Phil Knight wrote a Stanford term paper in 1962 asking whether Japanese running shoes could beat German ones, then spent sixteen years finding out. This episode follows the made up company name in a Kobe office, the handshake with coach Bill Bowerman, the shoes sold from the boot of a Plymouth Valiant, the thirty five dollar logo, the split with Onitsuka, the bank that pulled the plug in 1975, and the waffle iron that became the Waffle Trainer.
It also covers the 1980 listing, the years Reebok was winning, the Michael Jordan bet, Just Do It, the sweatshop protests of the 1990s and what the company is today. Founder Stories tells the story of one founder per episode, told plainly and in order.
