Nike’s Phil Knight: How to sell without selling

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I grew up in the eighties. And that was when Michael Jordan was in his prime. Basketball

All the commercials and the visual imagery. Yeah, Michael Jordan. Don't king. Yeah.

Shattering backboards. And crisscrossing over people. That was my impression, of course. But shoes was he wearing? He was wearing his Jordans and um

Yeah, his Nike's That's Eddie Lou. Co-founder of GOAT. the online marketplace for premium sneakers that every sneakhead knows.

As a child of the eighties and a basketball fan, Eddie has vivid memories of Jordan. And his Nikes. Jordan played his first NBA game for the Chicago Bulls in 1984, and signed his Nike endorsement deal the same year. Right away, he started making news, making plays, And Nike started making air jordans. Wait.

I still remember the price tag. They were$130. Yeah, foot locker and I just I couldn't afford them. Like any kid, you want something, but your parents will buy you something that's comparable. So instead of the Jordan's, they would maybe would get me the Penny Hardaways. Or

Even the Charles Barclays. Or you know, another shoe that was worn by an iconic player, but they just couldn't justify buying the the Freeman Jordans, and I think that really helped fuel my passion. and my nostalgia for sneakers and even Jordan's right to this day.

GOAT stands for greatest of all time. We love sneakers. Michael Jordan was Our idol and he was the goat. Goat now sells 100,000 unique styles of shoes. Of all kinds, not just Nike.

And that passion that Eddie and his co-founder felt for Nike is still very real. It also didn't just happen. That kind of lifelong brand loyalty is the product of a magical combination of aspiration, authenticity, true value. And brand.

It only works if buyer and seller feel totally aligned. And what they value. And what those values. Say about them. That's why I believe you need to sell.

Without selling. Great branding. is about identity. And matchmaking. You gotta have incredible talent at every position.

There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. We're a three-bedroom apartment. We haven't made it just how you do it. This. is masters of scale.

I'm Reid Hoffman. Co-founder of LinkedIn. Partner Greylock. And your host. And I believe you need to sell without selling.

Great branding. is about identity. and matchmaking. There's a little word game that one can play called They could sell a blank?

Two blank. It goes like this. He could sell a glass of water to a drowning man. Well she could sell sand of the Sahara. They could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves in the middle of July. It's fun and it paints a familiar picture of what we often envision sales to be.

We often conflate sales with charisma. And charismatic sellers like someone who could sell stilts to a giraffe. Or fuzz to a peach. Those charmers. Do exist.

The problem with relying on charm as a sales strategy is that it's difficult to scale. It's not impossible, but when there's a mismatch between product and market, the bottom usually drops out. Great selling is actually not about trying to force feed customers an ill-fitting product. It's more about matchmaking. First.

Tell the world who you are, and then do everything you can to find and connect with your ideal customers. Who are these ideal customers? The ones who respond to your authentic brand, they'll be the ones who stick with you as you scale. I wanted to talk to Phil Knight about this because no one is more qualified to talk about where authenticity and advertising meet. As the co-founder and longtime former CEO of Nike, he oversaw some of the world's most successful brand partnerships.

He helped innovate a new model of athlete sponsorships, endorsements, and product lines. Oh. And he commissioned one of the most iconic logos ever. But at the start of our story, Phil was just trying to make a sale. I never thought I was a sales personality.

An extrovert is a person that stares at other people's shoes. So I'm not really the typical salesman. But you know, eventually you gotta sell something. Phil was actually trying to make the hardest kind of sale. He and a friend were in Hawaii.

on the first leg of a trip around the world. We got conned into be an encyclopedia salesman. They ran an ad. in the Honolulu advertiser about wanting some people for PR. We went for the interview and we dressed up in our suit and tie and they said we wanted a couple PR guys to place encyclopedias and homes for free.

