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

Personal Rating:

An Enthralling Tell-All Tale of Race to Victory

From an iconic brand logo of a swoosh that conveys motion, designed with a cheap price of only thirty-five dollars to a multibillion-dollar company name that revealed itself from a midnight sleep, named after the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, comes an inspiring success business story in an autobiography book, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016) — a beautifully written account of true events of the life of one of the world’s most sought-after footwear brands, Nike (formerly called Blue Ribbon Sports) and its co-founding father, Philip Hampson Knight. 

The now-retired Chairman Emeritus of NIKE, Inc., self-made American billionaire and shortlist of Forbes’ wealthiest people in the world, wrote the book himself. Though it’s evident that this book leans toward a business genre, it is however written in a creative and elaborate manner that consistently follows a structured five-part format of an ingenious plot; it is almost as if reading a simple historical fiction. Not only is the writing fluent and natural, but it’s also well-perceptive and expressive that masterfully balances the technical facts and their sentimental association with a chain of events. 

It’s no wonder that the book has this quality of writing. After all, the possibility of what he then referred to as the Crazy Idea was born and manifested out of Phil’s exhaustive research paper about Japanese running shoes. In an entrepreneurship class at Stanford Graduate School of Business, he presented the economic feasibility of these low-cost but high-quality shoes in the U.S. market. Though this was not well-received by the student body, he pursued this idea with his father. After graduation, he ventured on a solo trip to several countries, including Japan, where he pitched this crazy idea to a large manufacturing company of running shoes that got his first deal. Years later, his initial investment of fifty dollars that he borrowed from his father grew to multibillion-dollar sales, and his 1963 Valiant car, where he first housed the earliest pairs of shoes he sold, turned into five thousand stores worldwide.

What’s fascinating about Phil Knight is that he doesn’t claim his tremendous success all to himself. At the heart of this memoir, a good portion of the book that occupies within the great long pages of each chapter is an in-depth piece of writing that almost resembles a eulogy, a homage to his co-founders and pioneers who were the original members of the executive in the mid-sixties and seventies — from Bill Bowerman, a former U.S. Olympic track coach who designed some of Nike’s classics such as the 1967 Cortez (a long-distance training shoe) and the 1972 waffle-soled shoes; to the First Employees who, like Phil, a group of misfits trying to fight against corporate normalcy. It’s a beautiful homage, an unfeigned combination of drama, comedy, and suspense that’s both exhilarating and heartbreaking to read. 

Now and then, they would go through this whole series of legal battles against creditors, competitors, and even their own bankers that nearly put them out of business every time. And then, at the peak of heightened interest, when something would come up again, a question is begging to be answered, whether they’re going to make it or not? The behind-the-scenes bloopers work well to ease the tension, and every win is such a sigh of relief that it’s hard not to hold on to the edge of the seat and root for these characters. 

“Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck,” Phil admitted. He said that some things happen by coincidental fate, and so long as humans work hard, these spiritual beings would nudge the universe into manifesting that individual’s own version of fortune. 

Phil closed the memoir with the epilogue, after the events of 1980 when Nike finally went public on the stock market. In his final reflection, he revealed that despite his multibillion-dollar worth, he wished he could do it all over again; a feeling of regret. Perhaps, that’s the moral lesson here: that regret is inevitable whether a decision or choice is made or not, so why not pursue it? Or in the words of Nike, Just Do It. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike written by Phil Knight is four out of five stars.