In his Epilogue, Knight points out that his fellow workers are much more like teammates than employees. He is referring to the fact that his company was started with love and built by only a handful of people who share that love.