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My reflections on the book "Shoe dog" by Phil Knight

The book called "Shoe dog" written by Phil Knight is a memoir of the creator of shorts apparel "Nike" with the notorious slogan "Just do it!"

Here I will reflect on it in several parts as I read through the book. I will indicate the dates and chapters I read to capture ideas and interesting facts.

Reflection 1. pages 1-41

The book starts from the author sharing his experience of running in the dawn one day in Oregon, USA in small town called Portland. It was in 1962 and he was back to his parents house after seven years since he left them. He studied at the University of Oregon, then did his master's from a top business school - Stanford, served a year in the US Army.

The author describes himself as shy, pale and rail-thin 24 years old kid. Even though he is 24, he felt himself as a young kid coming back to parents' house and live in his own room. He also mentioned that he questioned what he wants and would become. He had no idea at that point. However, his project paper on exporting shoes that he worked during the MBA Entrepreneurship class excited him and he dreamed about it because he was an athlete himself and knew a lot about running. So, he called this idea as a crazy idea throughout first few chapters.

Then pitched his crazy idea to his father one evening. His father was very respectful man in Oregon and was a publisher of Oregon Journal and apparently he was above average class worker at that time. Surprisingly to the author his father was supportive and he started to prepare to his trip, the world trip.

He convinced his college friend to join the journey and started it from Hawaii. Once they landed in the airport of Hanolulu, the beautiful islands they wanted to hang on there for a while. They find a job as salesmen of encyclopedias and later Phil started selling securities though conducting many cold phone calls and closing deals. He succeeds but his crazy idea motivates him to leave his friend behind (his friend found a girlfriend and wanted to be with her) and flies to Japan. In Japan he manages to convince 4 executives of one shoe company (Onitsuka & Co, in Kobe) to become their representative in the US. Phil describes that morning meeting with Onitsuka representatives in details how he felt and tons of controversial ideas flew through his mind and how surprisingly well his peach was and how odd Japanese culture was. Then he continued his journey to Malaysia, Thailand, Hong-Kong, Vietnam, India, Nepal, Cairo, Jerusalem, Turkey, Rome, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, UK, Greece. The trip took him almost six months (he left on 7 September 1962 and returned 24 February 1963).

Interesting facts:

Phil Knight was called Buck by his family members and friends;

He learned and quite good mastered surfing while living in Hanolulu;

He was in Hawaii while the cold war between US and Soviet contry reached it's peak and everyone was expecting start of WW3;

His father's friends from United Press Internationals helped him to get around in Tokyo and collected to former colleages who were importing goods from Japan.

He tension between US and Japan after the WW2 felt so recent when he arrived to Tokyo as many buildings remain damaged after the bombing;

how weird the Jananize culture, they don't say yes or no and always talk in circles that you can't expect clear answer from them;

He made up the company which he represented to Onitsuka. He called it "Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon" :-). These blue ribbons were from his past tracks (marathons) that he was proud of.

Isn't it interesting that at the age of 24 and be able to visit 16 countries in six months.

Reflection 2. pages 42-76 (1963-1964 years)

Throughout the year of 1963, Phil completed the accounting courses (yes, even more school) and got his CPA (Certified Public Account) certification then started working in an accounting firm Ross Bros.&Montgomery. The accounting company branch in Portland was very small and from November to April the workload was enormous. They worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. So, this year passed away while he was still waiting for his sports shoes from Japan.

After the new year, Phil got his first box with sports shoes (twelve pairs) and was impressed with the quality and appearance. He describes them as they were more than beautiful and he hasn't seen any other shoes like them in Italy or France. He immediately sends two pairs to his track coach at Oregon, Bill Bowerman. Bowerman was a brilliant coach and natural leader of young people with enormous obsession of gear for running. He had spend days on modifying the footwear of his athletes, improving them so they run like deer. Phil hoped that Bowerman would place order for the shoes for his athletes which he did. Eventually, they agreed to be a partners with 51/49 percent share of the deal and Phil be in control.

Second time, Phil placed 300 pairs of shoes worth of 3,000$ and became official distributor in the West US after receiving a confirmation letter from Mr Miyazaki, one of representatives of the Onitsuka company. Few months later he received a letter from another person from New York who claimed that he is only official distributor of Onitsuka. To clarify and get this straighten he went to Japan and met with the head of Onitsuka, Mr. Onitsuka himself. Apparently, all his executives were scared of Mr. Onitsuka but Phil's meeting went very well and he had gotten the confirmation that he would be the one offical distributor of his shoes in the West US. (The other person, in New York apparently was selling wrestling shoes and not the track shoes. Thus, Phil will be selling the track shoes in West US while the other representative will be selling wrestling shoes nationwide and track shoes only in the East Cost). After this high-level meeting he goes to climb the Mount Fuji, where he met his love, a girl named Sarah. He had fallen in love with her. She visits him after several weeks and they celebrate Christmas (1964) together. On the other occasion she visited him for couple of weeks. However, her parents prohibited her from dating with Phil. Eventually, she drops him. He goes through enormous heartbreak and with support of one of his twin sisters, Jeanne, he resumes his work with the Blue Ribbon (selling the shoes).