And we got a certain amount of money for every placement we made. Well when we got done with the training, which lasted about two hours They said, but you also have to sell the yearbook, which cost four hundred dollars. And so I said, Oh boy, we walked into that The scam was revealed.

But Phil and his friend still tried to unload the Free merchandise. Selling encyclopedias door to door is a bit of an overstatement since I didn't sell a single one. But I did try it for a week before I quit. It wasn't by choice.

But Phil learned a valuable lesson. Selling by deception is harder than it looks. It feels bad. to trick people into buying a product. You don't believe in.

And they don't want. It gives selling a bad reputation. It places customer and salesperson into a zero sum match that only one of them can win. And frequently they both lose. Luckily.

Phil's brief foray into the encyclopedic arts. was merely a side quest to his main mission. That had started back when he was a student at the University of Oregon. Ran on the track team coached by Bill Barman, the Hall of Fame coach. And he was always experimenting with shoes. In those days, all the really great runners were wearing either Adidas or Puma shoes, and it was a real eye opener for me when Otis Davis won the Pacific Coast Conference Championship in a pair of Barman homemade shoes.

If you're having a hard time picturing a pair of homemade track shoes, They're a little Frankensteinish. with leather upper cut by hand. and glued the rubber and metal soles. Bill Bowerman was so obsessed.

with making lightweight racing spikes for his runners. He even studied with a cobbler. Each new prototype was an experiment. Often. performed on Phil himself. He tried it out on his as he called his hamburgers before he put it on his elite athletes.

He felt that getting lighter shoes was important. Those Bowerman homemade shoes left their imprint on Phil's mind. It stayed there when he went on to business school at Stanford. I wrote a paper in the entrepreneurship class, Can Japanese shoes do to German shoes what Japanese cameras do to German cameras. the teacher gave me a good grade and I got kind of excited about it and uh away we go.

Phil wasn't trying to build shoes. Like his old track coach. He just wanted to sell them. And he had an idea. of where the innovation was happening.

He headed to Japan. With that. One brief. Encyclopedia filled stop in Hawaii. Along the way.

Phil managed to score a meeting with executives from the Onitska company. who manufactured an exciting new running shoe. Called the Tiger. It was the kind of lightweight performance shoe Bill Bowerman had been trying to make from scratch. Phil wanted to sell it in the US.

Now. He needed to sell Onitska. on himself. At the end of the day, it was a sales experience, right? I gotta sell'em on letting me be a distributor of the Tiger Shoes. Phil improvised a name for his non-existent company.

Right there on the spot. Blue ribbon sports. The name might have been made up. But his enthusiasm for the tiger was honest. So was his diligent market research and his strategy to capture market share.

His passion and preparedness convinced Onitska that to make Blue Ribbon Sports their American distributor. His sales pitch had worked. Now he needed to make good on his promises.

He returned to the United States. Got himself some samples and got to work. One of his first call was to his old track coach. I don't remember how many samples I got in. But it was probably twenty pair maybe.

I sent a couple of them down to Barman and hoping that he would buy some for his team. He called me up and he said, I'm gonna be up in Portland. For an indoor meet, let's have lunch. That's when he proposed that we be partners and I was thrilled. We shook hands and he agreed to put in five hundred dollars and that's what I had put in and so there we go. Phil had come to the table looking to make a sale.

Instead, he got a founding partner. Without even having the pitch. Bowerman had immediately recognized what his former runner was offering. It was a chance to create a future they both believed in. Full of featherweight sneakers that would help people run fast.

The idea sold itself. His deal was the world needs a better running shoe. And these were people that made good shoes and were really responsive to ideas on making better shoes. But as much improved as the Tiger Shoes were, it didn't take long for Phil and Coach Bowerman to start tinkering with the design. They said this is a great high jump training shoe, and it had some cushioning in it. And I says, Well, that's sort of silly for the high jump shoe, but cushion for a running shoe makes perfect sense. And it didn't make that much sense in Japan, where the average runner weig about one hundred and twenty five pounds, but in the United States where the you know, a hundred and sixty

Pound runner are running on the streets cushing him in a lot. Barman was tearing shoes apart, which ultimately led to a shoe called the Cortez, which was the first cushioned midsole running shoe, which really kinda got us going. The partnership between Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman. An Onitska tiger.

