based in Oregon, USA, Nike is the world's leading sportswear brand taking its name from the Greek goddess of victory, Nike.  Nike markets its products today under a number of brands including 'Nike', 'Nike Golf', 'Nike Pro', 'Nike+', 'Air Jordan', 'Team Starter' and a number of subsidiaries, however, in the beginning the company was known as 'Blue Ribbon Sports'.

University of Oregon Athlete Phil Knight and coach Bill Bowerman founded Nike (Blue Ribbon Sports) at the start of 1965 when they operated as a distributor for Japanese shoe manufacturere Onitsuka Tiger.  Initially sold sports shoes at track meetings to athletes from the back of Phil Knight's car.

the popularity of the shoes grew rapidly enough to open a retail store.in Santa Monica in 1966, by 1971 they were ready to launch their own line of footwear bearing the newly designed "Swoosh".  The first in the range released in the summer of 1971 was a football boot named 'Nike'.  In February 1972 Blue Ribbon Sports introduced its first line of Nike shoes and in 1978 the company was officially renamed 'Nike'.

Nike reached a 50% market share in the United States athletic shoe industry by 1980 and went public in December of the same year.  Its growth was due largely to 'word-of-foot' advertising (as described by a Nike print advertisement in the late 70's) rather than television adverts.  The first of Nike's national television commercials were broadcast in October 1982 during the televising of the New York Marathon.  In the 80's Nike expanded its product line to include many other sports and countries throughout the world and today sells its products to more than 25000 retailers in the U.S. and to more than 140 countries worldwide.  

Nike places much marketing emphasis on the sponsorship of professional athletes the first of which was the Romanian tennis player Ilie Năstase.  Since Nastase Nike has signed many top athletes across a variety of different sports including footballers Cristiano Ronaldo, Francesc Fabregas, Adriano, Wayne Rooney, Ronaldo, Robinho, and Ronaldinho, basketball players LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter, American footballers Brian Urlacher and LaDainian Tomlinson, cyclist Lance Armstrong, golfer Tiger Woods. tennis players Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova and Formula One drivers Felipe Massa and Michael Schumacher.

Nike has sponsored many successful track & field athletes too over the years including Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Sebastian Coe, however, it was the signing of basketball player Michael Jordan in 1984 that proved to be one of the biggest boosts to Nike's publicity and sales.

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