Blue Ribbon Sports changes its name to Nike - May 30th, 1971

On this day in 1971, with its first shipment of shoes set to go out the next day, the Blue Ribbon Sports company changed its name to Nike, Inc. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show for those interested in the big and small
moments of history. I'm Gabe Louzier, and today we're looking

(00:24):
at the story behind one of the world's most recognizable
brands and how it was almost known by a very
different name. The day was May seventy one, with its
first shipment of shoes set to go out the next day,

(00:47):
the Blue Ribbon Sports Company changed its name to Nike Incorporated. Today,
the Oregon based company is the largest seller of athletic
footwear and apparel in the world, but in one it
was a fledgling business with less than fifty employees total.
After six years of selling running shoes imported from Japan,

(01:10):
Blue Ribbon Sports was finally ready to produce and distribute
its own shoes. By May, the first batch was almost
ready to go. The only thing left to do was
to print and assemble the shoe boxes. But to do that,
the factory in New Mexico needed to know the new
name of the company. Blue Ribbon Sports was tied up

(01:33):
in prior contracts, so the staff had to come up
with something else, and they didn't have much time left
to do it. Printing could only be delayed until nine
am that morning if they wanted to hit their deadline.
So with the clock ticking and their new venture on
the line, the company's employees launched a desperate bid to
brainstorm the perfect brand name. The story of Nike began

(01:57):
in the late nineteen fifties with the meting of two men,
Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman. Night was a business student
at the University of Oregon and a middle distance runner
on the school's renowned track team. His coach was Bill Bowerman,
a man so dedicated to his sport that he took
lessons from a local cobbler just to learn how to

(02:19):
make his own running shoes. Coach Bowerman wasn't happy with
the caliber of track shoes available at the time. Recreational
running and jogging weren't as popular as they are today,
so there weren't that many options on the market. The
few brands available were uncomfortable, clumsy, and didn't offer the
support that runners needed. After learning the trade himself, Bowerman

(02:42):
continuously tinkered with his own designs, experimenting with every form
of material you could think of, velvet, deer hide, fish skin,
and even leather made from kangaroos. The results of these
experiments were routinely tested by Phil Knight, a willing guinea
pig and so so athlete who shared his coach's disdain

(03:04):
for the sorry state of track shoes. Night later recalled
this early partnership, saying, quote, the American shoes were offshoots
of tire companies. Shoes cost five dollars and you would
come back from a five mile run with your feet bleeding.
Then the German companies came in with thirty dollar shoes,
which were more comfortable, but Bowerman still wasn't satisfied. He

(03:28):
believed that shaving an ounce off a pair of shoes
for a guy running a mile could make a big difference.
So Bowerman began making shoes himself, and since I wasn't
the best guy on the team, I was the logical
one to test the shoes. Phil Knight left the University
of Oregon in nineteen fifty nine with a bachelor's in

(03:48):
business administration. He then enrolled in the Graduate School of
Business at Stanford, where he was challenged to come up
with a new small business idea and to create a
marketing plan. The title of his paper was can Japanese
sports shoes due to Germans sports shoes what Japanese cameras
did to German cameras. Night theorized that running shoes could

(04:11):
be produced more cost efficiently in Japan than in Germany.
Has it been the case with cameras and if that
were true, it would enable his company to market the
lower cost shoes to high school and college athletes who
would finally be able to afford them. After graduating from
Stanford in nine sixty two, Nights spent the better part

(04:31):
of two years traveling Japan and looking for a way
to test his theory. This led him to the Onetsuka
shoe factory in Kobe. The company was known for producing
a high quality Adida's look alike called Tigers. The production
costs were significantly lower than those produced in Germany, so
Night made a deal with Onetsuka to export the shoes

(04:54):
and begin selling them in the US. However, he didn't
embark on that venture a own. Instead, he brought in
his old friend, Coach Bowerman as a fifty fifty partner.
On January nineteen sixty four, the duo co founded a
brand new company, Blue Ribbon Sports. Things started small at first,

