How A Kid With $0 Created Nike

The first year of sales was 1964 and we sold eight thousand dollars. We made a profit of 240 today. His company Nike grew by $30 billion in sales last year thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this video. The little knights suddenly woke up. I had just been. having a nightmare where his life had no purpose except it wasn't just a dream this was his reality not knowing what to do with his life Phil went to the University of Oregon where he studied journalism and developed his interest in running it was here where he met track coach Bill Bowerman, a famous coach in the United States who trained Olympic athletes.

Phil trained with Bowerman as a middle-distance runner and the two men formed a great friendship that they didn't know at the time, but that would later develop into friendship. founding the largest sports company in the world, but we'll get to that after graduating with a degree in journalism in 1959. Phil was still very confused about what to do with his life; Deep down, he wanted to become an athlete, but at 24 years old. He had to admit it the dream was dead despite all the lessons and training at university he just hadn't reached the level needed and now he felt lost Phil even enlisted in the army and completed a year of service thinking it might give him meaning direction, he didn't, he became frustrated and angry, so after the military, Phil enrolled in Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and it was here at Stanford where he finally found his calling while working on an assignment to invent a new business Philip had an idea that would change his life forever on a piece of paper he wrote: can Japanese sports shoes be made from German sports shoes or Japanese cameras made from German cameras?

Phil had noticed how two Japanese cameras, Nikon and Canon, had replaced the German ones. cameras in the market, which used to be much more dominant and wondered if the same thing could happen with running shoes now, at that time, two German companies, Adidas and Puma, were the leading running shoe brands in the United States and They had great dominance in the markets. but Phil had heard that the Japanese were experimenting with some new shoe designs and he also knew that it would be cheaper to produce shoes in Japan, so Phil invested a lot in this task for his business class and really began to believe that there was a Here is a great business opportunity to import Japanese shoes to the American market, but when Phil presented this to the class, no one else seemed to see it that way, he even told some of his friends about the idea and none of them seemed to pay much attention, so supposed.

Phil really wanted to pursue this idea himself, he knew how difficult it would be, he didn't know anyone in Japan to contact and he knew absolutely nothing about importing Japanese shoes or even having to sell them in America, so he could actually he just did it after graduating from business school in 1962. Phil found himself back home living with his parents, that familiar feeling had returned that his life was passing him by and he needed to do something meaningful, one day Phil finally He decided he could. He didn't keep waiting for some magical opportunity and he had to go and create an opportunity for himself, so one of his friends decided to take a long trip to travel around the world.

Phil had become obsessed with his idea of ​​bringing Japanese shoes to the American market, so he thought that as part of the trip, he would visit Japan to see if he could make his crazy idea a reality, but first they visited classic European cities, backpacked through Asia and even stopped in Greece, where Phil saw the Temple of Athena. Nike dedicated to the goddess of Victory Phil and his friend then went to Hawaii and that was where things changed, Bill and his friends surfed relaxed on the beach and loved the place so much that they ended up getting jobs in Honolulu selling encyclopedias door to door Just like that.

They could afford to stay in this Hawaiian paradise a little longer, however, Phil was quite shy and did not do well at the sales job and finally decided that he had relaxed enough and it was time to leave. . His friend had met a girl and was left behind so Phil said goodbye and continued his journey alone and Phil already knew exactly where he wanted to go next it was time to get serious about his dream it was time to go to Japan abroad 1962 in the city of Kobe came Phil In one particular running session that caught his attention, the brand was called Tiger and the shoes were made by a company called Onitsuka.

Not only did he like the design, the shoes met the two main criteria that Phil needed, they were clearly high quality shoes and yet they were relatively cheap. Phil liked the shoe so much that he cold called the owners of the brand. shoes and managed to arrange a meeting feeling nervous and excited. Phil put on a suit and went to meet the makers of the Japanese shoe that he liked so much before going. He bought a copy of How to Do Business with the Japanese and memorized as much information as he could even though Phil had no experience in the business.

