سال هزار و نهصد و هفتاد و شش

1976

Now that we’d gotten past our bank crisis, now that I was reasonably sure of not going to jail, I could go back to asking the deep questions. What are we trying to build here? What kind of company do we want to be?

Like most companies, we had role models. Sony, for instance. Sony was the Apple of its day. Profitable, innovative, efficient—and it treated its workers well. When pressed, I often said I wanted to be like Sony. At root, however, I still aimed and hoped for something bigger, and vaguer.

I would search my mind and heart and the only thing I could come up with was this word—­“winning.” It wasn’t much, but it was far, far better than the alternative. Whatever happened, I just didn’t want to lose. Losing was death. Blue Ribbon was my third child, my business child, as Sumeragi said, and I simply couldn’t bear the idea of it dying. It has to live, I told myself. It just has to. That’s all I know.

Several times, in those first months of 1976, I huddled with Hayes and Woodell and Strasser, and over sandwiches and sodas we’d kick around this question of ultimate goals. This question of winning and losing. Money wasn’t our aim, we agreed. Money wasn’t our end game. But whatever our aim or end, money was the only means to get there. More money than we had on hand.

Nissho was loaning us millions, and that relationship felt sound, solidified by the recent crisis. Best partners you’ll ever have. Chuck Robinson had been right. But to keep up with demand, to continue growing, we needed millions more. Our new bank was loaning us money, which was good, but because they were a small bank we’d already reached their legal limit. At some point in those 1976 Woodell-­Strasser-Hayes discussions we started to talk about the most logical arithmetical solution, which was also the most difficult one emotionally.

Going public.

On one level, of course, the idea made perfect sense. Going public would generate a ton of money in a flash. But it would also be highly perilous, because going public often meant losing control. It could mean working for someone else, suddenly being answerable to stockholders, hundreds or maybe thousands of strangers, many of whom would be large investment firms.

Going public could turn us overnight into the thing we loathed, the thing we’d spent our lives running from.

For me there was an added consideration, a semantic one. Defined by shyness, intensely private, I found that phrase itself off-­putting: going public. No thank you.

And yet, during my nightly run, I’d sometimes ask myself, Hasn’t your life been a kind of search for connection? Running for Bowerman, backpacking around the world, starting a company, marrying Penny, assembling this band of brothers at Blue Ribbon’s core—hasn’t it all been about, one way or another, going public?

In the end, however, I decided, we decided, going public wasn’t right. It’s just not for us, I said, and we said. No way. Never.

Meeting adjourned.

So we set about casting for other ways to raise money.

One way found us. First State Bank asked us to apply for a million-­dollar loan, which the U.S. Small Business Administration would then guarantee. It was a loophole, a way for a small bank to gently expand its credit line, because their guaranteed-loan limits were greater than their direct-loan limits. So we did it, mainly to make their life easier.

As is always the case, the process turned out to be more complicated than it first appeared. First State Bank and the Small Business Administration required that Bowerman and I, as majority shareholders, both personally guarantee the loan. We’d done that at First National and at Bank of California, so I didn’t see a problem. I was in hock up to my neck, what was one more guarantee?

Bowerman, however, balked. Retired, living on a fixed income, dispirited after the traumas of the last few years, and greatly weakened by the death of Pre, he didn’t want any more risk. He feared losing his mountain.

Rather than give his personal guarantee, he offered to give me two-thirds of his stake in Blue Ribbon, at a discounted price. He was bowing out.

I didn’t want this. Never mind that I didn’t have the money to buy his stake, I didn’t want to lose the cornerstone of my company, the anchor of my psyche. But Bowerman was adamant, and I knew better than to argue. So we both went to Jaqua and asked him to help broker the deal. Jaqua was still Bowerman’s best friend, but I’d come to think of him as a close friend, too. I still trusted him completely.

Let’s not fully dissolve the partnership, I said to him. Though I reluctantly agreed to buy Bowerman’s stake (low payments, spread over five years), I begged him to retain a percentage, stay on as a vice president and member of our small board.

Deal, he said. We all shook hands.

WHILE WE WERE busy moving around stakes and dollars, the dollar itself was hemorrhaging value. It was all at once in a death spiral against the Japanese yen. Coupled with rising Japanese labor rates, this was now the most imminent threat to our existence. We’d increased and diversified sources of production, we’d added new factories in New England and Puerto Rico, but we were still doing nearly all our manufacturing in volatile Japan, mostly at Nippon Rubber. A sudden, crippling shortage of supply was a real possibility. Especially given the spike in demand for Bowerman’s waffle trainer.

