Review: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very readable story of the founding and early years of Nike. You get the feeling of listening to a scrappy small business owner making it work with negotiations, religiously dedicated employees, some shady characters, and a lot of luck. At the end, the author shares a story about being a billionaire in the same movie theater as a couple other billionaires, and given the scrappy upstart story you’ve read it doesn’t feel possible. Perhaps that’s the way the author feels as well, as if his company’s story is unreal. Note that this isn’t the kind of book that describes in detail “how I did it and how you can, too”. This is much more a story reporting the battles in growing a company, from keeping key employees to borrowing money after your bank dropped you as a customer. Again, the coverage is mostly on the start up and early years. The years where Nike becomes a fashion icon, where Nike promotes the biggest star athletes, where Nike uses child labor, those stories are left for other books. Here you learn how the company grew, in experience and values, so that these things were possible.

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