He introduced himself at the meeting as an American shoe distributor who was going to help market his shoes in the United States. It turns out that Onitsuka had already been looking for a way to sell their shoes in America, so they were actually very excited when Phil approached them with the same idea, maybe that's why they were willing to overlook the fact that they filled it. as if he were new to a university which he literally was, but despite being a recent graduate in his 20s with no real experience running a business, Phil had memorized many facts and statistics about the American footwear market during his assignment at the University , so he was basically able to recite. parts of his presentation during the meeting and he seemed like he completely knew what he was talking about.

The Japanese managers were impressed, however, one of them answered a very simple question: what is the name of a company you are from? Phil suddenly felt his heart beating faster, of course, the truth is that Phil didn't have a company name because he didn't actually have a company yet, he just had this crazy idea to import Japanese shoes to America. . Phil's mind started to race for a split second, he felt completely out of place. His depth just wanted to be back home with his parents and that was when his mind suddenly focused on the blue ribbons from his childhood that used to hang on his wall after a second pause Phil replied gentlemen, I represent the blue ribbon Sports of Portland Oregon just threw the name out of the blue, as he had never really expected to get this far, but after making up a company name in places where Phil could feel his confidence growing, he went on to explain the size of the market.

American and How come the tiger shoes were different from what they had in America, meaning there was a big opportunity if he and Onitsuka teamed up? The Japanese company was so interested that they basically started pitching Phil and asked him if he would be their US distribution partner to which Phil obviously agreed and then asked them to send some samples to his US address. Joined. It seemed that Phil's crazy idea was about to come true. One month, two months, three months, four months, time kept passing and no sample of Phil shoes arrived. He couldn't understand it.

He had returned to America so excited and optimistic because it seemed that his meeting with the Japanese shoe manufacturer had gone so well that he wrote to them to find out what was happening with the samples they had promised him. For which he had paid fifty dollars, then He received a letter saying that she would come in a few more days. Phil was back at his parents' house and showed the letter to his dad, who chuckled and said, son, $50 is a lot. Phil really got scammed and depressed Phil went and got a job to try to make some money.

He ended up working as an accountant, but he didn't like it very much and suddenly, one morning, 12 pairs of sample shoes from Japan arrived at his door. They were finally here and it was worth the wait. They were just as he expected. Phil was so excited that he went to see his old racing coach, Bill Bowerman, to show him the new shoes and see how highly he thought Bowerman was respected in the world. running and had always been obsessed with improving athletes' shoes, in fact, when Phil was at university with him, he would notice that Bowerman would take students' shoes, open them and make adjustments, for example adding more cushioning or using lighter materials and then sewing.

He would put them back together, sometimes his experiments would just make their feet hurt, but very often Powerman would improve the shoes and make them better or more comfortable for running. One thing was for sure, Bauman really knew what he was doing when it came to running shoes and that's why Phil had been so eager to hear his opinion on his new Japanese running shoes, surprisingly Bowman liked the sample shoes so much. who offered to be Phil and Bowerman's business partner was basically the perfect partner for each of the athletes to spend their lives on the track training. the most experienced athletic trainers with countless records and was obsessed with building athletic shoes, so Phil and Bowermont agreed to co-found this new company, Blue Ribbon Sports, and they both invested 500 each in their new company and everything That money is gone.

He used to order 300 pairs of shoes from Japan at a price of about 3.33 per pair. Phil also wrote a letter to Onitsuka asking if Blue Ribbon Sports could be the exclusive distributor of these Tiger shoes in the Western United States. They agreed and shortly after, in April. 1964 a shipment of 300 tiger shoes arrived from Japan. Phil now had a shooting player, a business partner and hundreds of shoes to sell, it was just a problem. What Phil didn't have was anywhere to sell the shoes, as you see when Phil went to everyone. Checking local sporting goods stores to see if they had shoes in stock, they didn't take Phil seriously and said they didn't need another track shoe, so Phil realized he was going to have to sell these shoes himself.

Phil had 300 pairs of shoes. to sell, so he started going to track meets and running clubs and started selling the shoes from the trunk of his car. He would enthusiastically show off the shoes to the Runners' coaches and fans on the track. His commitment and drive along with Bowerman's connections made them sell out. The 300 pairs in just three months was interesting because in the past when Phil had tried to sell he had failed terribly, but that was when he was selling encyclopedias door to door when it came to these running shoes, selling them seemed strangely easy and Phil felt That was because customers could feel his personal belief in the product, his conviction that these shoes were truly better than the alternatives, made people want to buy them, plus, Billy, there was demand for these high-quality shoes at a affordable price at the end of its first year.

