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Nike, Inc.: Athletic Apparel And Fashion Industry

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Since the early days of its inception, Nike, Inc has stood out as one of the most dominant competitors in the athletic apparel and fashion industries. With a net worth of over $15.9 billion dollars and the title of most valuable brand in the sporting world, the brand has proven that it has no intention of slowing down in terms of success and innovation (Ozanian, 2018). This research paper will explore the brand, Nike’s, creation, evolution and growth and deduce why it has found such tremendous achievement within the last fifty four years (O'Reilly, 2018). Nike, Inc. initially called Blue Ribbon Sports was founded by university track and field coach, Bill Bowerman and his former student, Phil Knight at Beaverton, Oregon (Encyclopedia Britannica, …show more content…

which was named after the greek goddess of victory, went public with a fresh and recognisable logo, a curved checkmark called “The Swoosh” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018). The brand mark was intended to convey motion while still maintaining a classic and simplistic aesthetic, when it was created in 1971 by Portland State University graphic design student, Carolyn Davidson, and till this day it can be recognised by people worldwide (Tailor Brands, 2018). “JUST DO IT” is the brand’s slogan , carefully constructed by Nike’s agency Wieden+Kennedy. It is another successful brand element that assists in motivating consumers to not only accept the brand as an apparel company but also as a lifestyle (Klimovski et al., 2018). Currently the brand boasts more than one thousand, one hundred and seventy two distributors in more than one hundred and seventy countries (Statista, 2018) (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018). Initially Nike’s target audience was runners, because of both Bowerman and Knight’s involvement in track and field. With this demographic in mind they identified the problems with the training shoes at that time and aimed to fix them with their patented light weight training shoes that were outfitted with their waffle nubs designed for better traction. After their debut of the new innovative shoes in 1972, they gained their first brand ambassador, American , Steve Prefontaine (Successstory.com, …show more content…

According to statistics, Nike, Inc. had 48% of the U.S. athletic footwear market and 96% of the basketball footwear market in 2016 (Statista, 2017). The brand has this edge over its competitors due to many varying reasons, one being scope. Nike, Inc. has introduced a wide range of products such as, shoes, clothing and equipment for men, women and children of all ages. By doing this they effectively gathered most of the market population and proves that their reach is larger than their competitors (Forbes.com,

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