jeff johnson, nike net worth
"The meaning of running grows over time," he says. Just as a baseball player is only as good as his last at-bat, Knight figures Nike is only as good as its last quarterly report. In a barrage of new TV spots and full-page newspaper ads, Nike unveiled its latest pitchman: pro golfer Tiger Woods. To the idea of Nike and its well-healed employees, the truly small and bereft of knowledge will respond that this global behemoth has overseen sweatshops around the world that exploited poorly paid employees. As Knight recalls about his companys austere past, Any dollar that wasnt nailed down I was plowing directly back into the business. Thinking about the corporate tax through the prism of Knight always operating on a constantly shredding shoestring, the corporate tax robs companies of their present and future. The company paid $35 to commission a new logo--a fat checkmark dubbed a "swoosh"--and the new shoe debuted at the 1972 Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore. Nike sold $3.2 million worth of shoes in 1972, and its profits doubled each of the next 10 years. The richest golf stars of 2022 . They aren't directly about running, but their messages apply to running. His father, a salesman himself, pushes Johnson to ask for more a partnership in Blue Ribbon, $600 in monthly salary, and a third of all profits after 6,000 pairs sold. Now, 10 years after Nike's upheaval, Phil Knight has become a sort of professor emeritus. Their short time together--one season of track--was enough for Johnson to reach out to Vin Lananna, the former University of Oregon coach, and tell him about Wheating's potential. And I'm still uneasy with it. ", But it's more than that. It was Johnson (described as "Employee Number One") who suggested the name Nike - the Greek goddess of victory. ", Nike went public in 1980 and the stock market pressure shifted the culture from jeans and T-shirts to coats and ties. But there was one tough component--the 1-mile warm-up. My kingdom for liquidity. What this writer would give to have every politician read Knights story, and for Knight to come to Washington in his retirement to tell his story. Knight knows intuitively what Adam Smith properly observed in the 18th century, that the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods. Money facilitates the trade that always benefits both sides. Nike is also opening up more Nike Town stores, which are as much museum as retail outlet. Today, Forbes estimates his net worth at more than $25 billion, making him the 24th richest person in the United States . It officially became Nike Inc. in 1971.. Eventually, he'll compile his favorites into a book for runners. Before Shortform, he co-founded PrepScholar, an online education company. Michael Dell's estimated net worth slid from $34.3 billion last year to $22.9 billion. Knight was raised in the Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland, and graduated from Cleveland High School. He straightens out of a slouch, steadies his gaze and, like a shortstop, waits to field the next question. He then continued his education at the University of Oregon, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, worked as a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald, and was a middle-distance runner. "Until the third or fourth week, the possibility that I would never get out of a wheelchair was real. It owns a movie studio, theatres and a marketing company. Knight also understood that this lust for heroes and appreciation for in-your-face attitude is not limited to American youth. Few took Knight seriously; least of all the dominant brand at the time, Adidas. Besides sharing the nuts and bolts of training, Johnson transformed the budding talent into a middle-distance specialist and filled out his regimen with plyometrics. Knight laughs uncomfortably and reaches for his watch as if embarrassed to have committed two personal transgressions: He reflected out loud, and he exposed a small corner of his heart. Once in Knights employ they were soon enough riding bikes to work, then scooters, then driving automobiles. He believed that shaving an ounce off a pair of shoes for a guy running a mile could make a big difference. He has a passion for non-fiction books (having read 200+ and counting) and is on a mission to make the world's best ideas more accessible to everyone. They know that if they try it again and again they are going to improve.". Enough already.". Examples in this review will show why thats perhaps true. It forgot about the women. Nike's "swoosh" logo, now deemed one of the most expensive logos globally, was approved for $35 by graphic design undergraduate Carolyn Davidson in 1971. He does because hes plainly a humanitarian, but also because it certainly is bad for business. Required fields are marked *. We welcome all corrections and feedback using the button below. Much has been made of Knight's meditative, almost dreamy mien and his affinity for all things Asian, especially