Clicked. Because of a shared goal. Improve. functionality and quality. while keeping their price point below that of Puma and Adidas.

To fill the value of the product was obvious. If the shoe performed. It would sell. Period. And the proof.

Was in the receipts. We went eight years as a distributor and we got sales up to two million dollars, which in modern times doesn't seem like much, but their total sales in Japan were twenty two million dollars. So it it was Not bad. It wasn't bad. But soon other distributors started noticing.

And they want it in. Onitska was fielding competitive offers to help sell their shoes to Americans. They got besieged by different distributors in the United States saying, you know, we could do a lot better job with this and it was kind of seductive to'em. They came to the conclusion that they'd be better off with established distributors rather than this two bits in the wood outfit in Oregon. So they basically jerked the contract and left us high and dry. And did you see it coming? Were you able to prepare

We had about a nine month notice. Their export manager uh came to us and he said, We're gonna set up the distributors unless you sell us fifty one percent of your company for book value. And so I swallowed my tongue and said, We'll think about it. And then got on the next airplane to Japan to find another factory. It was a classic pivotal moment in the entrepreneurs journey.

Phil had to decide in that moment. whether he could establish an identity for himself and his company without the partnership that had gotten him this far. It was a big risk. But it was also a necessary one. The partnership.

between Anitska and Blue Ribbs had become a bad match. Staying in it. Wouldn't have felt authentic. And it wouldn't have made either side happy. Within three months

Phil and Bill had found a new factory. This one. would allow them to make their own product. And not just distribute someone else's. It was a major change in strategy.

They started with Bill Bowerman's hybrid invention. The Cortez. But without the name and reputation of a Nitska tiger, they couldn't just rely on the quality of the product to drive sales. They would need to build a new brand identity. To win customer trust.

They needed a fresh start. A chance to start building a branding story from scratch. It's at this stage that so many new companies falter. to quote the legendary graphic designer, Paul Rand. Design is so simple.

That's Why it's so complicated. And nothing highlights the need for simplicity like the quest. for the perfect logo. We hired a freelance artist that was a student at Portland State University and paid her two dollars an hour to come up with different designs and she came up with what is now known as the swoosh.

If you're an avow sneakerhead, a hype beast. A connoisseur of kicks. all terms by producers have assured me are real, then you may already know this origin story. That's because the swoosh has iconic status. The elongated check mark looks like a line in motion.

It stirs something in the observer. It's an incredibly efficient design. She came up with several different iterations. She didn't just draw it one day. I mean she spent seventeen and a half hours on it. And we said modify this, modify that. The way Phil tells it.

He didn't have any grand moment of clarity about when the swoosh was done. He just had to trust his team that they'd gotten it right. It was kinda I don't know if I like it that much, but we gotta have something and that's the best we got. Amazingly. The same thing was true of Nike's name after the ancient Greek goddess of victory.

It was a way to align the brand with winning. either blatantly or subtly. depending on how well you know your mythology. It also helped that the name Nike obeyed a couple of basic rules of marketing. On a trademark article that we all had read, it said.

Good brand names are short. They have kind of a hard sign like Coke or Xerox or Kleenex, that type of a name. The name Nike. was submitted by the company's first employee. Jeff Johnson.

But it was far from the only suggestion in the mix. We had forty five employees and they all put a name in the hat. I put in the name Dimension Six, which I gave some thought to. And was the name in the hat. Like you had a set of options and everyone voted, or did everyone No, it's only one vote that counted. And what made Nike resonate with you?