Ribbon Sports had sold 8,000 pairs of sneakers, so Phil used the money he earned to order 900 more pairs from Japan. Shortly after, they recruited some sales reps, mostly former brokers, who shared their vision of what the company was trying to do and who they were. They worked solely on commission, getting two dollars for every pair of shoes they sold, so they drove all over the United States to every high school and college track meet they could. This success allowed Phil to obtain a business loan from the bank so he could move. Blue Ribbon Sports walked out of Phil's parents' basement and into his first real office;

However, since Bowerman still had a full-time job, Phil decided to hire the company's first full-time employee, Jeff Johnson, the man who would later ideate the company. iconic name Nike, but for now they were still called Blue Ribbon Sports and their sales increased rapidly in 1966, they were able to open their own retail store to sell their shoes, one kind of move they made was that they designed the store to be a shrine to The The runners were a place where they could hang out, talk, and browse through books full of running-related books, which helped them attract a lot of attention to the store, and while Phil and new employee Johnson worked on the business side of the stores. operations, Bauman was in charge of the creative part. side of things for example Bowerman started playing with shoe designs, once a shipment arrived from Japan he would take some shoes and tear them apart to see how they were designed, once he studied the shoe he would make notes on how improve it.

These notes were then sent to the manufacturer in Japan requesting that changes be made before the next shipment.You could say that Balman was basically now designing their Super Shoes for them at that time. Bowman also began training popular runners and future Olympic athletes, helping to further build his brand and sell even more shoes and not only that, but Bowerman almost single-handedly made jogging popular, as seen in the '60s, Jogging was not a common exercise at all, but Bauman wrote a book about it that surprisingly sold more than a million copies. and helped boost the popularity of jogging, which of course meant more people needed jogging shoes and what better place to buy them than from the company of the man who would popularize jogging in the first place;

In fact, one of Bauman's shoe designs called the Cortez became the best-selling shoe in 1969 and Blue Ribbon generated total revenue of around three hundred thousand dollars, so business was booming and everything seemed to be going smoothly. very good between Phil's company, Blue Ribbon Sports, and Onitsuka in Japan. Together they had

created

a partnership that brought success to both parties, but what Phil didn't know was that Onitsuka planned to stab them in the back. This Nike story shows how difficult it was for entrepreneurs to execute their ideas back then. Phil literally started selling shoes out of his car, but now anyone with an idea for a product can start selling online quickly and easily with Shopify.

Shopify allows anyone, even those without any technical skills, to create, grow and run a business which I love. What about Shopify is how much time it saves you, with just a few clicks you can create a stunning, professional looking online store that is completely adapt to your business and start selling your products and receiving payments for me, having an online business had always been my goal. to be able to travel anywhere in the world and know that wherever I am my business is still making money and thanks for the support from you, now I have been able to do that, but that is why I truly believe that Shopify is so amazing that it allows me to Entrepreneurs with a idea make that happen and start making money from anywhere in the world, so if you're ready to take the first step to starting your own business, click the link in the description below now to get started with Shopify today, asked Phil to Onitsuka. if Blue Ribbon Sports could be the exclusive distributor of Tiger shoes throughout the United States, not just the West as previously agreed upon, but they initially said no because they didn't think Phil's company was big or established enough to handle that and they wanted someone with offices. on the east coast on the spot Phil immediately said but we have offices on the east coasts, they didn't really have them, but Onitsuka thought he had fallen and was impressed that Blue Ribbon seemed like a much bigger company than they had initially thought, so they attacked.

An agreement was reached for Blue Ribbon to be the exclusive U.S. partner for Tiger brand shoes, and Phil ordered 20,000 more pairs. The Onitsuka executive told them that he would send them to the Blue Ribbon office on the east coast, which of course they didn't have. After the meeting to try to raise money for these new offices, Phil sent out flyers announcing the possibility of people investing in Blue Ribbon Sports. They said it was a fast-growing shoe company looking to expand and people could buy shares. Then they sat down and waited for people to invest but no one responded.