(05:16):
with Night traveling from one track meet to the next,
selling on Itsuka Tigers out of the trunk of his car.
By nineteen sixty nine, though the country's growing interest and
jogging had pushed Blue Ribbon Sports to over a million
dollars in sales. They had proven there was demand for affordable,
but still high quality running shoes, but that success led

(05:38):
to other problems. Hoping to capitalize on the established interest,
on Atsuka began courting other US distributors, a move that
threatened to cut Blue Ribbon Sports out of the market.
It helped create Knights, and Bowerman saw the writing on
the wall. They knew that for their company to survive,
it would have to become more than a middleman for

(05:59):
another company's shoes. With that in mind, they cut ties
with their Japanese partners in and began trying to manufacture
and distribute their own shoes under their own label. To
mark this fresh start, and to avoid further legal complications
with on Atsuka, Night decided to retire the Blue Ribbon

(06:20):
name and create a stronger brand identity for the new shoe.
The logo came before the name compliments of Carolyn Davidson,
a graphic design student at Portland State University, where Knight
used to teach accounting. Davidson whipped up a few potential
designs to show Night, including the now iconic swoosh, a

(06:40):
kind of stylized check mark. Night was reportedly unimpressed, saying
of the design quote, well, I don't love it, but
maybe it will grow on me. It apparently did, as
of course, that's the logo the company wound up using.
And if you're wondering about the going rate for a
timeless low go in nineteen seventy one, that would be

(07:02):
thirty five dollars, a decent deal for Carolyn Davidson at
the time, but not so much in the long run.
In late May of that year, with the shoes nearly
finished and the logo decided on, the last step was
to christen the company and its shoe boxes with a
catchy new name, Night made a big swing by proposing

(07:22):
the name Dimension six, reportedly because he was a fan
of a nineteen sixties pop group called The Fifth Dimension.
Luckily for Phil, the rest of the team hated that
name and quickly laughed it out of the running. Other
employees suggested animal based names, hoping to capture the same
success as Puma, one of the industry's leading brands, Bengal

(07:46):
a type of tiger, and Peregrine, a type of falcon.
We're both briefly considered, but neither was popular enough to
seal the deal. The company wide effort ultimately proved to
be a bust. The new name was due the following morning,
and there was no clear front runner. That's when longtime
employee Jeff Johnson came to the rescue. At the last

(08:08):
possible minute. That night, according to Johnson, he had a
dream about Nike, the Greek winged goddess of victory. He
woke up convinced that was the perfect name. It even
aligned with an article he had read about how the
best brand names were two syllable words that feature strong
sounding letters like X and K. Think Kodak, clorox or

(08:32):
klean X. At seven am on the morning of May thirty,
Johnson called company president Bob Woodell and excitedly pitched him
on the name Nike. Woodell was unconvinced, but agreed to
relay the idea to Phil Knight before the nine am deadline.
In the end, Night wasn't a fan of Nike either,

(08:52):
but just like with the Swoosh logo, he decided to
give it a shot. With a factory deadline looming, he
told Woodell, quote, I guess we'll go with the Nike
thing for a while. I don't like any of the names,
but I guess that's the best of the bunch. With
that ringing endorsement, the company had finally found its new name.

(09:13):
The first Nike branded shoe hit store shelves three weeks
later on June eighteenth, nine seventy one. Despite some growing pains,
the new company managed to sell three point two million
dollars worth of shoes in nineteen seventy two, and from
there it's profits doubled for each of the next ten years.

(09:33):
The company's transition from a small time shoe importer to
one of the world's most popular brands had officially begun,
and all because Phil Knight had enough self restraint to
not insist on the name Dimension six. I'm gave Lousier
and hopefully you now know a little more about history

(09:54):
today than you did yesterday. If you enjoy today's episode
and you want to keep up with the show, you
can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t
d i HC Show. You could also rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts, or you can reach out
directly by writing to This Day at I heart media

(10:14):
dot com. Thanks as always to Chandler Mays for producing
the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
back here again tomorrow for another day in History class.