In 1965 the year starts from the request of his former classmate, Jeff Johnson to become his sales representative because the pair of shoes that Phil send him were great and everyone was interested to buy. Eventually, he starts selling the shoes and overwhelms Phil with mail communication by sending daily mails. Jeff being a social worker loved socializing and decided to quit his social work and unite with runners and became full time sales person of Blue Ribbon. Jeff's persistence wins and he becomes the first full time sales with the salary of 400$ (even as a social worker he got 460$).

A friend of his father gave advice on Phil's career path saying that anyone changes jobs at least three times and each time they have to start all over again. So, he advised Phil to get his CPA while he is young. The CPA (Certified Public Account) along with MBA will put solid floor under the earnings. This way he can change jobs but will always maintain his salary level. Nice advice, isn't it?

Phil bought shoes (tiger model) for 3.33$ per pair and sold it for 6.95$ in the US.

During the flight to Japan, Phil was so nervous that he was trying to memorize a content of the book "How to do business with the Japanese".

in 1965 running wan't a sport. Apparently, people mocked the runners. Drivers would throw a beer or soda at them.

Reflection 3. pages 77-??? (1965-1980 years)

There were a lot happening starting from breaking up with Onitsuka in extremely unpleasant way, going through the trial and winning it, launch of new Blue Ribbon's brand "Nike", recruitment of promising athletes, constant shortage of cash and many other challenges that will be described below.

Blue Ribbon (BR) started to grow in sales with 100% growth each year. In 1967, it had Johnson on the East Coast and Bork in California. In addition, Bowerman recommended several people, including Bob Woodell who played a crucial role in the development of BR. He was a promising athlete (a track star) if not an accident where he injured his vertebra and had no hope of walking. Even though Bob was in the wheelchair, he had a strong stamina and will and never complained and furiously tackled all challenges at BR. At one moment, when Phil desperately needed cash to close his debt Bob's parents had given him all their savings. In 1974 there was a trial with Onisutka and Pre died. In 1975 BR bought their first factory in the US and started repairing it for 250,000

Cash. 150,000 in sales in 1968, 300,000 in sales in 1969, 1.3 million USD in 1971,

Phil's personal life. He was working as an accountant at Price Waterhouse for almost two years (1966-1967), then he became an assistant professor at Portland State University in Fall 1967. His aim was to free up time to dedicate to BR. At the university he had met his wife and married her within a year. She started working at BR and after four months they started dating and exchanged their vows on 13 September 1968. Phil quits teaching next year and accidentally learned that one of students were looking for a job and he offered to be design print ads, logoes, visuals for presentations (it was Caroly Davidson, who created a today's Nike swoosh). Phil describes himself as absentminded (he would drive to the grocery store and come home empty-handed, without the one item Penny asked. It was because of many business problems he had). Also, he apparently misplaced everything at home, especially wallets and keys. Besides, he wasn't housebroken. He left his clothes everywhere, left food on the counter, etc. Moreover, he was into himself. He was lost in his own thoughts, trying to solve some problems and developing plans. He didn't hear her or remember what she said. Finally, he hated loosing anything. He always blamed someone, remembered how his father didn;t let him win ping-pong when he was a child. On top of this, Penny had to manage tiny (25 USD per week) budget for groceries. In September 1969, they had a first baby (boy whom they named Matthew). In search of a new shoe supplier he agrees to do a business in a factory called, Canada in Guadalajara, Mexico. They produced first batch of the shoes but the quality was poor and shoes broke down quickly. Then BR had problems with the First National bank and Ito, from Nissho basically saved them and payed all the load fully after carefull examination of BR's accounting books. I stopped at page 255. he almost always was tongue-tied. loss of words,

Person:

Bowerman, Olympics trainer of track runners, very ambitious, meticulous, callous, persistent.

Hiraku Iwano, personal assistant of Kitami, one of Onitsuka's main representatives. Iwano in his twenties, innocent, just a kid.

Nissho Iwai, Japanese trading company, who helped BR a lot by loaning the cash. he believed that BR was very promising and could be 20 mln worth company. Ito is another person from this company, he was the most smartest man Phil ever met, meticulous, super confident, so self-assured. Phil called him the Ice Man.

Kitami, Onitsutka's main representative. He once played a guitar and sang an Italian song in the voice of an Irish tenor. The room was surreal. He proposes to sell the BR and later he refuses saying it. Onitsuka's plan was to replace BR with other distributors.

Pre, promising young athlete who changed after 1972 olympics and was never the same. He died at age of 24 in a car accident.

Bob Strasser, young lawyer, who helped BR win the case over Onitsutka and later because the partner of BR. His was best at negotiations. However, when Nike went public he stopped listening Phil and left the company. He joined adidas and Phil took it as betrail.

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