It was humiliating and also extremely worrying that no one seemed to believe in the potential of their business, as no one wanted to invest their money. The only money they received was from the parents of one of them. Blue Ribbon's first employees, Bob Woodell, his parents knew the company was in desperate need of cash and offered to pony up eight thousand dollars, which was literally their life savings, depleting their balance to almost zero and putting them in a very difficult financial situation, but they wanted to do it. what they could to give the company the best chance of survival.

Phil didn't want to take the money from him, but the banks refused to lend him any more, so he had no real choice on the plus side. Phil and Bowerman loved the shoes

created

. Onitsuka respected the quality of the Japanese brand and of course it seemed beneficial to both parties because thanks to his company Blue Ribbon Sports, Onitsuka had become a formidable brand in the United States, so Phil understandably thought that the The future of their company was with Onitsuka but the truth is that they had some problems and were about to grow even more. You see, the initial success of Blue Ribbon Sports had led to the rapid opening of new stores which often left it in a risky situation where it constantly had to worry about cash flow to support the growth of stores and employees.

Phil had to get more facilities, hire more staff, and order more shoes. The Cortez, for example, had quickly become one of the most popular shoes in America and they were selling out faster than they could. keep up, so Phil repeatedly tried to get Onitsuka to ship the shoes faster to meet demand, but the Japanese brand continued to ship them at the same rate. Only later did Phil discover that Onitsuka had been selling to his Japanese customers first as his priority and simply importing what was left over to the US was unfair, but there really wasn't much Phil could do to aggravate the situation.

Onitsuka was slow to produce the suggestions and innovations that Phil and Bowerman shared with them and at times completely ignored their suggestions which infuriated Bowerman who had been working hard on new designs and improvements in hopes of improving the situation with his supplier. and discuss the renewal of their contracts. Phil arranged another in-person meeting with a representative of Onitsuka, a man named Katami, but the meeting was strange. Kitami said Blue Ribbon's sales were disappointing and he didn't seem all that interested in renewing a long-term deal with Blue Ribbon. Phil couldn't understand her, he felt that his company had definitely earned the contract extension after all of Onitsuka's success in the United States had diminished.

For Blue Ribbon Sports they had introduced the Tiger brand in the United States and sales grew every year. Phil even showed them a survey that revealed that 70 of America's runners wore or owned one of his shoes, not to mention that Bowman had helped improve his shoe designs. Phil had already been a little suspicious, but Onitsuko was planning to partner with other Distributors and it was becoming increasingly clear that something was not right, so when Katami left the room, Phil pulled out a folder from his briefcase containing a list of 18 athletes. . Shoe distributors all over the US and a schedule of appointments to meet with them, it was now clear that Onitsuka was secretly plotting to replace Blue Ribbon and find a new distributor from their perspective now that they had gained a significant foothold. in the United States thanks to Due to Blue Ribbon's efforts, Onitsuka executives decided they needed to move to more experienced distributors to expand and their revenue.

Phil was outraged, but most of all he was hurt, he confronted them about this and pointed out that they still had a contract in place for at least another year, however, the Japanese Brandman gave Phil an ultimatum: we bought 51 of the Blue Ribbon sports or we make deals with other distribution partners. Phil Knight immediately rejected his offer to buy the company from him, he didn't want to sell it and couldn't believe it. This was happening, but Phil knew there was really only one way to go now, if Onitsuko was going to start partnering with other American distributors then it was time for war overseas.

It took a while for Phil to get over the shock of everything that had happened. at the meeting, but when he did so he decided to fight back. Phil and Bowerman realized that losing the Onitsuka Tiger brand wasn't necessarily the end of the world; In fact, maybe this was an opportunity; After all, they could be much more than just a distributor. Cortez Onitsuka's best-selling shoe was the Bauman design, so why couldn't Blue Ribbon just make their own shoes and sell them? Plus, that way they wouldn't have to keep waiting for shipments to arrive and they could make as many shoes as they wanted.

