History of Nike & Its First Shoes

In April 1964, Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike received its first delivery of shoes from Japan. Ever since then, he decided to resign from his full-time job as an accountant towards selling shoes from his car.

However, Knight's strategy business which requires him to drive and seek customers was quite a flop. Therefore in the mid of 1965, Knight paid Jeff Johnson as his first full-time worker. In just 10 months, Johnson managed to sell 3250 pairs of shoes and Knight thought that this might just be his best performance by far.

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The business strategy of Johnson is quite similar to Knight which is to drive and find his potential customers. But it seems that Johnson took the proactive step to have better interaction with the customers.

Every time he sold his shoes, Johnson will make a card related to those customers. By obtaining the data from his customers, Johnson will keep the conversation going. In fact, Johnson will also reply to his customers' queries to know of any related problems that the customers might have with the shoe that they bought.

For instance, one customer told him that the shoe does not have any sponge to support them when walking a long distance. To solve this problem, Johnson has paid a cobbler to incorporate more sponges into the shoes for the customer's comfort.

The rate of reply he got from doing this was so high and fast that more customers start pouring in. The hard work of Johnson has gotten the attention of many customers who took an interest in Nike's shoes.

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Johnson did not stop and continued to approach society in order to promote Nike's shoes and his hard work definitely paid off. Nike managed to sell 50,000 units of its first shoes just by word of mouth alone.

Meaning to say, they did not pay for any futuristic marketing like what we have now and the message definitely gets delivered from Johnson's great service. Today, Nike managed to become one of the giants in the sports industry raking in billions of dollars annually.

Not just that, Nike also sponsors many athletes out there as a way to effectively promote their products. As of now, Nike has also expanded to more than just selling shoes like jerseys and various types of balls.

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