ECONOMICS AND TRADE | Achieving growth through open markets
11 April 2008
Track Coach Makes Faster Shoe, Stumbles into Big Business
“If you have a body, you are an athlete,” Bowerman said
Washington -- In 1971, while coaching the University of Oregon’s track team, William Bowerman poured a urethane mix into his wife’s waffle iron. He ruined a kitchen appliance and unwittingly gave birth to an industry.
All Bowerman had wanted to do was improve upon the treads of running shoes his athletes were wearing. But he turned a pair of smelly sneakers into a worldwide running phenomenon and, eventually, a Fortune 500 company.
“He was a trailblazer. The way he coached ... had traits that are common to inventors,” said Dave Williford, spokesman for Oregon’s athletic department. He was known as a coach who was always dreaming up better ways to train runners.
His waffle iron experiment led Bowerman to develop a lighter shoe that would cut down on blisters and other foot sores as well as shave ounces off a runner’s shoes. Bowerman had long been interested in track shoes and had already started a small company -- Blue Ribbon Sports -- that sold them. When improving shoe design, he took into account the impact on a runner’s heel and tried to cushion the landing.
EARLY YEARS
Bowerman, who died in 1999 at the age of 88, had modest beginnings. He was born in 1911 and grew up in a small town in Oregon, long before running was even considered a sport in mainstream America.
He went to the University of Oregon. During World War II, he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy in 1945. A few years later, he landed a job as track and field coach at Oregon -- a job he did for a quarter century, during which he trained 31 Olympic athletes, 51 All-Americans, 12 American record-holders and 24 NCAA champions.
In a trip to New Zealand in 1962, Bowerman was introduced to jogging as a fitness routine. He brought the concept home and began developing it in the United States. “If you have a body, you are an athlete,” Bowerman said. Today, jogging is a regular routine for millions of men and women of all ages.
In 1964, while he was still coaching, Bowerman joined Phil Knight, a prominent runner he had trained, to start Blue Ribbon Sports. During the 1970s, some time after the waffle iron incident, the men renamed the company Nike, for the winged goddess of victory from Greek mythology. By the end of the 1970s, the company had grown to $270 million in sales per year. “If there had been no Bill Bowerman, there would have been no Nike,” Knight has said. Bowerman was well into his 60s and had retired from coaching by the time the Nike brand emerged.
But even as the company took off, he didn’t stray from a lifelong focus on improving the sport of track and field. He was an innovator in track surfaces and equipment and created new kinds of training for long-distance runners.
“He had a changing effect on society,” Williford said of Bowerman. “He was an amazing individual who revolutionized track and field and the industry of shoes and wearing apparel.”
Today, Nike carries on Bowerman’s dreams in many ways. As part of its philosophy of corporate responsibility, the company aims to invest a minimum of $315 million through 2011 in grants and other programs to give youths greater access to sports. This includes giving a homeless boy in Scotland the chance to play sports and helping children in New Orleans affected by devastating hurricanes.
Today, Nike Inc. sells apparel, eyewear, watches and many other products, in addition to athletic shoes geared for many sports.
“Nike is the Number 1 sporting good [brand] in the world. Bowerman and Knight were true entrepreneurial visionaries,” said Mike May, spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. “They started in the most basic way. They built an empire bigger than their wildest dreams.”
Although Bill Bowerman has died, his spirit and his work live on every day in every person who puts on a pair of Nike shoes before heading out for a run.
