Nike has three birthdays: the 1964 handshake, the 1967 incorporation, the 1971 name. For its first seven years it sold someone else's shoes

When Nike was born depends on which document you read. The company’s official article says Blue Ribbon Sports was born the moment Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman shook hands at a Portland hotel at midday on Saturday, January 25, 1964.

The annual report gives another year. NIKE, Inc. was incorporated in 1967 under the laws of the State of Oregon. And according to an encyclopedia compiling the record, the name became Nike in May 1971. The handshake, the incorporation and the name make three birthdays.

Between those three dates lie the seven years when Nike was not yet Nike. During that time, what Blue Ribbon Sports sold was not its own shoes. Listed companies fall outside this site’s criteria for cases, so only those seven years are traced here through numbers, as a column.

From the 1964 handshake to parting with the supplier in 1972

The official article gives only the date and place of the handshake and the fact that the first contract came two years later. It does not state how much was invested or how many pairs were first ordered. Every figure sits on the side of the annual report and the encyclopedia compiling the record.

The first contract came two years after the handshake

The official article contains one line that stands out. The two signed their first contract two years after the handshake. The handshake told as the company’s birth was, legally, no promise at all.

They signed a contract in 1966 and incorporated in 1967, three years from the handshake. In that time, the first year’s 1,300 pairs and $8,000 grew to $20,000 in the second year. What follows is inference: the contract and the corporation can be read as catching up only once sales were big enough to need those forms.

For the first seven years, it sold another company’s shoes

Blue Ribbon Sports began as a distributor selling Japan’s Onitsuka shoes in the United States. The first year’s 1,300 pairs were Japanese running shoes too. Many were reportedly sold straight from Knight’s car at track meets.

A distributorship works well as long as the supplier keeps making the product. No effort goes into finding shoes that sell or into making them. That advantage, though, lasts only as long as the relationship with the supplier lasts.

In 1971, Onitsuka demanded that 51% of Blue Ribbon Sports be handed to it. A demand for a majority. The relationship ended the following year, 1972. The name became Nike and the Swoosh was first used in exactly that year, 1971. Their own name and mark appeared in the year the relationship with the supplier wavered.

The desk reads this sequence as structure rather than coincidence. In a business selling someone else’s product, the more sales grow, the more the business is worth to the supplier and the stronger the supplier’s reason to change the terms. Having its own name and mark was the way out of that structure.

The mark, too, was registered two and a half years after first use

The gaps in dates are not limited to birthdays. The Swoosh was first used on June 18, 1971, and registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office on January 22, 1974. From first use to legal protection as its own took two years and seven months.

The first store also came two years after the handshake, in 1966: a single shop opened on a street in Santa Monica. Until then the sales floors had been track meets and a car. Form, name, mark and store all followed the same pattern: sales came first, and paperwork and premises caught up later. The founding story compresses everything into the moment of a handshake, but on the record this company spent seven years gradually adding things of its own.

Supplier dependence can also be what kills small businesses

The danger of doing business on top of someone else’s product or platform appears in the records of much smaller businesses as well. In the column counting the causes of death of 11 closed cases, dependence on a platform was one of the causes more common than running out of money. A ten-year Amazon seller account shows a business built on someone else’s marketplace itself being bought and sold.

The list setting Nike beside other legendary companies is in the column tracing 22 founding legends to their sources.

What could be confirmed

The limits need stating. The first year’s 1,300 pairs and $8,000 and 1965’s $20,000 were checked against an encyclopedia’s compilation, not the books of the time. How much each founder put in and how many pairs were first ordered from Onitsuka could not be confirmed in the sources read. The date the name became Nike, Inc. follows the encyclopedia’s statement of May 30, 1971. The details of how the Onitsuka relationship ended were not available in what was read.

The handshake story, three dates and 51%

In the official article, Nike’s founding is told as a single scene of a handshake. On paper, the handshake, the contract, the incorporation and the name pile up with dates slightly out of step. Inside those gaps lie seven years as a distributor.

It is natural for the legend to tell the handshake. But what best explains why this company came to have its own name, the desk thinks, is the figure of 51% in 1971. A company selling another firm’s shoes created its own name and mark in the year its supplier demanded a majority. It has three birthdays because it was born in three stages.