Some Recognizable Iconic Brands and Their Names and Logos – Nike, Adidas, and Reebok (2nd of a series)

The first thing one doesn’t overlook is a pair shoes. The top brands that have various quality and designed for one’s activity and its use to protect the foot.

Named after the Greek goddess of Victory, NIKE, and the SWOOSH is the symbol of her flight. NIKE, originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS), was founded by University of Oregon track athlete Philip Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman in January 1964, and officially became NIKE, Inc., in May 30, 1978.

The company first operated as a distributor for Japanese shoe maker Onitsuka Tiger (now ASICS), making most sales at track meets out of Knight’s automobile. According to Otis Davis, a student athlete whom Bowerman coached at the University of Oregon, who later went on to win two gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics, Bowerman made the first pair of Nike shoes for him, contradicting a claim that they were made for Phil Knight.

Says Davis, “I told Tom Brokaw that I was the first. I don’t care what all the billionaires say. Bill Bowerman made the first pair of shoes for me. People don’t believe me. In fact, I didn’t like the way they felt on my feet. There was no support and they were too tight. But I saw Bowerman make them from the waffle iron, and they were mine.”

The company’s profits grew quickly.  In 1967, BRS opened its first retail store, located on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. By 1971, the relationship between BRS and Onitsuka Tiger was nearing an end. BRS prepared to launch its own line of footwear, which would bear the Swoosh that was newly designed by Carolyn Davidson. It was first used by Nike on June 18, 1971 and was registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on January 22, 1974.

The first shoe sold to the public to carry this design was a soccer shoe named Nike, which was released in the summer of 1971. In February 1972, BRS introduced its first line of Nike shoes In 1978, BRS, Inc. officially renamed itself to Nike, Inc. Beginning with Ilie Năstase, the first professional athlete to sign with BRS/Nike, the sponsorship of athletes became a key marketing tool for the rapidly growing company. The company’s first self-designed product was based on Bowerman’s “waffle” design.

After the University of Oregon resurfaced the track at Hayward Field, Bowerman began experimenting with different potential outsoles that would grip the new urethane track more effectively. His efforts were rewarded one Sunday morning when he poured liquid urethane into his wife’s waffle iron. In 1974, He developed and refined the so-called “waffle” sole which would evolve into the now-iconic Waffle Trainer.  By 1980, Nike had attained a 50% market share in the U.S. athletic shoe market, and the company went public in December of that year. Its growth was due largely to “word-of-foot” advertising to quote a Nike print ad from the late 1970s, rather than television ads.

 Nike’s first national television commercials ran in October 1982, during the broadcast of the New York Marathon. The ads were created by Portland-based advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy, which had formed several months earlier in April. Together, they have created many print and television advertisements.  Wieden & Kennedy remains Nike’s primary ad agency.

It was agency co-founder Dan Wieden who coined the now-famous slogan “Just Do It” for a 1988 Nike ad campaign, which was chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top five ad slogans of the 20th century and enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution. Walt Stack was featured in Nike’s first “Just Do It” advertisement, which debuted on July 1, 1988. Wieden credits the inspiration for the slogan as the last words spoken by Gary Gilmore before he was executed.

Nike has been criticized for contracting with factories known as “Nike sweatshops” in countries; such as, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico. Vietnam Labor Watch, an activist group, has documented that factories contracted by Nike have violated minimum wage and overtime laws in Vietnam as late as 1996, although Nike claims that this practice has been stopped.

The company has been subject to much critical coverage of the often poor working conditions and exploitation of cheap overseas labor employed in the free trade zones where their goods are typically manufactured. Sources for this criticism include Naomi Klein’s book No Logo and Michael Moore documentaries.

During the 1990s, Nike faced criticism for the use of child labor in Cambodia and Pakistan in factories it contracted to manufacture soccer balls. Although Nike took action to curb or at least reduce the practice, they continued to contract their production to companies that operate in areas where inadequate regulation and monitoring make it hard to ensure that child labor is not being used.

In 2001, a BBC documentary uncovered occurrences of child labor and poor working conditions in a Cambodian factory used by Nike. The documentary focused on six girls who all worked seven days a week, often 16 hours a day. Campaigns have been taken up by many colleges and universities, especially anti-globalisation groups, as well as several anti-sweatshop groups such as the United Students Against Sweatshops. Despite these campaigns, however, Nike’s annual revenues have increased from US$6.4 billion in 1996 to nearly US$17 billion in 2007, according to the company’s annual reports.

