Nike

Nike was founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman on January 25th 1964, initially known as Blue Ribbon Sports, before the company changed its name to Nike Inc. on May 30th 1971, inspired by the Greek Goddess of Victory, Nike.

Nike has no specific owner, with the company’s shares traded on the stock exchange, but co-founder Phil Knight owns by far the most shares, with Executive Chairman Mark Parker and COO Andrew Champion the next-highest personal stock owners. There are also three institutional shareholders with large amounts, namely Swoosh LLC (created by Knight), Vanguard Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc.

Nike is best known for manufacturing and advertising high-quality sports clothing and footwear, initially focusing on athletics before successfully branching out into football, tennis, golf, basketball and much more. Thanks in no small part to partnerships with the likes of Michael Jordan, Cristiano Ronaldo and Tiger Woods, Nike’s success in basketball, football and golf, respectively, has been astronomical.

Nike is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, USA, having initially been based in nearby Eugene due to its close proximity to the University of Oregon, where co-founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman were athlete and coach, respectively.

There has been much debate about how to pronounce Nike but Phil Knight confirmed it as Nike-y, owing to the pronunciation of the Greek Goddess Nike. That being said, using the monosyllabic Nike is also acceptable and widely used.