With its unique outer sole, and its pillowy midsole cushion, and its below-market price ($24.95), the waffle trainer was continuing to capture the popular imagination like no previous shoe. It didn’t just feel different, or fit different—it looked different. Radically so. Bright red upper, fat white swoosh—it was a revolution in aesthetics. Its look was drawing hundreds of thousands of new customers into the Nike fold, and its performance was sealing their loyalty. It had better traction and cushioning than anything on the market.

Watching that shoe evolve in 1976 from popular accessory to cultural artifact, I had a thought. People might start wearing this thing to class.

And the office.

And the grocery store.

And throughout their everyday lives.

It was a rather grandiose idea. Adidas had had limited success converting athletic shoes to everyday wear, with the Stan Smith tennis shoe and the Country running shoe. But neither was nearly as distinctive, or popular, as the waffle trainer. So I ordered our factories to start making the waffle trainer in blue, which would go better with jeans, and that’s when it really took off.

We couldn’t make enough. Retailers and sales reps were on their knees, pleading for all the waffle trainers we could ship. The soaring pair counts were transforming our company, not to mention the industry. We were seeing numbers that redefined our long-term goals, because they gave us something we’d always lacked—an identity. More than a brand, Nike was now becoming a household word, to such an extent that we would have to change the company name. Blue Ribbon, we decided, had run its course. We would have to incorporate as Nike, Inc.

And for this newly named entity to stay vibrant, to keep growing, to survive the declining dollar, we’d need as always to ramp up production. Sales reps on their knees—that wasn’t sustainable. We’d need to find more manufacturing hubs, outside Japan. Our existing factories in America and Puerto Rico would help, but they weren’t nearly enough. Too old, too few, too expensive. So in the spring of 1976 it was finally time to turn to Taiwan.

For our point man in Taiwan I looked to Jim Gorman, a valued employee, long known for his almost fanatical loyalty to Nike. Raised in a series of foster homes, Gorman seemed to find in Nike the family he’d never had, and thus he was always a good sport, always a team player. It was Gorman, for instance, who’d drawn the unpleasant task of driving Kitami to the airport, back in 1972, after that final showdown in Jaqua’s conference room. And he did it without complaint. It was Gorman who’d taken over the Eugene store from Woodell, the toughest of acts to follow. It was Gorman who wore subpar Nike spikes in the 1972 Olympic Trials. In every instance, Gorman had done a fine job and never uttered a sour word. He seemed the perfect candidate to take on the latest mission impossible—­Taiwan. But first I’d need to give him a crash course on Asia. So I scheduled a trip, just the two of us.

On the flight overseas Gorman proved to be an avid student, a virtual sponge. He grilled me about my experiences, my opinions, my reading, and wrote down every word I said. I felt as if I was back in school, teaching at Portland State, and I liked it. I remembered that the best way to reinforce your knowledge of a subject is to share it, so we both benefited from my transferring everything I knew about Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan to Gorman’s brain.

Shoe producers, I told him, are abandoning Japan en masse. And they’re all landing in two places. Korea and Taiwan. Both countries specialize in low-priced footwear, but Korea has elected to go with a few giant factories, whereas Taiwan is building a hundred smaller ones. So that’s why we’re choosing Taiwan: Our demand is too high, our volume too low, for the biggest factories. And in smaller factories we’ll have the dominant position. We’ll be in charge.

Of course, the tougher challenge was to get any factory we chose to upgrade its quality.

And then there was the constant threat of political instability. President Chiang Kai-shek had just died, I told Gorman, and after twenty-five years in command he was leaving a nasty power vacuum.

For good measure, you always needed to account for Taiwan’s ancient tensions with China.

On and on I talked as we sailed over the Pacific. While taking copious notes, Gorman also came up with new, fresh ideas, which gave me new insights, things to think about. Stepping off the plane in Taichung, our first stop, I was delighted. This guy was intense, energetic, eager to get started. I was proud to be his mentor.

Good choice, I told myself.

By the time we reached the hotel, however, Gorman was wilting. Taichung looked and smelled like the far end of the galaxy. A vast megalopolis of smoking factories, and thousands of people per square foot, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and I’d been all over Asia, so of course it overwhelmed poor Gorman. I saw in his eyes that typical first-timer’s reaction to Asia, that look of alienation and circuit overload. He looked exactly like Penny when she met me in Japan.

Steady, I told him. Take it one day, one factory, at a time. Follow your mentor’s lead.

Over the next week we visited and toured about two dozen factories. Most were bad. Dark, dirty, with workers going through the motions, heads bowed, vacant looks in their eyes. Just outside Taichung, however, in the small town of Douliou, we found a factory that showed promise. It was called Feng Tay, and it was managed by a young man named C. H. Wong. Small, but clean, it had a positive vibe, as did Wong, a shoe dog who lived for his workplace. And in it. When we noticed that one small room off the factory floor was off-limits, I asked what was in there. Home, he said. “That is where my wife and I and our three kids live.”