Japanese. The global expansion of Nike has been a certain enemy of poverty, but at the same time Knight writes with regret of three layoff periods in ten years that forced his company to lay off 15,000+. Is the footnote still the handmaiden of academia, or has "Genius" is the one attribute on the list that Knight questions. A road trip with Jeff Johnson, Nike's original wage-earner, unveils a treasure of running history. Some say the logo is worth the net worth of the Nike brand, valuing it as a more than $30 billion image. Like many of the 2,700 employees on the campus, Knight instinctively glances down at his visitor's shoes before taking a seat at the far end of the conference table, his back to the picture window that offers a view of the campus and the 10-acre lake anchoring it. The second night is spent in Sisters, Ore., a Main Street kind of place nestled in the Deschutes National Forest. moment," Knight says. His channel proved to be an immediate success, earning more than 40,000 subscribers within the first six months of its existence. Immediately, Knight's ownership in shares made him worth $178 million. From an economics standpoint, Knights recollection of nearly always being in debt for the first 18 years of the companys existence, of always fearing the one incorrect move that would bankrupt Nike, is instructive on its own. Newspaper columnists decried "Just Do It" as a nihilistic slogan that justified or even begat these crimes. To Knight, Nikes early history, one defined by near constant fear of bankruptcy, was the story to tell. Jeff Johnson Nike Net Worth. This is how he secured the distribution rights for Tiger in the western United States. When the Olympic trials conclude, he packs up his gray Subaru and drives back home to add these memories and photos to those captured over the past 50 years. "We don't always see things the same, but when our conversation is over I at least know he has listened to my perspective. "Apparently, they shared the same whim because they accepted me," he says. Run 50 meters three times. A former middle-distance runner at the University of Oregon (he ran a respectable 4:10 mile), Knight, MBA '62, has been on a 30-year endorphin rush. Nike engineered shoes for the top echelon of athletes to compete and train in. Where Knight was once famous for governing by instinct, today Nike studies reams of statistics and convenes a focus group before designing a new shoelace. "And he helped build that connection in our culture.". According to our Database, He has no children. He holds Class A and Class B shares through a Delaware-based holding company appropriately named "Swoosh". But these days he is more interested in being an artist than a businessman. But make no mistake: As athletically awesome and charismatic as Michael Jordan is, he alone did not make Nike as recognizable worldwide as Coke and McDonalds. Phil and Penny, have been long time contributors and supporters for the University of Oregon athletic fund and have been honored by many times over by the school. Knight reports that around the founding of Blue Ribbon, 26 out of 27 companies failed. Though he carries a cell phone in the car, he insists that he never uses it. His involvement had always been focused on the startup phase, so he handed the Farm Team off to Frank Gagliano in 2001 and returned to New Hampshire. At 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning, Johnson abruptly woke up from a sound sleep, shot up in bed and knew he had it. But in 1984, it was unprecedented. The company paid $35 to commission a new logo--a fat checkmark dubbed a "swoosh"--and the new shoe debuted at the 1972 Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore. Allen graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude and attended medical training at the MD/PhD program at Harvard and MIT. Then Jeff Johnson, '63, a fellow running geek, proposed a name that came to him in a dream: Nike, for the Greek winged goddess of victory. President Trump and many on his economic team regularly tell us that the China, Japan, Mexico and other foreign countries are beating us to a pulp. Funny is this ridiculous theory. Precisely because theyre doing things differently, few take them seriously. He chooses the location because of Casa Jaramillo, a Mexican restaurant he enjoyed on an earlier trip. Here's what you'll find in our full Shoe Dog summary : Allen Cheng is the founder of Shortform. But Bowerman still wasn't satisfied. In addition to his work at Nike, Knight also had a hand in the success of the animation studio Laika. Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center And Johnson was an even more prolific salesman than Knight. Could Nike's Phil Knight Really Buy The Trail Blazers? The Ducks ultimately recruited Wheating in 2006 and he went on to make the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic teams. It's the central, unifying culture of the United States and the stuff of romance and dreams. "But you better not spend much time doing that, because every six months is a new lifetime, and you've got to worry about what's coming up to stay ahead of the curve," he says. (Encounter), along with Popular Economics (Regnery Publishing, 2015). The swooshNike's iconic symbolwas designed by a college art student who was paid $35 for her design work, at the rate of $2 per hour. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. All net worths are calculated using data drawn from public sources. Ok, but imagine if Nike and its owners had been taxed quite a bit less. About this broad point, Knight largely stays away from politics in his autobiography, but it seems reasonable to believe that the founder leans small l libertarian. Jeff Johnson - the first employee In 1965 they hired Jeff Johnson - the perfect employee one could hope for. Nike also owns the Converse and Jordan brands. The following year Johnson picked up a copy of Boy's Life and read an article on Charlie Paddock, the fastest man in the world. Instead, he opts for core exercises in his hotel room. We can handle this. "Nike is the prime representative of the way we overmarket and overadvertise and overdo everything these days," says Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies in the USC school of cinema and television. Jeff Johnson has settled on the location of their first East Coast office Wellesley, MA, a place where runners seemed to abound and the Boston Marathon runs through. Jeff Johnson, Nike's first employee, recommended calling the firm "Nike," named after the Greek flying goddess of victory, and Blue Ribbon Sports has consequently renamed Nike in 1978. "Sometimes I look out there and I get goosebumps," says Knight, almost dreamily. "What the hell is that?" "What else you got?" "Where should I sit?" and absurd," Wheating says. The always silly notion of antitrust is further exposed in this essential autobiography. "We're not in the fashion business, as the Wall Street Journal wrote the other day," says Knight, clearly still peeved. We have estimated Jeff Johnson's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Really? Even though the company's commercials have been hailed as pop art, Nike has been denounced for turning sports stars into cartoonish berathletes and creating a market of young consumers blinded by idolatry. The company made a quantum leap in 1984 when it signed the 21-year old Jordan to endorse a basketball sneaker. Then there are the three library-style drawers where Johnson keeps thousands of note cards scribbled with quotes he's come across over the years. Jeff Johnson's income source is mostly from being a successful . Knight has been portrayed as mysterious, inscrutable, eccentric, unpredictable, enigmatic, idiosyncratic, shy, aloof, reclusive, competitive and a genius. Nike courts controversy. How lucky Nike employees are that they get to hear about how it all began in Knights parents basement, all of this before Blue Ribbon could afford to rent a space connected to a raucous bar; this one with broken windows that this then-fledgling company lacked the funds to fix. After returning from Japan in 1964, the 26-year-old Knight began peddling Onitsuka running shoes from the back of his green Plymouth Valiant at track meets across the Pacific Northwest. In Palo Alto, Johnson met Phil Knight, who of course went on to become the founder and CEO of Nike. Theres only one person crazy and passionate enough to do this at a moments notice Jeff Johnson. Using independent subcontractors, Nike makes many of its products in Indonesia, a world pariah for its well-documented human-rights abuses. More information on Jeff Johnson can be found here. The club moved to Eugene in 2006 and morphed into the Oregon Track Club, of which Wheating and fellow Olympians Nick Symmonds and Ian Dobson are members. The response from his top-of-the-heap MBA classmates was silence. . ", An adoring sports media lapped up the young man's winning soundbite. "We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. All he wore was a pair of sandals. Nike passed Adidas to become the industry leader in the United States in 1980, the year it went public. "We had gangs in third grade," he remembers. He wouldnt have done this if there had been manufacturing capacity in the States capable of and willing to make the shoes for him here. The company desperately needed one. 383 pages later theyll know more about a not-so-dismal dismal science than theyll ever know if they go the conventional route of reading boring textbooks full of charts, formulas, and statistics. But did you know she All those things make sense, but it also cant have hurt that Knight had a major chip on his shoulder. Nike aggressively signed NBA players. Nike NKE closed its stores across the U . He looked at every exercise like doing repeat quarters. . Blue Ribbon moves out of Phils apartment and into its first real office. "Nike is at times feisty, or counterestablishment, deliberately," says Spence, the business school