A July 2008 investigation by Australian Channel 7 News found a large number of cases involving forced labor in one of the largest Nike apparel factories. The factory located in Malaysia was filmed by an undercover crew who found instances of squalid living conditions and forced labor. Nike has since stated that they will take corrective action to ensure the abuse does not continue.

As of July 2011, Nike stated that two-thirds of its factories producing Converse products still do not meet the company’s standards for worker treatment. A July 2011 Associated Press article stated that employees at the company’s plants in Indonesia reported constant abuse from supervisors. Throughout the 1980s, Nike expanded its product line to encompass many sports and regions throughout the world.

As of November 2008, Nike, Inc. owns four key subsidiaries: Cole Haan, Hurley International, Converse Inc. and Umbro. The first acquisition was the upscale footwear company Cole Haan in 1988. In February 2002, the company bought surf apparel company Hurley International from founder Bob Hurley. In July 2003, it paid US$309 million to acquire Converse, Inc., makers of the iconic Chuck Taylor All Stars sneakers. In March 3, 2008, Nike acquired sports apparel supplier Umbro, known as the manufacturers of the England national football team‘s kit, in a deal said to be worth £285M, (about US$600M. Other subsidiaries previously owned and subsequently sold by Nike include Bauer Hockey and Starter.

Founder is Adolf Dassler whose nickname was “ADI.” The company name was taken from the nickname and the first three letters of his surname, “DAS.” Together, as a portmanteau, it formed “ADIDAS.” The company’s clothing and shoe designs typically feature three parallel bars and the same motif is incorporated into Adidas’s current official logo. The “Three Stripes” were bought from the Finnish sport company Karhu Sports in 1951.

Adidas AG is a German sports clothing manufacturer and parent company of the Adidas Group, which consists of the Reebok sportswear company, TaylorMade-Adidas golf company, including Ashworth and Rockport. Besides sports footwear, the company also produces other products such as bags, shirts, watches, eyewear, and other sports- and clothing-related goods. The company is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe and the second biggest sportswear manufacturer in the world.

Adidas was founded in 1948 by Adolf Dassler, following the split of Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik between him and his older brother Rudolf. Rudolf later established Puma, which was the early rival of Adidas. Registered in 1949, Adidas is currently based in Herzogenaurach, Germany, along with Puma. He started to produce his own sports shoes in his mother’s wash kitchen in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria after his return from World War I.

In July 1924, his brother Rudolf returned to join his younger brother’s business, which became Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). The pair started the venture in their mother’s laundry despite electricity supplies in the town were unreliable and the brothers sometimes had to use pedal power from a stationary bicycle to run their equipment.

By the 1936 Summer Olympics, Adi Dassler drove from Bavaria, in one of the world’s first motorways, to the Olympic village with a suitcase full of spikes and persuaded U.S. sprinter, Jesse Owens, to use them, the first sponsorship for an African-American. Owens’s haul of four gold medals cemented the good reputation of Dassler shoes among the world’s most famous sportsmen.

Business boomed and the Dasslers were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes each year before World War II. Both brothers joined the Nazi Party, but Rudolf was slightly closer to the party than Adolf Hitler. During the war, a growing rift between the pair reached a breaking point after an Allied bomb attack in 1943, when Adi and his wife climbed into a bomb shelter that Rudolf and his family were already in: “The dirty bastards are back again,”Adi said, referring to the Allied war planes; but Rudolf was convinced his brother meant him and his family. After Rudolf was later picked up by American soldiers and accused of being a member of the Waffen SS, he was convinced that his brother had turned him in.

The brothers split up in 1947, with Rudi forming a new firm that he called Ruda, from RUdolf DAssler, and later rebranded PUMA. Adi formally registered the company as Adidas AG from Adi Dassler in 1949. Although it is popularly claimed that the name is an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sport, that phrase is a backronym.

From Afrikaans spelling of RHEBOK, a type of African antelope or gazelle, hence the name REEBOK. Joseph William Foster was making a living producing regular running shoes when he came up with the idea to create a novelty spiked running shoe.

After his ideas progressed he joined with his sons and founded a shoe company named J.W. Foster and Sons in 1895. It was renamed in United Kingdom in 1958, when two of the founder’s grandson, Joe and Jeff Foster found the name in a South African edition dictionary. The company lived up to the J.W. Foster legacy, manufacturing first-class footwear for customers throughout the UK.

In 1979, Paul Fireman, a US sporting goods distributor, saw a pair of Reeboks at an international trade show and negotiated to sell them in North America.

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