Nike: Phil Knight’s Net Worth

“We wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour. Play by the rules, but be ferocious.”

-          Phil Knight

Billionaire. Philip “Phil” Hampson Knight is an American business tycoon and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and the current chairman emeritus of sports kits company, Nike Inc. He also doubles as the owner of Laika, a stop motion film production company.

As of 2021, Knight was ranked the world's 28^th richest person by Forbes, with a net worth of $42 billion. However, his net worth is currently estimated to be roughly $45.5 billion.

Background

Knight was born on February 24, 1938, to the family of Bill and Lota Knight, in Portland Oregon, where he grew up. He attended Cleveland high school and furthered his education at the University of Oregon (UO), Eugene.

After graduating from UO, Knight enlisted with the US Army and served one year on active duty, after which he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Knight produced a paper for his small business class, entitled: “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?" At this time, he already had the interest to venture into making sports shoes, with an ambition to import high-quality and low-cost running shoes from Japan to America.

Knight’s professional career began with a white-collar job with Coopers & Lybrand, where he worked as a Certified Public Accountant. He later changed jobs to work with then price Waterhouse, before settling to become an accounting professor at Portland State University.

Phil would, later on, reveal that up until he was 14 years old he always wanted to be in the big league as a baseball player, but never lived up to that expectation because he was cut off from his high school's baseball team. Many years later, he changed his focus from being active in the big league to "market the product". “

“We’ve come around to saying that Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool,” Phil Knight.

On Knight's quest to find the most suitable brand for his importation business, he discovered the Tiger brand running shoes manufactured by Onitsuka Co. (now Asics) in Kobe. The first samples took up to a year to be shipped to Knight.

A proper company was later created after Knight's first successful sales from a storied green Plymouth Valiant automobile. The company's first employee, Jeff Johnson, suggested that the name should be "Nike", named after the Greek winged goddess of victory. Blue Ribbon Sports was then renamed Nike in 1978.

Nike Logo

The Nike “swoosh” logo is considered one of the most valuable logos in the world today. It was designed by student Carolyn Davidson in 1971, commissioned at $35. According to Knight, he didn’t “love it” at the time but said it would grow on it. Davidson was later given an undisclosed amount of Nike stock for her lasting contribution to the company’s brand.

Nike (NKE) Market Capitalization

Market cap: $229.00 Billion (according to companiesmarketcap.com)

Sports marketing company, Nike has a market cap of $229 billion, as of February 2022. The company is currently the 46^th most valuable company by market data in the world, according to data from Companies Market Cap. A company’s market capitalization is its total market value as a publicly-traded company.