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Shoe Dog. The Epic Tale of the Ever Running Brand
How one man’s unyielding passion for running and owning a business created one of the most recognized brands in the world after running upstream for decades.
There are so many people who like to run these days and some people even have it as a lifestyle running every day and attend to marathons on every continent.
In the early 60s, this wasn’t the case. People still liked sports, but fitness or cardio sports weren’t that popular. There were only a few global brands. Adidas from Germany was the biggest by far and Tiger from Japan was also building great sports shoes.
In the city of Portland, Oregon, there was a man passionate about athletics and running. He graduated from the University of Oregon and then, had an MBA from Stanford, and at the age of 24, he was back in Oregon living with his family. This young man was Phil Knight.
Phil was smart and active, but he didn’t know what to do with his life. He never knew any large company, which originated from Portland and he thought he loved Oregon, but he had to do something extraordinary with his life.
Then, one day he went back to one of the papers he wrote at school. How would he be able to work with Tiger, the Japanese shoemaker, and become the distributor?