dean. Absent a globalized supply chain, Nike once again isnt Nike. Indeed, Knight first presented his ideas for a shoe company (jogging shoes) at Stanford Business School. ", In the late 1990s, Johnson and Lananna created the Nike Farm Team, a training group for post-collegiate athletes based at Stanford, where Lananna coached at the time. Money for Blue Ribbon, and eventually Nike, was always tight. Interesting about Shoe Dog is that it pretty much ends in 1980 when Nike was taken public. As Knight recalls, Not one [student] asked a single question. his co-worker asked. solved mysteries in her spare time? And for those with underdeveloped public personas, Nike has not hesitated to fill in the blanks. Unlike most people who take up running to accomplish a goal, lose weight or join a team, Johnson's initial inspiration was survival. His own father thought he was jackassing around. War is about wealth destruction, its about the extermination of human capital that is the driver of all wealth creation. Sorry, but theres no free lunch. Thinking about Europe and Japan alone (Knights description of 1960s Tokyos bombed out existence in Shoe Dog is chilling and sad), imagine how much more prosperous both would be, and by extension imagine how much more prosperous the U.S. would be today, absent the waste of precious life that the war was. Then the German companies came in with $30 shoes, which were more comfortable. During an executive meeting in 1983, Knight reshuffled the roles of his highest-ranking deputies. "I thought, 'If I am going to be better than Charlie Paddock, I better do the hard thing,' so I emphasized that," Johnson says. The Real Reason, How Phil Knight started Nike when he was just 24 years old, The ups and downs of Nike over 20 years of business. If one of those athletes weren't Michael Jordan, consumers worldwide might still be pronouncing Nike like Mike. "He once said in a speech that the worst thing he could envision was to sit his grandkids on his knee and have them ask him, 'What's a Nike?' Eventually, Knight purchased Will Vinton Studios, and in 2003 he branded the company under the new name Laika. Despite the agony, despite the countless times his creation nearly died, its this part of the story that Knight says he would live again if he could. Despite the arguments of Johnsons father, Phil holds steady he would give Johnson a $50 raise, and that was it. Government is an expensive lunch paid for by you, the worker. Matt McCue is a frequent contributor to Running Times and the author of An Honorable Run. If were trading with individuals around the world, wars that kill those trading partners become rather expensive. Blue Ribbon Sports cleared $3,240 in its first year, 1964. Hes lived Brenners quote, and much more. "Even when you are done with it, it is not done with you.". Midway through 1965 Knight hired Jeff Johnson, his first full-time employee. Award-winning journalist and communications specialist known best for his social and political commentary on BET, MSNBC, and syndicated radio. Blue Ribbons first salesman, Jeff Johnson has a personality quirk he sends Phil mountains of letters, detailing his every development, every sale and notable customer. But first, he traveled to Japan, where he became enamored of Japanese culture and business practices. That same wrestling coach from 1964 who was supposed to stick to wrestling shoes. It was also time to give his fledgling company a new name and logo. About early finance for his company, Knight dealt with the very local First National Bank of Oregon. Knight, 58, still has the lean, almost gaunt build of a runner. Little did he know that the decision would change his life. (It was originally called Blue Ribbon Sports before being renamed Nike in 1971.) Even Billionaires Like Phil Knight Have Trouble Finding A Parking Spot For Their $65 Million Private Jets. ", Some consider Nike--with its swoosh popping up on uniforms, on the lapels of college basketball coaches, even as bus-size renderings on walls of stadiums--responsible for the over-commercialization of sports. The press savaged the ads for posing Woods as a racial trailblazer, a path long since pioneered by black golfers such as Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder. An avid photographer, Johnson snapped classic images of the many distance wunderkind in the 1960s and 1970s. When they met, Andrew Wheating told Johnson he wanted to be a top 5K runner. "In a very short period of time, Phil Knight created one of the greatest American commerce stories of the 20th century," says sports agent David Falk, who has frequently butted heads with Knight over the marketing and representation of athletes. In his mind, Johnson is still a lithe teenager striding across the trails of northern California, sights set on breaking 4:30 for the mile. Subsequently, Knight began selling the Tiger shoes out of his car, a green Plymouth Valiant, at various track meets across the Pacific Northwest. Just about every item ever