Well, the others were so bad. My comment at the time was, I don't know if I like it that much, but it'll grow on me, and of course it has. At its core, great branding is about simplifying. It's about stripping away the irrelevant details until only the essence remains. Imagine a sculptor.

Chipping away at a block of marble until the statue beneath Is revealed. That isn't just true of logos and names, it's also true of messaging. Your company's values must be just as identifiable as its font and signature colors. In Nike's case, what they valued most was competitive edge.

Think back to Bill Bauerman's Frankenstein shoes. crafted to help his runners win. Now it was their job to tie that quest for victory to the brand. One of the things that I think is fascinating about the Nike story is that It starts with this intense focus on product.

But it also then goes well we can't just have the world's best product. We also have to be Very brand conscious. And it's like we didn't start out to be brand people, but now Everyone in the world looks to us as

The experts. about how you establish brand and how you grow and treat a brand and you connect that brand emotionally with customers. When did the brand part of the story begin to be something like okay, this is something we have to focus on too. originally the focus was on the product itself, totally. And then if we could get some good people to wear it so it would get the attention of our consumers, which were really the runners of the world.

And you know, getting Steve Prefundane to wear the Souche. was a big, big help of establishing a brand. Steve Prefontaine American long-distance runner and competitor in the 1972 Olympics Coached by Bill Bowerman

As Phil just told us. Nike strategy relied heavily on its association with star athletes. Nike didn't invent the endorsement. but they may well have perfected them. going for world class competitors that captured the public's imagination.

Steve Prefontaine. Carl Lewis. Jackie Joyner Chrissy. If you wanna run fast, wear Nike. If you don't take your training seriously, who cares what you wear?

But there was a flaw in that plan to go all in on the serious runner. the number of people who aren't. They had defined their target audience so narrowly they made themselves vulnerable to the competition. In the eighties, we got our brains beat out by a upstart company called Rebok. And they basically focused on women and they focused on what the shoes look like. And we hadn't really focused on the appearance of the shoes. We said if a shoe performs and a great athlete wears it, it'll sell.

And so all of a sudden design became important to us because we were losing market share for bad design, if you will. By the nineteen eighties, sneakers were well integrated into everyday fashion. Men wore them with suits. To look a little rebellious. Women wore them in place of high heels.

on their way to the office. And it wasn't just Reebok. Mikey's old nemesis, Adidas. who are also surging in popularity in clout. After performing their song, My Adidas, at Madison Square Garden.

The rap group Run DMC scored a million dollar endorsement deal on the spot. Nike was bleeding market share, and there was no sign of it stopping. Speaking only to the performance driven market was not gonna deliver a win. So Nike. pivoted back to the swoosh.

Or more precisely. To everything surrounding it. We went back and And got an emphasis on design. We had a young designer that we kinda put in charge of all those design. His name was Mark Parker. Mark Parker famously rose within the Nike ranks from footwear designer to a fifteen year run as CEO, and now as Nike's board chair.

Which gives you a sense of how strong those early designs were. Freshening up the look of their shoes was a good start, and style has been an integral part of Nike's strategy ever since. But it wasn't enough. They also had to pivot their sales strategy. They needed to inform the non-elite athlete. But Nike was for them too.

Well, maybe we should try some advertising after all. If this seems like it should have been a no brainer. Keep in mind what Phil told us at the start of this episode. I never thought I was a sales personality.

The fill. Their shoes shouldn't have to pass the fashion test. If Nike was trusted by world champions, what else did you need to know? But even he had to admit that it was time to connect their reputation to their branding and their branding to a wider audience. What they did next would soon change everything.

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When we last left our guest, Phil Knight, he had just accepted grudgingly that it was time for Nike to change their approach to brand strategy. He and his team went to meet with a young upstart advertising agency. Very upstart. We walked into an office that had four guys on a card table, their names were David Kennedy and Dan Wyden. If those names sound familiar.