So the two co-founders gathered the entire team and started working on creating their own original shoes instead of selling Onitsuka's Tiger shoes, but first they needed a new name. Phil initially wanted to call his new brand Dimension Six, but almost no one else liked that. name and then Jeff Johnson, his first employee said that he had suddenly gotten an idea in a dream the night before, let's call him Nike Phil just looked at him blankly and said what it was, the Greek wing goddess of Victoria Johnson explained to him don't give it back. At the temple he visited while traveling, he had to admit that the Victory connection certainly made a lot of sense for a sports brand, but the truth is that Phil himself wasn't that interested in the Nike name at first, but the problem was that he was. .

They were running out of time and they had to decide on a name right now because they needed to start making plans for their new shoe brand as soon as possible, so they were left with few options. Phil agreed to use the name Nike next, they needed a logo so they recruited a graphic design student from a nearby university to create it and she came up with the now iconic swoosh. She was paid only $35 for it, but now that the name and logo were figured out, there was one more crucial thing they needed to do. To really fight Onitsuka, Phil needed a shoe manufacturer that could produce his new shoes in high quality and at an affordable price.

They already had the design they wanted to use for their first Nike logo shoe, which was basically a remake of the popular Cortez. but they had to find the right manufacturer to make it and all the initial manufacturers they tried seemed to have quality control issues at a company meeting. Phil told his employees that our partnership with Onitsuka was over and now that we have this we are completely alone. This new line we're working on now and we call it Nike, but there are big problems with the quality. We're trying to fix it, but we don't have much time, so there's no room for error.

Phil looked down at the table. to the employees at the meeting and he noticed that they were all slumped in their seats looking defeated as if losing their deal with Onitsuka meant the end of Blue Ribbon Sports. Phil realized that he needed to inspire his team, so he turned his speech around and put it in other words. This is the moment we've been waiting for, everyone around the table looked up and Phil continued, no more selling someone else's brand. Onitsuko has been holding us back for years, her late deliveries, her confusing orders, her refusal to listen to and implement our design ideas.

Let's not look at this as a crisis, let's look at this as our Liberation When Phil stopped talking, he could feel a wave of relief around the table, the mood had changed after Phil's speech and the employees felt that maybe just maybe This wasn't the end of the company, everyone got to work on how they could make this new Nike brand successful and how they could partner with the right manufacturers, although Phil made sure not to make the same mistake he had made with Onitsuka, so instead of committing it. with a single manufacturer, he established a network of manufacturers that gave him full control over production, which was not the end of his dealings with Onitsuka, as they actually sued Blue Ribbon Sports claiming that by starting this new brand Nike reached his contract that said Blue Ribbon. would only sell tiger shoes Phil then responded that Onitsuka had been actively trying to break his exclusivity agreement with Blue Ribbon Sports and in the end both parties finally reached an agreement and went their separate ways in 1971, the Blue Ribbon Sports company officially became Nike and at that time At that time, a company cost a million dollars in sales a year and from then on, Nike's expansion skyrocketed as they began to become the most famous sports brand that we know and recognize today at the 1972 Olympics.

Nike featured heavily, which gave them a lot of exposure worldwide. Stage revenues rose rapidly to $14 million in 1976 and then doubled in just one year to $28 million in 1977. At that time, new factories opened around the world and everything continued to be reinvested in more growth and I was working. Nike was in a big boom, not only were they gaining market share, but they were also quickly becoming a fashion statement; However, its success was envied by many American brands who were watching very closely, waiting for the moment to take down the company, things seem to be going. Great for Nike,Sales are incredible, word of mouth was positive and their legal disputes are behind them.

The only slight problem was that they actually still had quite a bit of cash. Poor Phil was reinvesting every penny he could into further growth and even borrowing money to help accelerate the expansion. For him, it was either grow or die, so he continued to order more and more shoes, open more stores, and hire more employees to help finance this expansion. Phil was thinking about taking the company public, but one morning he received a letter that changed everything. bill from the US Customs Service saying that Nike owed them 25 million dollars at first Phil thought it must be a joke or some strange mistake if they really owed the government 25 million they would be out of business it would all end up like this that everything they had worked for after a few phone calls it soon became clear that the bill was completely real and the real reason behind it was something surprisingly sinister.