produced by Knights wondrous company was manufactured somewhere not the United States, not to mention that Knights financial savior in Blue Ribbons (Knights original shoe company before Nike) less prosperous days was a Japanese trading company, Nissho. His black, collarless shirt buttons up to his Adam's apple. He is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc., and was previously chairman and CEO of the company. FAQs. They wanted you to never, ever outgrow your cash balance. Not much has changed since. At the same time, the company's mass marketing made the shoes so attractive and desirable that they became a de rigueur accessory to the American wardrobe and dream--even if increasingly sedentary teens only wore them to watch TV. As the perhaps overly modest Knight notes, Whenever reporters said a factory was unsatisfactory, they never said how much better it was than the day we first went in. Interesting about Nikes overseas factories is that the company always paid above the prevailing market rate; sometimes so much above it that Nike, according to Knight, was disrupting the nations entire economic ecosystem. Translated, there were times when exploited Nike factory workers were earning more than doctors in the impoverished countries that Nike entered. He found a way to harness society's worship of heroes, obsession with status symbols and predilection for singular, often rebellious figures. Stanford University. Not that Reebok endorser Sean Kemp or Converse man Larry Johnson (both guilty of taunting lesser opponents while representing the United States in the 1994 World Games) are paragons of virtue, but Nike pioneered the trend of signing athletes who project attitude as well as excellence. They got their iconic "swoosh" logo from graphic design student Carolyn Davidson in 1971, paying her $35 for the commission. By signing, promoting and eventually turning Jordan into a legend, Nike played a pivotal role in revving up the cult of personality that now pervades sports. Jeffrey Jordan (born November 8, 1988) is famous for being basketball player. Johnson, 70, is the kind of guy who sets out on a 3,050-mile trip without making a single hotel reservation or mapping out any stopping points along the route west. Nike has since eclipsed Adidas, but then history tells us some apparel and shoemaker will eventually eclipse Nike. The incident became a symbol for those concerned with the inexorable and rapidly advancing influence of money in the world of athletics, obscuring or even warping the purity of the Games themselves. According to this. Jeff Johnson sends advertising ideas (Phil doesnt believe in advertising), shoe designs (Phil already has enough to deal with with Bowerman), and his insistence on opening a retail shop in Los Angeles. "Phil is always thinking ahead," says Nelson Farris, Nike's director of corporate education and a Knight confidante for 23 years. Interesting about trade is that money is solely a lubricant of it, or a way to push capital goods into the future as investment. he asks. When the aerobic fad hit in the mid-'80s, Nike ignored it. "It's one thing to have good ideas and another to make that idea come to fruition like Jeff did," says Lananna, an OTC supporter. Knights book rejects what is ridiculous. "Mike Pallet had like 50 kids in his and then there was me. Late at night, he leans back in his office chair and gazes out the window. And Knight took leave of our interview by forming a steeple with his hands and bowing. Phil feels smothered and rarely replies to Jeff Johnsons letters. .css-17zuyas{display:block;font-family:Sailec,Sailec-fallback,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:bold;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-17zuyas:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-17zuyas{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-17zuyas{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-17zuyas{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-17zuyas{font-size:1.2rem;line-height:1.4;}}.css-17zuyas h2 span:hover{color:#CDCDCD;}Coaches Tips for Tackling the Boston Marathon, What You Need to Know About Threshold Training, Periodized Training Can Help You Hit Your Goals, What Every Runner Should Know about Fascia, Why Slowing Down Can Help You Get Faster (Really! Woods may be the company's current star, but its controversial CEO and founder is the real story. After 50 years of working out, his body was familiar breaking down tissue, resting and recovering, and doing it all over again the next day. The area serves as a launching point for hikers scrambling up the nearby snow-capped peaks or a refueling station for said victorious climbers. After Johnson retired from Nike, he returned to his beloved New England to live a quiet life. "The athletes are knocking themselves out in the rehab room. Though he was tapped out at the time, Johnson fondly reflects on his 18-year career at Nike. Individuals are only sellers insofar as theyre buyers, or exporters as