It's because Wyden and Kennedy is now one of the largest independently owned ad agencies in the world. The first time I met Dan Wyden. Well I walked into his office and I said, I just want you to know, Dan, I hate advertising. And he says, Well that's an interesting way to start. It was

But what Dan Wyden said next made Phil evolve his opinion. One of the things they did, and of course they were young and hungry too. is that we have to know the client. We have to know the product. We have to know who and what they are. We have to represent what they really are. And what he began to understand really quite quickly wasn't that I hated advertising, it was that I hated traditional advertising. What did he mean by traditional advertising?

Maybe. Something a little like this. Look here, Solarium Supergalvanized Rubber Shoe Soles. Provide 73% more satisfaction and comfort than shoes without. Other soles are too stiff, fall apart, and inclement weather are just Make your steps soulful with Solarion Supergalvanized Rubber Shoe Soles. Phil wanted something different for Nike. Something that felt less like selling encyclopedias and more like an honest introduction.

to what Nike is all about. Something stirring. Kinetic Something more like That's whoosh.

Was the design and the advertising the beginning of saying It isn't just the absolute best product. For the athletes and for the people who want to run But it also has to be a way of connecting with them so people understand that this product is the

Is the product that's for them. For sure. That was the advertising message. Why didn't Kennedy wanted to kick off a brand revolution for Nike? So of course. That's what they called it.

Mm-hmm. We had John McEnroe swearing by it. We had Bo Jackson being able to play three or four different sports. Michael Jordan jumping over the moon. And it all came together.

And really looking back. It's maybe just in that first real campaign is one of the best campaigns we've ever had. Springboarding off the sheer star power of these athletes would become a staple of Nike's strategy. were made with the best in mind.

and the proof was on the screen. The ad also used the Beatlesong Revolution. That got a lot of controversy and a lot of publicity, which we loved. Why controversy? Well, for one Many people weren't comfortable with the idea of the Beatles.

Selling out. Even though by then the rights to their catalog had already been sold, their record label EMI Capital owned the licensing rights. while the publishing rights belonged to none other than Michael Jackson. It was a very strange time. The three surviving beetles sued Nike for the song's use.

But the controversy reinforced Nike's image as an iconoclastic. Irreverent company. That wasn't afraid to show their edge. We just wanted to One, wake people up.

And then be honest on who we were. And it became edgy. We didn't say okay, make it edgy. It just sort of reflected what we were trying to do. You can find that original 1987 commercial online. And however you feel about the Beatles, the ad is still electric. Not just because of the song.

Or Mac and Row. Or Michael. but because of the old couple speedwalking in the park. The little kid caught midair as he sails across the basketball court. The exhausted marathon are collapsing under their foil blanket after the race.

The ad draws a direct connection between ultra elite athletes and the people who could be You. You and the great. Exist side by side in the same sweaty. Happy Tribe.

This is what spot on branding can do. It doesn't just showcase the best aspects of the product. It lets you believe that you deserve them. A slew of high profile Head turning ads.

Endorsements and sponsorships would follow. Mars Blackman, and there's my main man, Michael George. Yo, Mars Blackman here with my main man, Michael George. It's Charles Barkley. Tell the boys and girls how you get fine, Charles. Most of all for fighting. That ought to wake up the country club. Bono's baseball. Bono's football. Bono's basketball too. Bones. You don't know who this The revolution will be led by Jason Kidd, Jimmy Jackson, Eddie Joe, Joe Smith, and Kevin Garnett!

Michael Jordan. Yo Mike, what makes you the best player in the universe? Is it the vicious stunts? No, Mars. Is it the shoes? No, Mars. You sure it's not the shoes? I'm sure Mars. What about the shoes? No, Mars. Money's gotta be the shoes. Also, a little healthy controversy. Doesn't hurt either. Well, isn't it the case like the Air Jordan was banned by the NBA?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Th that was great. You heard that right. Phil just said that being banned by the National Basketball Association on the court, where the biggest celebrity athlete played.

