Spoilers Ahead

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE Phil Knight

Rating: 4 of 5

I completed reading Shoe Dog in about 10 days. Its a very easy book to read and I found it engaging and entertaining.

The book chronicals Phil Knight founding Nike. Originally called the Blue Ribbon Shoe Company from 1962 until it finally goes public in 1980. There’s a longish epilog set in 2007(?) after Phil Knight has retired from running Nike day to day.

The story starts with 24 year old Phil having graduated from Standford business school with an MBA (I think) and him getting his father to finance an around the world working vacation for him. He eventually travels to Japan with the idea to import low cost Japanese manufatured sport shoes into the USA market… Honestly, you can likely figure out the story without reading the book. There are very few surprises. What I found interesting was:

• In the 1960’s importing low cost poorly manufatured goods from Japan was how you undercut more costly US and European manufactured goods similar to what is currently done with Chinese imports.
• In the 1960’s Japanese manufacturing was seen as cheap and marginal (but improving) quality.
• Banking law was drastically different then today. It was difficult to finance the company. There was no concept of Venture Capital especially for a Shoe company.

Phil Knight is hardly a “Horatio Alger” story. His father was pretty successful and Phil was very connected. He wasn’t “East Coast Money” but he was definitely born well and without his parents money I doubt Nike would have happened.

A lot of Nike’s early employee stories are interesting. Phil makes a lot of the early employee’s (himself included) sound like functional alcoholics. Perhaps Phil is exaggerating. Its difficult for me to tell. They are described as a group of pretty type A aggressive guys. Phil fondly refers to his team as “The Buttfaces”. Interestly with the exception of one fellow they stay with him from the early stages of the company to the end. Harsh criticism was expected between the team. You couldn’t be “sensitive” and last long working with Phil. Despite this his working relationship with his employees was strong and he seems to really love them.

I get the sense that Phil’s relationship with his wife and children suffered because of his dedication to Nike. He indicates that his relationship with his older son (Mathew) was poor and that Mathew suffered from addiction. Mathew died in a tragic scuba accident as a adult as well and Phil has regret about this. Its interesting to consider: Could Phil have been more available to his wife and kids and still built Nike? We will never know.

Some could rewrite Shoe Dog thusly: Privledged white guy imports shoes from Asia.
Through labor arbitrage and the right type of sales and marketing he gets rich beyond human imagination ($10 billion) despite running a team of type A asshole alcoholics. But this rewrite would obscure an interesting human story. We shouldn’t take away from Phil’s success because he was in the right place at the right time with the right idea. We should enjoy that he truely loved building Nike. In the end it was about the game and the journey for him, the cash was just the score board.