I was reminded of Johnson. I decided to make Feng Tay the cornerstone of our Taiwan effort.

When we weren’t touring factories, Gorman and I were being feted by factory owners. They stuffed us with local delicacies, some of which were actually cooked, and plied us with something called a Mao tai, which was a mai tai, but apparently with shoe cream instead of rum. Jet-lagged, Gorman and I both had lost our tolerance. After two Mao tais we were potted. We tried to slow down, but our hosts kept raising their glasses.

To Nike!

To America!

At the final dinner of our Taichung visit Gorman repeatedly excused himself and ran to the men’s room, to splash cold water on his face. Every time he left the table I got rid of my Mao tai by pouring it into his water glass. Each time he returned from the men’s room there was another toast, and Gorman thought he was playing it safe by raising his water glass.

To our American friends!

To our Taiwanese friends!

After another huge gulp of spiked water, Gorman looked at me, panic-stricken. “I think I’m going to pass out,” he said.

“Have some more water,” I said.

“Tastes funny.”

“Nah.”

Despite offloading my booze onto Gorman, I was woozy when I got back to my room. I had trouble getting ready for bed. I had trouble finding the bed. I fell asleep while brushing my teeth. Midbrush.

I woke sometime later and tried to find my extra contact lenses. I found them. Then dropped them on the floor.

There was a knock. Gorman. He walked in and asked me something about our next day’s itinerary. He found me on my hands and knees, searching for my contact lenses in a pool of my own sick.

“Phil, you okay?”

“Follow your mentor’s lead,” I mumbled.

THAT MORNING WE flew to Taipei, the capital, and toured a couple more factories. In the evening we strolled Xinsheng South Road, with its dozens of shrines and temples, churches and mosques. The Road to Heaven, locals called it. Indeed, I told Gorman, Xinsheng means “New Life.” When we returned to our hotel I got a strange and unexpected phone call. Jerry Hsieh—pronounced Shay—was “paying his respects.”

I’d met Hsieh before. In one of the shoe factories I’d visited the year before. He was working for Mitsubishi and the great Jonas Senter. He’d impressed me with his intensity and work ethic. And youth. Unlike all the other shoe dogs I’d met, he was young, twenty­something, and looked much younger. Like an overgrown toddler.

He said he’d heard we were in the country. Then, like a CIA operative, he added: “I know why you are here . . .”

He invited us to visit him in his office, an invitation that seemed to indicate he was now working for himself, not Mitsubishi.

I wrote down Hsieh’s office address and grabbed Gorman. The concierge at our hotel drew us a map—which proved useless. Hsieh’s office was in an unmapped part of the city. The worst part. Gorman and I walked down a series of unmarked lanes, up a series of unnumbered alleys. Do you see a street sign? I can barely see the street.

We must have gotten lost a dozen times. Finally, there it was. A stout building of old red brick. Inside we found a precarious staircase. The handrail came off in our hands as we walked up to the third floor, and each stone step had a deep indentation, from contact with a million shoes.

“Enter!” Hsieh shouted when we knocked. We found him sitting in the middle of a room that looked like the nest of a giant rat. Everywhere we looked were shoes, and more shoes, and piles of shoe pieces—soles and laces and tongues. Hsieh jumped to his feet, cleared a space for us to sit. He offered us tea. Then, while the water boiled, he began educating us. Did you know that every country in the world has many many customs and superstitions about shoes? He grabbed a shoe from a shelf, held it before our faces. Did you know that in China, when man marries woman, they throw red shoes on the roof to make sure all goes well on wedding night? He rotated the shoe in the scant daylight that managed to fight through the grime on his windows. He told us which factory it came from, why he thought it was well made, how it could have been made better. Did you know that in many countries, when someone starts on a journey, it’s actually good luck to throw a shoe at them? He grabbed another shoe, extended it like Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull. He identified its provenance, told us why it was poorly made, why it would soon fall apart, then tossed it aside with disdain. The difference from one shoe to another, he said, nine times out of ten, is the factory. Forget design, forget color, forget all the other things that go into a shoe, it’s all about factories.

I listened closely, and took notes, like Gorman on the plane, though the whole time I was thinking: It’s a performance. He’s putting on a show, trying to sell us. He doesn’t realize that we need him more than he needs us.

Now Hsieh went into his pitch. He told us that in exchange for a small fee he’d gladly connect us with the very best factories in Taiwan.

This had the potential to be big. We could use someone on the ground, to pave our way, to make introductions, to help Gorman acclimate. An Asian Giampietro. We haggled over commission per pair, for a few minutes, but it was a friendly haggling. Then we shook hands.

Deal? Deal.