What had happened was that the American competitors of Nike, Keds Converse and some small factories were getting scared. Due to the popularity and growth of Nike, they saw Nike as a threat that could potentially exclude them from the market, so they sent representatives to Washington and pressured the customs office to effectively stop Nike's growth by applying something called US selling price. an archaic rule from before the Great Depression, but it said that if there was a shoe made by a company in the US then anyone who imported a similar shoe from abroad had to pay an import tax of 20 of the sales price of the competitors.

The idea behind this law was to promote nationalism and essentially prevent companies from importing products that could be made in the United States, and Nike's competitors had pressured the federal government to enforce this old rule since Nike was not manufacturing their shoes. in the United States, but in Japan their competitors realized everything they needed. What they did was make a copy of Nike shoes and make them extremely expensive. In doing so, they had successfully created an American alternative, and although Nike shoes were original because Nike products were imported from another country, they were hit by ridiculously high import tariffs.

Because of this American selling price rule, this basically meant that Phil would have to pay an additional six dollars for every pair they imported, to make matters worse the import duties were dated three years ago on every pair of shoes that Nike Phil knew there was no way Knight could pay that much money because it would bankrupt them. There was only one option and that was fighting. Phil hired one. of the best lawyers he could find and for three brutal years Phil went toe to toe with the customs office and people like Converse and children in court Mike also produced a television commercial telling their story and explaining what was happening to them to try to get them customers would get excited and on their side and it worked.

Nike's competitors and their accomplices in the government realized that Nike was going to fight this with everything they had and in the end they settled for $9 million instead of $25 million. Phil still thought this was scandalous, but in those three years the legal battle had been fought. Nike had grown enormously and their sales had reached a whopping $440 million, so they could now afford to settle and leave it all behind, it had been another near miss, but the company had now come out stronger. than ever and now was the time to receive some very good news: Nike became a public company that effectively ended its cash flow problems. completely and allowed them to accelerate their growth even further and, since Phil alone owned a 46% stake in the company, he became a very wealthy man, but he also remembers that the parents of one of Nike's first employees invested the savings of his entire life to help the company survive. when they were low on cash, well, they hadn't done it as an investment to make money, they had just done it to try to keep the company alive, but in exchange they had been given shares and so, after Nike went public, Phil had one of the happiest moments of his career when he told them that their initial investment of 8,000 was now worth 1.6 million dollars, that the money was obviously changing their lives completely and that they couldn't believe it.

From there, the night got bigger and Bigger Phil signed deals with two Chinese factories that made Nike the first American shoe maker allowed to do business in China. They also diversified into selling clothing and this not only helped them make more money and attract more investors but also gave them an advantage. When negotiating endorsement deals with athletes, since they could now offer them more than just shoes, and celebrity endorsements were actually one of the biggest keys to Nike's success, they struck deals with rookie athletes like Tiger Woods and LeBron James in the Of course, when they became massive stars, it greatly boosted the popularity of Nike, although their most lucrative endorsement of all was with Michael Jordan.

They discovered his potential early on and signed an endorsement deal early in his career and like Jordan Rose to stardom, his Air Jordans shoe line went on to earn hundreds of millions of dollars by 1986. Nike had surpassed Converse to become the America's largest sports brand and at this point you might be thinking that Nike is just an incredible business success story, but here's the thing. Behind all that success there were very dark secrets, a secret that involved violent bullying, slavery, harassment and child labor and that secret was about to be exposed, okay, time for a quick break while I ask you a favor if you're enjoying this video.

Until now, activate the notification bell for media tycoons. I'm posting a lot of movies about business money marketing and more, but just subscribing doesn't always mean you'll see them, so consider turning on notifications and I'll love you forever, it was 1991 and everyone who worked at Nike was having a normal day, but the American labor activist Jeffrey Ballinger released a report that nearly destroyed Nike's entire reputation in his film behind the swoosh he claimed that Nike secretly used child labor and that the company exploited people living in underdeveloped countries the video He claimed that workers in these Countries were forced to live in slums or near open sewers where they shared toilets and bathing water with more than a hundred different families.

These workers were then crammed into factories that were often housed in damaged buildings that posed fire hazards during their work. hours they were denied access to drinking water or toilets and at the end of the day after which they had undergone all these inhumane treatments they were paid a mega sum of 1.25 cents; Then, in 2001, a BBC documentary uncovered the use of child labor and poor working conditions in a Cambodian factory used by Nike. The doc focused on six girls who work seven days a week, often 16 hours a day. All of these claims sparked a lot of backlash with many students and activists around the world participating in protests against Some people at Nike calling for a boycott of all their products and several universities cutting ties with the footwear brand.