Was a good thing. I mean, we couldn't have paid David Stern for better publicity. that he actually banned the original Bear Jordan's from anybody else in the NBA. Even Michael Michael wasn't supposed to work I mean of course that got huge publicity and every kid wanted it. Eddie Lou of Goat Was one of those kids.

He remembers this incident too. Michael Jordan's band commercial where he was getting fined every single day for wearing his Jordan one breads and That that commercial's just so iconic where he's just bouncing that basketball and the announcer saying that um Um, these are the shoes that the NBA has banned um Michael Jordan from wearing, et cetera. And all that stuff just creates more hype.

By the way, those fines against Jordan came to five thousand dollars per day. and Nike paid them all. We wanted him to ban it again, but he made him legal the next year. This commitment to controversy. continued when Wyden and Kennedy and Nike worked together to unveil their new slogan in 1988.

Just do it. The slogan was used in a thirty second spot. about an inspiring eighty year old runner. I run 17 miles every morning. People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in a wintertime.

I leave in my locker. Just do it has since been used for Just about everything Nike related to this day. It's a slogan that bats away excuses and says the only thing standing in your way is Is you.

You know, one of my favorite ads is Joanne Ernst was a great triathlete and she was in the early uh Revolution ads. She talked about how hard it was to do the the two mile swim, the twenty six mile marathon and the hundred mile bike ride. And she said, This is what you gotta do, you gotta train. She goes through it and there's a just do it sign and then she looks into the camera and says, And it wouldn't hurt when she quit eating like a pig either. And so it's completely different than anybody else ever said, and it was just sort of us. Phil remembers this ad fondly, but Nike also got a lot of hate mail over it.

Especially from women. Part of the very demographic they were trying to reach. Was this a case of Nike identifying their values? Or are they choosing controversy? Over a chance to connect with part of their natural audience.

They decided to find out. In the early nineties. Nike worked with a young female ad writer at Wyden and Kennedy by the name of Janet Champ. She crafted a new print campaign. For Nike Women's Fitness, they read more like a series of poems.

All your life. You are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will tell you you're not good enough, or strong enough, or talented enough. They'll say you're the wrong height or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. Sometimes

The ads featured female athletes. But often there were no sports pictured at all. Instead. There would be a picture of Marilyn Monroe. or an antique photo of a mother and daughter.

Or just The word no. They will tell you no. A thousand times no until all the other nos become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no quite firmly and quite quickly.

They will tell you no. And you. Well tell them. Yes. After decades of explicitly masculine advertising.

This was a seismic change in approach. But contrary to what it might seem, it wasn't a change in identity. Weren't soft and flowery. They were tough.

And direct. It sent a signal to women. Written in a woman's authentic voice. Our shoes are for athletes. And you.

Our athletes too. Nike started getting letters from women again. This time in praise of the ads. The campaign was a resounding success. And it paved the way to endorsement deals with superstar female athletes from Cheryl Swoops to Michelle Wee.

to the goat of tennis. Serena Williams. They started with athletes and They have all the best athletes.

in the world and it's funny because a lot of athletes they could get paid a lot more to work with other brands, but they stick with Nike because of the level of excellence and performance and the brand value that Nike has. Once more. Eddie Lou of Goat.

They've stuck to their core values and um becoming truthful to what they stand for and having that point of view is very important. Remember. Great branding is about matchmaking.

Risky or not. There's actually a benefit to letting your brand story define not only who your audience is, But who it isn't. Like When Nike took a risk by making Colin Kaepernick the anchor celebrity.

Of just do it. thirtieth anniversary campaign in twenty eighteen. Kaepernick had been the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers until he started kneeling during the national anthem to protest. Police violence. and racial inequality in America.

When he signed on a Nike's campaign, he was And still is. Unsigned by any NFL team. And Nike's ad. Spoke to that.