We sat down again and drew up an agreement to establish a Taiwan-­based subcompany. What to call it? I didn’t want to use Nike. If we ever wanted to do business in the People’s Republic of China, we couldn’t be associated with China’s sworn enemy. It was a faint hope, at best, an impossible dream. But still. So I picked Athena. The Greek goddess who brings nike. Athena Corp. And thus I preserved the unmapped, unnumbered Road to Heaven. Or a shoe dog’s idea of heaven.

A country with two billion feet.

I SENT GORMAN home ahead of me. Before leaving Asia, I told him, I needed to make one quick stop in Manila. Personal errand, I said vaguely.

I went to Manila to visit a shoe factory, a very good one. Then, closing an old loop, I spent the night in MacArthur’s suite.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

IT WAS THE Bicentennial Year, that strange moment in America’s cultural history, that 365-day lollapalooza of self-examination and civics lessons and seminightly fireworks. From January 1 to December 31 of that year, you couldn’t change the channel without hitting upon a movie or documentary about George Washington or Ben Franklin or Lexington and Concord. And invariably, embedded in the patriotic programming, there would be yet another “Bicentennial Minute,” a public service announcement in which Dick Van Dyke or Lucille Ball or Gabe Kaplan would recount some episode that took place on this date during the Revolutionary era. One night it might be Jessica Tandy talking about the felling of the Liberty Tree. The next night it might be President Gerald Ford exhorting all Americans to “keep the Spirit of ’76 alive.” It was all somewhat corny, a little bit sentimental—and immensely moving. The yearlong swell of patriotism brought out an already strong love of country in me. Tall ships sailing into New York Harbor, recitations of the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, fervent talk of liberty and justice—it all refreshed my gratitude about being an American. And being free. And not being in jail.

AT THE 1976 Olympic Trials, held again that June in Eugene, Nike had a chance, a fantastic chance, to make a good show. We’d never had that chance with Tiger, whose spikes weren’t top caliber. We’d never had that chance with the first generation of Nike products. Now, at last, we had our own stuff, and it was really good: top-­quality marathon shoes and spikes. We were buzzing with excitement as we left Portland. Finally, we said, we’re going to have a Nike-shod runner make an Olympic team.

It was going to happen.

It needed to happen.

Penny and I drove to Eugene, where we met up with Johnson, who was photographing the event. Despite our excitement about the trials, we talked most about Pre as we took our seats in the packed bleachers. It was clear that Pre was on everyone else’s mind, too. We heard his name coming from every direction, and his spirit seemed to hover like the low clouds roiling above the track. And if you were tempted to forget him, even for a moment, you got another bracing reminder when you looked at the runners’ feet. Many were wearing Pre Montreals. (Many more were wearing Exeter-­made products like the Triumph and the Vainqueur. Hayward that day looked like a Nike showroom.) It was well known that these trials would have been the start of Pre’s epic comeback. After being knocked down in Munich, he’d have risen again, no doubt, and the rising would have begun right here, right now. Each race prompted the same thoughts, the same image: Pre bursting ahead of the pack. Pre diving through the tape. We could see it. We could see him flush with victory.

If only, we kept saying, our voices choking, if only.

At sunset the sky turned red, white, and a deep blackish blue. But it was still bright enough to read by as the runners in the 10,000 meters gathered at the starting line. Penny and I tried to clear our minds as we stood, hands clasped as if in prayer. We were counting on Shorter, of course. He was extremely talented, and he’d been the last person to see Pre alive—it made sense that he’d be the one to carry Pre’s torch. But we also had Nikes on Craig Virgin, a brilliant young runner from the University of Illinois, and on Garry Bjorklund, a lovable veteran from Minnesota, who was trying to come back from surgery to remove a loose bone in his foot.

The gun went off, the runners shot forward, all bunched tight, and Penny and I were bunched tight, too, oohing and aahing with every stride. There wasn’t an inch of separation in the pack until the halfway mark, when Shorter and Virgin violently pushed ahead. In the jostling, Virgin accidentally stepped on Bjorklund and sent his Nike flying. Now Bjorklund’s tender, surgically repaired foot was bare, exposed, smacking the hard track with every stride. And yet Bjorklund didn’t stop. He didn’t falter. He didn’t even slow down. He just kept running, faster and faster, and that blazing show of courage won over the crowd. I think we cheered for him as loudly as we’d cheered for Pre the year before.

Entering the final lap, Shorter and Virgin were in front. Penny and I were jumping up and down. “We’re going to get two,” we said, “we’re going to get two!” And then we got three. Shorter and Virgin took first and second, and Bjorklund plunged ahead of Bill Rodgers at the tape to take third. I was covered with sweat. Three Olympians . . . in Nikes!