Sales fell completely and Nike shares fell 15% and the company was portrayed in the media as a company willing to exploit workers and deprive them of their basic services. wages needed to support himself Phil Knight had always been in a position where he and his company were the good guys, but this time he was the bad guy, it was a different challenge and he responded by promising that he would personally make sure that the conditions in the factories of Nike will improve. The world after that Nike spent the next decade trying to fix its reputation, of course, the truth is that the company was basically founded on the principle of finding cheaper labor overseas in order to make good quality shoes that were cheaper than competitors but they were Nike definitely made changes to significantly improve conditions for overseas workers and many human rights activists have acknowledged their efforts to minimize these problems, but the allegations never fully stopped a 2005 report from The company found that workers in up to half of its factories were still forced. working 60 hours a week earned less than minimum wage oh we are denied the use of toilets and drinking water and even more recently in December 2021 the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights filed a criminal complaint against Nike and other brands claiming that he benefited from the use of forced labor in China now to be fair and give the other side of this.

Phil would say that the factories involved in these scandals were not actually Nike, they were simply rented along with other tenants, so Nike did not have direct control. These factories simply made deals with them, and while that's no excuse, Phil is right that singling out Nike for using sweatshops misses the bigger picture, which is the countless multinational companies that use labor. foreign with very questionable conditions in parts of their supply chains. The items we all use every day were possibly produced with cheap labor under terrible working conditions. If making videos for this channel has taught me anything, it's that if you look deep enough into almost any business, you'll find a darker side, but it's particularly interesting. about Nike is how they have managed to turn controversy into profits overseas Nike released a new ad titled Dream Crazy with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick as the voice and face of their new just do it campaign.

Kaepernick himself posted a close-up in black and white. photo of his face with the words believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything that statement was in reference to a controversy that began back in 2016 when Kaepernick himself sparked a political scandal by kneeling during the United States national anthem to protest against racial injustice and the police. brutality in America, many people, including then-President Donald Trump, claim that Kaepernick was disrespecting the flag and the country, so Nike's partnership with Colin was controversial, to say the least, the price of his stock immediately fell 2.5 percent and many people across the United States destroyed their Nike shoes and declared a boycott of the company, but then something interesting happened, many people who shared the same sentiment behind the theme of Nike's ad became on its side and many people began to buy and wear Nike products as a show of support thanks to the controversial and bold Nike marketing move received more attention than ever and broke many records, earning 6 billion dollars in brand value , 163 million in media and an additional increase of 31 in sales.

The campaign also earned Nike its first Emmy Award since 2002 for Most Outstanding Commercial of 2019. In the end, all the cries for boycotting Nike products had little or no major impact on its sales, and this wasn't the first. time that Nike relied on controversies to make more money. In 1988, Nike launched its first just do it campaign, the campaign addressed the issue of ageism and featured an 80-year-old marathon runner who ran 17 miles every morning. Then in February 1995, Nike launched a just do it campaign featuring an HIV positive runner, so why does Nike take risks in their ads that they know they will?

Creating some controversy, well the reality is that Nike has an experienced marketing team, but it weighs the risk versus reward and makes a calculated decision. In the case of ads like these, they weighed the costs and believed the benefits were worth many other factors. Obviously it affects sales, it is clear that its advertising campaigns have played a very important role in the company's success since the first just do it campaign was launched in 1988 until 1998. Nike increased sales from 800 million dollars to 9, 2 billion; However, after 40 years, Phil stepped down as CEO. His story is quite remarkable, he started when he was a child with no experience and headed to Japan to try to make his crazy idea a reality and ultimately build the biggest sports brand in the world, but what about you, what is your crazy idea?

Because if one thing is clear. From Phil's story is that the moment is never perfect, sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith or in the words of Nike,just do it and if you want more business stories and lessons to inspire you, watch this video right here. Next thing I think you'll really like, I hope to see you there, thanks for watching, regards.