Acquired · Jul 24Nike
Started with $500 each from Knight and Bowerman, who took 49%. Sales doubled from $8,000 in 1964 to $16,000 in 1965, but $1.75 per pair profit couldn't fund growth, and it ran near 100% debt to assets.
Tips
- Phil Knight ran Blue Ribbon at a near 100% debt to assets ratio and had to grow▶ 55:56Sales doubled from $8,000 in 1964 to $16,000 in 1965 and kept roughly doubling, reaching $150 million in 1979.
- Bill Bowerman took 49% of Blue Ribbon to get access to making shoes▶ 30:00Each put in $500 to buy the first shipment of Tigers.
- Bill Bowerman's jogging book helped create the fitness market Blue Ribbon sold into▶ 50:50By 1970 Blue Ribbon had over $500,000 in annual sales and 70% of US runners wore Onitsuka shoes.
- Phil Knight turned a Stanford paper on undercutting German brands with Japanese shoes into Blue Ribbon▶ 12:00The US branded athletic shoe market is now about $130 billion, versus about $2 billion then.