The next morning, rather than take a victory lap at Hayward, we set up camp at the Nike store. While Johnson and I mingled with customers, Penny manned the silk-screen machine and churned out Nike T-shirts. Her craftsmanship was exquisite; all day long people came in to say they’d seen someone wearing a Nike T-shirt on the street and they just had to have one for themselves. Despite our continual melancholy about Pre, we allowed ourselves to feel joy, because it was becoming clear that Nike was doing more than making a good show. Nike was dominating those trials. Virgin took the 5,000 meters in Nikes. Shorter won the marathon in Nikes. Slowly, in the shop, in the town, we heard people whispering, Nike Nike Nike. We heard our name more than the name of any athlete. Besides Pre.

Saturday afternoon, walking into Hayward to visit Bowerman, I heard someone behind me say, “Jeez, Nike is really kicking Adidas’s ass.” It might have been the highlight of the weekend, of the year, followed closely by the Puma sales rep I spotted moments later, leaning against a tree and looking suicidal.

Bowerman was there strictly as a spectator, which was strange for him, and us. And yet he was wearing his standard uniform: the ratty sweater, the low ball cap. At one point he formally requested a meeting in a small office under the east grandstand. The office wasn’t really an office, more like a closet, where the groundskeepers stored their rakes and brooms and a few canvas chairs. There was barely room for the coach and Johnson and me, never mind the others invited by the coach: Hollister, and Dennis Vixie, a local podiatrist who worked with Bowerman as a shoe consultant. As we shut the door I noticed Bowerman didn’t look like himself. At Pre’s funeral he’d seemed old. Now he seemed lost. After a minute of small talk he started bellowing. He complained that he wasn’t getting any “respect” anymore from Nike. We’d built him a home lab, and supplied him with a lasting machine, but he said that he was constantly asking in vain for raw materials from Exeter.

Johnson looked horrified. “What materials?” he asked.

“I ask for shoe uppers and my requests are ignored!” Bowerman said.

Johnson turned to Vixie. “I sent you the uppers!” he said. “Vixie—didn’t you get them?”

Vixie looked perplexed. “Yes, I got them.”

Bowerman took off his ball cap, put it back on, took it off. “Yeah, well,” he grumbled, “but you didn’t send the outer soles.”

Johnson’s face reddened. “I sent those, too! Vixie?”

“Yes,” Vixie said, “we got them.”

Now we all turned to Bowerman, who was pacing, or trying to. There was no room. The office was dark, but I could still tell that my old coach’s face was turning red. “Well . . . we didn’t get them on time!” he shouted, and the tines of the rakes trembled. This wasn’t about uppers and outer soles. This was about retirement. And time. Like Pre, time wouldn’t listen to Bowerman. Time wouldn’t slow down. “I’m not going to put up with this bullshit anymore,” he huffed, and stormed out, leaving the door swinging open.

I looked at Johnson and Vixie and Hollister. They all looked at me. It didn’t matter if Bowerman was right or wrong, we’d just have to find a way to make him feel needed and useful. If Bowerman isn’t happy, I said, Nike isn’t happy.

A FEW MONTHS later, muggy Montreal was the setting for Nike’s grand debut, our Olympic coming-out party. As those 1976 Games opened, we had athletes in several high-profile events wearing Nikes. But our highest hopes, and most of our money, were pinned on Shorter. He was the favorite to win gold, which meant that Nikes, for the first time ever, were going to cross an Olympic finish line ahead of all other shoes. This was an enormous rite of passage for a ­running-shoe company. You really weren’t a legitimate, card-­carrying running-shoe company until an Olympian ascended to the top medal stand in your gear.

I woke up early that Saturday—July 31, 1976. Right after my morning coffee I took up my position in my recliner. I had a sandwich at my elbow, cold sodas in the fridge. I wondered if Kitami was watching. I wondered if my former bankers were watching. I wondered if my parents and sisters were watching. I wondered if the FBI was watching.

The runners approached the starting line. With them I crouched forward. I probably had as much adrenaline in my system as Shorter had in his. I waited for the pistol, and for the inevitable close-up of Shorter’s feet. The camera zoomed in. I stopped breathing. I slid out of my recliner onto the floor and crawled toward the TV screen. No, I said. No, I cried out in anguish. “No. NO!”

He was wearing . . . Tigers.

I watched in horror as the great hope of Nike took off in the shoes of our enemy.

I stood, walked back to my recliner, and watched the race unfold, talking to myself, mumbling to myself. Slowly the house grew dark. Not dark enough to suit me. At some point I drew the curtains, turned off the lights. But not the TV. I would watch, all two hours and ten minutes, to the bitter end.

I’m still not sure I know exactly what happened. Apparently, Shorter became convinced that his Nike shoes were fragile and wouldn’t hold up for the whole twenty-six miles. (Never mind that they’d performed perfectly well at the Olympic Trials.) Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was superstition. He wanted to use what he’d always used. Runners are funny that way. In any case, at the last moment he switched back to the shoes that he wore when he won the gold in 1972.

