Nike's annual earnings are over $2.5 billion, but it all started in a small kitchen thanks to a Sunday brunch and an old waffle iron!
By: Robert Smith
For its first eight years, Nike® was just another athletic shoe company. That changed one Sunday morning in 1972, when Bill Bowerman and his wife Barbara were making waffles.
Bowerman was a University of Oregon coach when he and Phil Knight, a former track
star, joined forces in 1964. With $1,000 and a handshake, they started Blue Ribbon Sports,
dedicating themselves to finding and selling better running shoes.
At first, they did just that -- sourcing shoes from Japanese manufacturers and selling
them at track meets from the back of Bowerman’s car. Then they began making shoes of their own, applying science to footwear design. A raft of innovations followed, but the very first was born in Bowerman’s kitchen in 1972.
That year, Oregon resurfaced its Hayward Field track with urethane, and Bowerman was experimenting with new shoe soles. He thought if he could make a sole with just the right pattern, it might grip the track better.
Inspiration struck one Sunday morning when he noticed the waffles coming out of his wife’s 1930s waffle iron. It created a pattern of nubs that protruded from the waffles like tire treads.
“I think that might work,” said Bowerman.
And right then and there, he grabbed the appliance, ran out to his shop, and poured
liquid urethane into the waffle iron. The result was the first "waffle sole” -- a design he refined as the Waffle Trainer in 1974.
A parade of innovations followed, including wedged heels, cushioned mid-soles and
nylon uppers. And Nike became a powerhouse in athletic apparel.
By the time Bowerman died in 1999, Nike was on the road to being a $20 billion
company. But much of the creativity that fueled its growth began that Sunday morning in
Bowerman’s kitchen
Bill Bowerman of Nike exemplifies an axiom featured on our website thinkofthat.net. Solve a problem in your profession. He looked everywhere for ways to improve running shoes, and found the answer in a waffle iron. Now Why Didn’t I Think of That?