insofar as theyre importers. Knights story is unputdownable as both autobiography and business book, and then as an economics book, it is endlessly great. Not only did Bowerman actually place an order for the shoes, he actually propositioned Knight to become his business partner. This reviewer simply hopes that Knight takes more time to explain what he did, and what he saw. He evolved into a distance runner, the kind described as having a lot of "heart. Silly stuff. Nike has become a major player in promoting women's sports as well as funneling money into inner-city sports programs. A voice in his head told him, "This is no big deal. Within a year, it seemed that every boy in America was strutting about in the clunky, siren-red Air Jordan high-tops. He was a middle-distance runner for the University of Oregon track team, which at the time had one of the best programs in the country. Notable here is that Knights early days as a shoe dog were spent in Japan, the manufacturing locale for his shoes. He currently resides in Harrogate, Yorkshire, England, UK. He returned to coaching, something he did when he worked at the Nike factory, and began serving as a volunteer assistant for the local high school running programs around Lebanon. "That's partly Phil and partly the athletic culture Nike is modeled after. Knight lived it, and the uncertainty of a yen sans a price rule was that life was suddenly treacherous for any company doing the bulk of its production in Japan. So while the Japanese wisely didnt devalue the yen as much as Presidents Nixon and Carter wrecked the dollar in the 70s, floating exchange rates made conducting business there quite a bit more difficult. He reads broadly, covering a wide range of subjects including finance, management, health, and society. Laika's first feature film was the stop motion animated film "Coraline" (2009). For the first time, he was excited to read about something other than sports. November 23, 2021. When were shooting at one another, were not improving one another through trade. "She'll smoke me.". It's like picking up John DeLorean in a Yugo. Without the full-length cushioned mid-sole, which Johnson invented from shower thongs, many of us would be on crutches today. Flashing a teeth-baring grin, the white-haired Johnson still dons the Swoosh from head (his sunglasses) to toe (his beloved Nike Free 3.0s, which are no longer made, but as luck would have it, he found along the way at a factory outlet store in Iowa). Johnson recommended that Wheating keep track of his weekly miles and run every day. It wasn't the first time Johnson and Lananna collaborated. Even if Johnson "only" got $10,000 in Nike stock, those shares would now be worth nearly $1 billion. The following morning Johnson had to undergo an MRI. Every day different. But the shoe still needed a name so Jeff Johnson, Nike's first full-time employee, came up with the word Nike. In 1971 Johnson gave the company its most distinguishable asset: its name. "We had no master plan," Knight acknowledges. Known as "Buck," Knight had more enthusiasm than talent, which made him the ideal human guinea pig for legendary track coach Bill Bowerman's endless tinkering with running shoes. The company was renamed Nike, after the Greek winged goddess of victory, at the suggestion of their first employee, Jeff Johnson. . "I used to believe that a good product sold itself," says Knight, who like many of his employees sports a Nike "swoosh" tattoo, his on his left calf. What these ankle-biters fail to understand is that when Nike arrived in Vietnam (this alone could be a book itself, and an interesting one at that), the workers in its factories were walking to work. Employees reported to work in sneakers and shorts, partied hard and made decisions on the run. He is from United States. He loves to talk about running, but when the conversation turns toward his own routine, he all but apologizes for his current state of fitness. Traveling north over the dry flatlands of western Idaho and into Oregon, Johnson decides to pack it in for the night in Ontario, a speck-of-dust town right off the interstate. Net Worth in 2022. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In Knights case, the man who signed Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson and Tiger Woods to lucrative endorsement deals predicted a pedestrian NBA career for Magic Johnson, and years later viewed Ryan Leaf as a better pro prospect than Peyton Manning. Reebok's sales surpassed Nike's in 1987. On Tuesday night, May 3, 2004, "The Sopranos" had just ended when Johnson, then 62, felt like he'd been hit by lightning. Trade is a two way, lifestyle enhancing street. So Phil flies to Jeff Johnson and his father to negotiate. "It was probably going to close in five minutes and I'd have another job, probably one I hated just as much as the one I had now and was bad at. "When I first went to meet with Wieden and Kennedy [Nike's Portland-based ad agency], I told them: 'I don't like advertising.'