And I switched from soda to vodka. Sitting in the dark, clutching a cocktail, I told myself it was no big deal, in the grand scheme of things. Shorter didn’t even win. An East German surprised him and took the gold. Of course I was lying to myself, it was a very big deal, and not because of the disappointment or the lost marketing opportunity. If watching Shorter go off in shoes other than mine could affect me so deeply, it was now official: Nike was more than just a shoe. I no longer simply made Nikes; Nikes were making me. If I saw an athlete choose another shoe, if I saw anyone choose another shoe, it wasn’t just a rejection of the brand alone, but of me. I told myself to be reasonable, not everyone in the world was going to wear Nike. And I won’t say that I became upset every time I saw someone walking down the street in a running shoe that wasn’t mine.

But it definitely registered.

And I didn’t care for it.

At some point that night I phoned Hollister. He was devastated, too. There was raw anger in his voice. I was glad. I wanted people working for me who would feel that same burn, that same gut-punch rejection.

Happily, there were fewer such rejections all the time. At the close of fiscal 1976 we doubled our sales—$14 million. A startling number, which financial analysts noted, and wrote about. And yet we were still cash-poor. I kept borrowing every nickel I could, plowing it into growth, with the explicit or tacit blessing of people I trusted. Woodell, Strasser, Hayes.

In early 1976 the four of us had talked tentatively about going public, and tabled the idea. Now, at the close of 1976, we took up the idea again, more seriously. We analyzed the risks, weighed the cons, considered the pros. Again we decided: No.

Sure, sure, we said, we’d love to have that quick infusion of capital. Oh, the things we could do with that money! The factories we could lease! The talent we could hire! But going public would change our culture, make us beholden, make us corporate. That’s not our play, we all agreed.

Weeks later, strapped for money again, our bank accounts at zero, we took another look at the idea.

And rejected it again.

Wanting to settle the matter once and for all, I put the subject at the top of the agenda for our biannual gathering, a retreat we’d taken to calling the Buttface.

JOHNSON COINED THE phrase, we think. At one of our earliest retreats he muttered: “How many multimillion-dollar companies can you yell out, ‘Hey, Buttface,’ and the entire management team turns around?” It got a laugh. And then it stuck. And then it became a key part of our vernacular. Buttface referred to both the retreat and the retreaters, and it not only captured the informal mood of those retreats, where no idea was too sacred to be mocked, and no person was too important to be ridiculed, it also summed up the company spirit, mission and ethos.

The first few Buttfaces took place at various Oregon resorts. Otter Crest. Salishan. Ultimately we came to prefer Sunriver, an idyllic spot in sunny central Oregon. Typically, Woodell and Johnson would fly out from the East Coast, and we’d all drive out to Sunriver late Friday. We’d reserve a bunch of cabins, seize a conference room, and spend two or three days shouting ourselves hoarse.

I can see myself so clearly at the head of a conference table, shouting, being shouted at—laughing until my voice was gone. The problems confronting us were grave, complex, seemingly insurmountable, made more so by the fact we were separated from each other by three thousand miles, at a time when communication wasn’t easy or instant. And yet we were always laughing. Sometimes, after a really cathartic guffaw, I’d look around the table and feel overcome by emotion. Camaraderie, loyalty, gratitude. Even love. Surely love. But I also remember feeling shocked that these were the men I’d assembled. These were the founding fathers of a multimillion-dollar company that sold athletic shoes? A paralyzed guy, two morbidly obese guys, a chain-smoking guy? It was bracing to realize that, in this group, the one with whom I had the most in common was . . . Johnson. And yet, it was undeniable. While everyone else was laughing, rioting, he’d be the sane one, sitting quietly in the middle of the table reading a book.

The loudest voice at every Buttface always seemed to be Hayes. And the craziest. Like his girth, his personality was ever expanding, adding new phobias and enthusiasms. For instance, by this time Hayes had developed a curious obsession with heavy equipment. Backhoes, bulldozers, cherry pickers, cranes, they fascinated him. They . . . turned him on, there’s no other way to say it. At an early Buttface we were leaving a local bar when Hayes spied a bulldozer in the field behind the lodge. He discovered, to his astonishment, the keys had been left inside, so he hopped in and moved the earth all around the field, and in the parking lot, quitting only when he narrowly missed crushing several cars. Hayes on a bulldozer, I thought: As much as the swoosh, that might be our logo.

