Nike: How he made the planet speak Greek

Blue Ribbon Sports, a sports shoe company founded by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, is changing its name. Its new name is Nike and for the next 50 years it will make the whole world speak… Greek, although not always correctly. In the United States, the Nike name was pronounced "naiki", even if Knight himself tried at some point to correct the mistake.

But how did a company from Oregon that sold Japanese shoes get a Greek name?

The story of Nike begins with the travels around the world by 20-year-old Phil Knight from Oregon, a Stanford graduate who felt somewhat lost in life. During those years he traveled to Hawaii, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Israel, Italy, France. He comes to Greece, where he realizes his dream of seeing the Acropolis.

But the deal to create a global giant was struck in Japan, where Knight agreed with a local company that made cheap but high-quality replicas of Adidas shoes, Onitsuka, to sell its products in the US market.

Phil Knight in 1987. (Photo: AP)

In 1964, at the age of 26, Knight returned to the United States from Japan, worked with track and field coach Bill Bowerman, and began promoting Onitsuka running shoes to athletes, while retaining his "normal" job as an accountant.

In the years that followed, as jogging gained popularity in the United States, sales of the Blue Ribbon Sports brand increased, and in 1971 Knight decided that he no longer needed to work as an accountant.

It's time to give the company a new name. Knight thinks of "Dimension Six", but his employees laugh. And then, one of the employees, Jeff Johnson, suggests a name he saw in a dream while he was sleeping: Nike, from the Greek goddess of Victory.

The next step was to create a logo, which Knight commissioned from Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University. Davidson designed the well-known Nike "swoosh", a shape that refers to movement and speed, but also looks like the wings of the goddess Nike. Knight did not go crazy, but agreed to use the mark and paid Davidson $ 35.

The following year, Nike sold $ 3,2 million worth of shoes, and its profits doubled every year for the next decade. In 1980, Nike overtook Adidas to become the No. 1 company in the US market.

Today, Nike is worth more than $ 182 billion and sells more than $ 44 billion a year.

As for Davidson, she does not feel "thrown" that the logo she designed instead of $ 35 has conquered the world. Nike recognized her contribution by throwing a party in her honor and giving her a stake worth an estimated $ 1 million, as well as a diamond and gold ring with the swoosh logo.

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