Nike

"If you want a long-lived brand, avoid strategy altogether — instead have an Ideal (like Nike, Apple) or an executional device (Andrex, The Economist). Anything with a strategy is doomed never to outlive your client. Discuss."

"The other person behind Nike was Bill Bowerman, former coach of the track and field team at the University of Oregon, a training ground for many of the country’s most remarkable run- ners and jumpers. Tinkering in his garage, like Adolf Dassler in his mother’s laundry, Bowerman came up with astonishing nov- elties. One of them was known as The Vagina (looking scary but feeling wonderful inside). Another startling invention was the Waffle trainer, so called after the kitchen appliance Bowerman had used to mold its soles."

"To push its advantage, Nike introduced a shrewd mechanism known as Futures. The principle was that they would convince retailers to place firm orders and guarantee payments in advance. With these commitments, Nike could increase its orders from Asian manufacturers without gambling too much. In other words, they shifted some of the financial risk to the retailers. In return, the retailers who took part in Futures would obtain a sizeable rebate on their orders and could rest assured that they would ac- tually obtain the goods. In a market driven by wild demand, this was an unbeatable argument."

"H&M has been pioneers in finding cheap labor in Asia in order to keep prices down and maximize profitability.[72](private://read/01jas9tvg84jycb27616w1f9k8/#note-72) In the 1990s, there is an intense debate about the working conditions within the textile industry, especially around American giants like Nike and Levi’s. Swedish Television has decided to investigate the consequences of the global economy in two documentaries focusing on our national prides, Ikea and H&M."

"Austad is an inspirer and a brand builder by the grace of God. Where others got hung up on zippers and buttons on the sports jackets, Austad noticed the brand on the chest. What were the customers really asking for when they bought Nike shoes for 1,300 kroner? Was it the quality of the shoe, or was it the status of owning such an expensive shoe, combined with the buyer believing the shoe was extremely good? Austad understood how the customers thought, and where sports stores nagged about screws, nuts, and service, the boss thought sales, sales, sales. Austad himself emphasizes that he should not take all the credit. Smart enough, he always stressed how important and useful it was to have Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten on the board. "Most other boards spend 90 percent of the time talking about the past, and only 10 percent about the future. In the Gresvig board, it was the opposite. There we mostly looked forward," says Austad. Before the trio took over, G-Sport was a series of country stores with huge parts warehouses and outdated tracksuits. Many of the stores struggled heavily, with little support from the chain. Austad backed them into a corner: Either they joined, or they were out immediately."

"The smile froze after a few days, when Johnny Austad joined the conference call for the Brooks management for the first time. Now the bureaucracy and paperwork were over, Austad demanded results. "And if you don't deliver as promised, I will come over and drink your blood," was the message. "I wanted to signal that we were Vikings," he smiles retrospectively. Austad's next move was to attack the management with an axe, move Brooks to Seattle, and hire one of Nike’s top people, Helen Rockey. The new boss was known as "the rocket" among friends because of her skiing skills. In record time, she had developed Nike’s sales of T-shirts from 60 million a year to almost a billion."

"Austad was invited over to Portland in the USA to see Nike up close, and became directly infuriated over the supplier's use of power. So instead of attending a presentation in a huge Nike store, Austad went to a competing sports store. There he wandered along the shoe shelves with an ulterior motive: It had to be possible to find another supplier that could be built up into a big brand in Norway. In the shelf, he found the answer: Brooks Shoe Factory. And a few phone calls later, he was on a plane to Brooks headquarters in Michigan. There was no end to the goodwill when Austad suggested that Gresvig should get the Scandinavian rights to the shoe brand. The news hit like a bomb at the confident Nike. They were used to getting their way, but they met granite. Who did Austad from little Norway think he was? For Brooks, Austad's interest must have seemed like a gift from heaven. While Nike and Reebok were billion-dollar successes, Brooks was the scabby boy in the class. Already in 1983, the company went bankrupt for the first time, and the current owner, Wolverine World Wide Inc, bought the brand at a bargain. For eleven years, they had tried in vain to make it a good business – without success. Wolverine was a shoe brand that had great success with the shoe brand Hush Puppies, but they quickly discovered that running shoes had as little to do with ordinary shoes as jogging suits with tuxedos."