I always said that Woodell made the trains run on time, but it was Hayes who laid down the tracks. Hayes set up all the esoteric accounting systems without which the company would have ground to a halt. When we first went from manual to automated accounting, Hayes acquired the first primitive machines, and by constantly mending them, modifying them, or pounding them with his big hammy fists, he kept them uncannily accurate. When we first started doing business outside the United States, foreign currencies became a devilishly tricky problem, and Hayes set up an ingenious currency-­hedging system, which made the spread more reliable, more predictable.

Despite our hijinks, despite our eccentricities, despite our physical limitations, I concluded in 1976 that we were a formidable team. (Years later a famous Harvard business professor studying Nike came to the same conclusion. “Normally,” he said, “if one manager at a company can think tactically and strategically, that company has a good future. But boy are you lucky: More than half the Buttfaces think that way!”)

Undoubtedly we looked, to any casual observer, like a sorry, motley crew, hopelessly mismatched. But in fact we were more alike than different, and that gave a coherence to our goals and our efforts. We were mostly Oregon guys, which was important. We had an inborn need to prove ourselves, to show the world that we weren’t hicks and hayseeds. And we were nearly all merciless self-loathers, which kept the egos in check. There was none of that smartest-guy-in-the-room foolishness. Hayes, Strasser, Woodell, Johnson, each would have been the smartest guy in any room, but none believed it of himself, or the next guy. Our meetings were defined by contempt, disdain, and heaps of abuse.

Oh, what abuse. We called each other terrible names. We rained down verbal blows. While floating ideas, and shooting down ideas, and hashing out threats to the company, the last thing we took into account was someone’s feelings. Including mine. Especially mine. My fellow Buttfaces, my employees, called me Bucky the Bookkeeper, constantly. I never asked them to stop. I knew better. If you showed any weakness, any sentimentality, you were dead.

I remember a Buttface when Strasser decided we weren’t being “aggressive” enough in our approach. Too many bean counters in this company, he said. “So before this meeting starts I want to interject something. I’ve prepared here a counter budget.” He waved a big binder. “This right here is what we should be doing with our money.”

Of course everyone wanted to see his numbers, but no one more than the numbers guy, Hayes. When we discovered that the numbers didn’t add up, not one column, we started howling.

Strasser took it personally. “It’s the essence I’m getting at,” he said. “Not the specifics. The essence.”

The howling grew louder. So Strasser picked up his binder and threw it against the wall. “Fuck all you guys,” he said. The binder burst open, pages flew everywhere, and the laughter was deafening. Even Strasser couldn’t help himself. He had to join in.

Little wonder that Strasser’s nickname was Rolling Thunder. Hayes, meanwhile, was Doomsday. Woodell was Weight. (As in Dead Weight.) Johnson was Four Factor, because he tended to exaggerate and therefore everything he said needed to be divided by four. No one took it personally. The only thing truly not tolerated at a Buttface was a thin skin.

And sobriety. At day’s end, when everybody had a scratchy throat from all the abusing and laughing and problem-solving, when our yellow legal pads were filled with ideas, solutions, quotations, and lists upon lists, we’d shift ground to the bar at the lodge and continue the meeting over drinks. Many drinks.

The bar was called the Owl’s Nest. I love to close my eyes and remember us storming through the entrance, scattering all other patrons. Or making friends of them. We’d buy drinks for the house, then commandeer a corner and continue laying into each other about some problem or idea or harebrained scheme. Say the problem was midsoles not getting from Point A to Point B. Round and round we’d go, everyone speaking at once, a chorale of name-­calling and finger-pointing, all made louder, and funnier, and somehow clearer, by the booze. To anyone in the Owl’s Nest, to anyone in the corporate world, it would have looked inefficient, inappropriate. Even scandalous. But before the bartender gave last call, we’d know full well why those midsoles weren’t getting from Point A to Point B, and the person responsible would be contrite, and put on notice, and we’d have ourselves a creative solution.

The only person who didn’t join us in these late-night revels was Johnson. He’d typically go for a head-clearing run, then retreat to his room and read in bed. I don’t think he ever set foot in the Owl’s Nest. Or knew where it was. We’d always have to spend the first part of the next morning updating him on what we’d decided in his absence.

In the Bicentennial Year alone we were struggling with a number of unusually stressful problems. We needed to find a larger warehouse on the East Coast. We needed to transfer our sales-­distribution center, from Holliston, Massachusetts, to a new forty-thousand-square-foot space in Greenland, New Hampshire, which was sure to be a logistical nightmare. We needed to hire an advertising agency to handle the increasing volume of print ads. We needed to either fix or get shut of our underperforming factories. We needed to smooth out glitches in our Futures Program. We needed to hire a director of promotions. We needed to form a Pro Club, a sort of reward system for our top NBA stars, to cement their loyalty and keep them in the Nike fold. We needed to approve new products, like the Arsenal, a soccer-baseball cleat with leather upper and vinyl poly-foam tongue, and the Striker, a multipurpose cleat good for soccer, baseball, football, softball, and field hockey. And we needed to decide on a new logo. Aside from the swoosh, we had a lowercase script name, nike, which was problematic—too many people thought it was like, or mike. But it was too late in the day to change the name of the company, so making the letters more readable seemed a good idea. Denny Strickland, creative director at our advertising agency, had designed a block-lettered NIKE, all caps, and nested it inside a swoosh. We spent days considering it, debating it.