Believe in something. Kapernick said. Even if it means Sacrificing everything. The ad first air during the NFL season opener.

A not so subtle dig at Cap's former employer. By making him the face of just do it. Nike wasn't just stirring controversy. They were taking a clear stand at a moment of extreme political division. They were picking.

Aside. It sounds easy but it it's hard for a lot of companies, right? But I think Nike's done a great job saying, What are our core values? Let's stick to them and let's have a point of view and That's how people really create more affinity for the brand. they work with a lot of athletes and people in the community that are affected by things that happen in this world. So I think it was Great to see Nike share their point of view on

Important topic that affect their audience. And I think this next generation of consumers are really in tune with social justice and Nike did a great job of supporting them in that way. Nike decided it was important to double down on their values. Including the one. That told them never to play it safe.

They trusted that the love it would generate in athletes and fans would far outweigh the anger it would raise in others. And if you're wondering if this risk paid off. Nike saw a thirty-one percent increase in online sales in the ad's immediate wake. It was basically a system where we said We don't care how many people dislike us as long as enough people like us.

The Nike of today looks a lot different. than the Nike of nineteen eighty eight or nineteen seventy one. including the fact that Phil is no longer CO. And is now Chairman Emeritus. But despite all the changes.

The core of the company seems intact. Nike. is still associated with high level performance shoes above all. In fact, one of the most recent products The Nike Vapor.

was almost banned from the Olympics for giving its runners too much of an edge. A lot of that innovation. Um has gone a long way in making us appreciate w that Nike pushes the envelope. Even to now the the vapor flies and allowing people to run the marathon under Two hours. It's it's amazing. It's through Nike's innovation that has

allow them to get there. I asked Phil Knight about the lessons he's learned in trying to keep the identity of the company crisp. and aligned with its audience while continuing to grow. What are some of the areas where you found the the mistakes taught you? About

The brand. So like I know that one of the things was Well, you know, we're Before we're very focused on sports, then maybe we're an apparel company, maybe we'll have casual shoes. Right.

You named two of the real good failures, right? Absolutely. We had a brand of casual shoes called I E. And it wasn't very successful. And then we bought a company called Kohl Hawn, which really was successful. We sold it not because it wasn't successful, but because we thought our resources were That are served in the other areas.

Those experiments may have fizzled, but Nike's active wear lines have thrived. Especially as they've continued to expand their definition of who an athlete is and what she might look like. Recently, they launched Nike M. Their first maternity collection. Saying

Mothers. Are the ultimate endurance athletes? Phil Knight may not have envisioned this product market fit back in 1964. But in nineteen sixty four, our vision of who an elite athlete is was probably too narrow. Even

as Nike has evolved its understanding of its core customer, the match between customer and its brand identity. has remained true. So Any other surprises Phil didn't predict? We didn't really foresee back

twenty years ago that the sports shoe business could get so big. You're starting to see a a few people wearing sports shoes, black sport shoes with tuxedas, which we hope is a trend that catches on. I sometimes do that because they're so much better for your feet and they're so much more comfortable. Oh, for sure. I hope there are more people like you. Yes.

I'm Reed Hoffman. Thanks for listening. Masters of Scale is a whitewater. The show is recorded remotely with Sanitized Audio Gear. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Treff.

Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Our producers are Chris McLeod, Adam Skuse, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McLeod. Catherine Clark Gray. Hali Bondi, Christina Gonzalez, and Ben Manilla. Our editor at large is Bob Safian. Original music and sound design by Ryan Holliday.

And Daniel Nissenbach. Audio editing. by Keith J Nelson. Mixing and mastering. by Brian Pugh.

Special thanks. Chris Yay. Elisa Schreiber. David Sanford. Say it's a piano. Adam Heiner, Emily McManus.

Kelsey Capitano. Tim Cronin Sarah Sandman. Charlie Menessis and Colin Howard. Visit.

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