Above all, we needed to decide, once and for all, this “going public” question. In those earliest Buttfaces, a consensus began to form. If we couldn’t sustain growth, we couldn’t survive. And despite our fears, despite the risks and downsides, going public was the best way to sustain growth.

And yet, in the midst of those intense discussions, in the middle of one of the most trying years in the company’s history, those Butt­face meetings were nothing but a joy. Of all those hours spent at Sunriver, not one minute felt like work. It was us against the world, and we felt damned sorry for the world. That is, when we weren’t righteously pissed off at it. Each of us had been misunderstood, misjudged, dismissed. Shunned by bosses, spurned by luck, rejected by society, shortchanged by fate when looks and other natural graces were handed out. We’d each been forged by early failure. We’d each given ourselves to some quest, some attempt at validation or meaning, and fallen short.

Hayes couldn’t become a partner because he was too fat.

Johnson couldn’t cope in the so-called normal world of nine-to-five.

Strasser was an insurance lawyer who hated insurance—and lawyers.

Woodell lost all his youthful dreams in one fluke accident.

I got cut from the baseball team. And I got my heart broken.

I identified with the born loser in each Buttface, and vice versa, and I knew that together we could become winners. I still didn’t know exactly what winning meant, other than not losing, but we seemed to be getting closer to a defining moment when that question would be settled, or at least more sharply defined. Maybe going public would be that moment.

Maybe going public would finally ensure that Nike would live on.

If I had any doubts about Blue Ribbon’s management team in 1976, they were mainly about me. Was I doing right by the Buttfaces, giving them so little guidance? When they did well I’d shrug and deliver my highest praise: Not bad. When they erred I’d yell for a minute or two, then shake it off. None of the Buttfaces felt the least threatened by me—was that a good thing? Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. It was the right tack for Patton and his GIs. But did that make it right for a bunch of Buttfaces? I worried. Maybe I should be more hands-on. Maybe we should be more structured.

But then I’d think: Whatever I’m doing, it must be working, because mutinies are few. In fact, ever since Bork, no one had thrown a genuine tantrum, about anything, not even what they were paid, which is unheard of in any company, big or small. The Buttfaces knew I wasn’t paying myself much, and they trusted that I was paying them what I could.

Clearly the Buttfaces liked the culture I’d created. I trusted them, wholly, and didn’t look over their shoulders, and that bred a powerful two-way loyalty. My management style wouldn’t have worked for people who wanted to be guided, every step, but this group found it liberating, empowering. I let them be, let them do, let them make their own mistakes, because that’s how I’d always liked people to treat me.

At the end of a Buttface weekend, consumed with these and other thoughts, I’d drive back to Portland in a trance. Halfway there I’d come out of the trance and start thinking about Penny and the boys. The Buttfaces were like family, but every minute I spent with them was at the cost of my other family, my real family. The guilt was palpable. Often I’d walk into my house and Matthew and Travis would meet me at the door. “Where have you been?” they’d ask. “Daddy was with his friends,” I’d say, picking them up. They’d stare, confused. “But Mommy told us you were working.”

It was around this time, as Nike rolled out its first children’s shoes, Wally Waffle and Robbie Road Racer, that Matthew announced he would never wear Nikes so long as he lived. His way of expressing anger about my absences, as well as other frustrations. Penny tried to make him understand that Daddy wasn’t absent by choice. Daddy was trying to build something. Daddy was trying to ensure that he and Travis would one day be able to attend college.

I didn’t even bother to explain. I told myself it didn’t matter what I said. Matthew never understood, and Travis always understood—they seemed born with these unvarying default positions. Matthew seemed to harbor some innate resentment toward me, while Travis seemed congenitally devoted. What difference would a few more words make? What difference would a few more hours make?

My fatherhood style, my management style. I was forever questioning, Is it good—or merely good enough?

Time and again I’d vow to change. Time and again I’d tell myself: I will spend more time with the boys. Time and again I’d keep that promise—for a while. Then I’d fall back to my former routine, the only way I knew. Not hands-off. But not hands-on.

This might have been the one problem I couldn’t solve by brainstorming with my fellow Buttfaces. Vastly trickier than how to get midsoles from Point A to Point B was the question of Son A and Son B, how to keep them happy, while keeping Son C, Nike, afloat.