Philip Hampson Knight (born February 24, 1938) is an American billionaire business magnate who is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc., a global sports equipment and apparel company. He was previously its chairman and CEO. In April 2023, Knight along with his family was ranked by Forbes as the 24th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $47.7 billion. He is also the owner of the stop motion film production company Laika. Knight is a graduate of the University of Oregon and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was part of the track and field club under coach Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon with whom he would later co-found Nike.
Knight has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to each of his alma maters, as well as Oregon Health & Science University. He has donated over $2 billion to these three institutions.
Knight is the founder of Nike, the world’s biggest maker of athletic shoes and sports apparel with more than 1,000 stores worldwide, according to its 2022 annual report. Knight and his family controls about a fifth of the company’s shares but effectively control the business, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of regulatory filings.
Knight and his family own about 234 million shares through holding company Swoosh, according to a July 2022 proxy filing. Philip Knight owns a further 30 million shares in his own name, according to the same proxy filing and a January 2023 filing. His son Travis Knight has about 41 million shares through a trust and its subsidiary.
Shares held by Swoosh and family members are credited to Philip Knight in Bloomberg’s analysis to reflect his status as founder and family patriarch. He’s still deemed to be the owner for tax purposes, according to Nike spokesman Greg Rossiter. Nike’s Class A shares don’t trade and are convertible to B shares on a one-to-one basis. Shares held by Knight’s charitable foundation are excluded.
He’s collected billions of dollars from dividends and the sale of Nike stock, based on an analysis of Bloomberg data. The value of his cash investments is based on these proceeds, as well as taxes, market performance and charitable donations, which include $400 million to Stanford University in February 2016.
Rossiter declined to comment on the calculation of Knight’s net worth.
Biography
Early life
Knight was born in Portland, Oregon, to Bill Knight, a lawyer turned newspaper publisher, and his wife, Lota Cloy (née Hatfield) Knight. He grew up in the Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland, and attended Cleveland High School. According to one source, “When his father refused to give him a summer job at his newspaper [the now defunct Oregon Journal], believing that his son should find work on his own,” Knight “went to the rival Oregonian, where he worked the morning shift tabulating sports scores and every morning ran home the full seven miles.”
Knight continued his education at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he ran for the famed Oregon track and field program, was a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald and was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Knight earned a business degree (B.B.A.) in 1959 in just three years. That same year, Knight also received his Army Reserve Commission and was a “Distinguished Military Graduate“.
As a middle-distance runner at Oregon, his personal best was 1 mile (1.6 km) in 4 minutes, 13 seconds, and he won varsity letters for his track performances in 1957, 1958, and 1959. In 1977, together with Bowerman and Geoff Hollister, Knight founded an American running team called Athletics West.
He created athletic footwear distributor Blue Ribbon Sports with his former college track coach, Bill Bowerman, in 1964 and continued to work as an assistant professor at Portland State University and as an accountant. He started selling sneakers at weekend track meets from the back of his green Plymouth Valiant and dedicated himself full time to his shoe business in 1968.
The billionaire changed the company’s name to Nike in 1972. He sold shares in a public offering eight years later. Nike became the most popular sports apparel brand in the world over the next couple of decades by capitalizing on the influence top athletes began to have on popular culture. The company signed star athletes — Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods — and helped create brands around each of them to market its fashionable shoes and other sportswear. Knight stepped down as Nike’s chief executive officer in 2004 and as chairman in 2016.
He has donated $500 million for cancer research to the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, $400 million to Stanford University for graduate scholarships and $1 billion to the University of Oregon in Eugene for a science research center.
Knight is married, and his second son Travis is a Nike board member. His eldest son Matthew died in 2004.
Career
Early career
Before Blue Ribbon Sports—later Nike—flourished, Knight was a CPA, first with Coopers & Lybrand, and then Price Waterhouse. Knight then became an accounting professor at Portland State University
Nike Inc.
Immediately after graduating from the University of Oregon, Knight enlisted in the Army and served one year on active duty and seven years in the Army Reserve. He next enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where, for his small business class, Knight produced a paper, “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?”, that essentially foretold his eventual foray into selling running shoes. His ambition was to import high-quality and low-cost running shoes from Japan into the American market. He graduated with a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford in 1962
Knight set out on a trip around the world after graduation, during which he made a stop in Kobe, Japan, in November 1962. It was there that he discovered Tiger brand running shoes, manufactured in Kobe by the Onitsuka Co., now known as Asics. Impressed by the quality and low cost of the shoes, Knight called Mr. Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him. By the end of the meeting, Knight had secured Tiger distribution rights for the western United States.
The first Tiger samples would take more than a year to be shipped to Knight; during that time he found a job as an accountant in Portland. When Knight finally received the shoe samples, he mailed two pairs to Bowerman at the University of Oregon, hoping to gain both a sale and an influential endorsement. To Knight’s surprise, Bowerman not only ordered the Tiger shoes, but also offered to become a partner with Knight and provide product design ideas. The two men agreed to a partnership by handshake on January 25, 1964, the birth date of Blue Ribbon Sports, the company that would later become Nike.
Knight’s first sales, were made out of a now storied green Plymouth Valiant automobile at track meets across the Pacific Northwest. By 1969, these early sales allowed Knight to leave his accountant job and work full-time for Blue Ribbon Sports.
Jeff Johnson, Nike’s first employee, suggested calling the firm “Nike,” named after the Greek winged goddess of victory, and Blue Ribbon Sports was subsequently renamed Nike in 1971.
Nike’s “swoosh” logo, now considered one of the most valuable logos in the world, was commissioned for $35 from graphic design student Carolyn Davidson in 1971. According to Nike’s website, Knight said at the time: “I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” In September 1983, Davidson was given an undisclosed amount of Nike stock for her contribution to the company’s brand. On the Oprah television program in April 2011, Knight claimed he gave Davidson “a few hundred shares” when the company went public.
At Nike, Knight developed personal relationships with some of the world’s most recognizable athletes, including Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods
Vinton Studios becomes Laika
Following mainstream success in the late 1990s, Will Vinton Studios animation company sought external investors due to rapid growth. Knight assumed a 15 percent stake in the company in 1998, and his son Travis—who had graduated from Portland State following an unsuccessful attempt at a rap music career—went to work at the studio as an animator.
Citing mismanagement, Knight eventually purchased Will Vinton Studios and assumed control of the company’s board with the cooperation of Nike executives. In late 2003, Knight appointed his son to the board and, after Vinton had stepped down—prior to leaving the company with a severance package—Knight rebranded the company Laika. He then invested $180 million into Laika, and the studio released its first feature film, Coraline, in stop motion, in 2009. Coraline was a financial success and Travis Knight was then promoted into the roles of Laika CEO and president.
Death of Matthew Knight
In May 2004, two years after Knight bought Vinton, his son Matthew, aged 34 years, traveled to El Salvador to film a fund-raising video for Christian Children of the World, a Portland nonprofit organization. However, while scuba diving with his colleagues Vincenzo Iannuzzelli and Robert McDonell in Lake Ilopango, near San Salvador, he died from a heart attack 150 feet (46 m) underwater due to an undetected congenital heart defect. Knight and Travis traveled to El Salvador to return Matthew’s body to the US. Laika Studio’s 2005 short film Moongirl was dedicated to Matthew’s memory.
Knight resigned as Nike CEO on November 18, 2004, several months after Matthew’s funeral but retained the position of chairman of the board. Knight’s replacement was William Perez, former CEO of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., who was eventually replaced by Mark Parker in 2006.
In 2011, the Matthew Knight Arena at the University of Oregon was named in his honor.
Post-Nike CEO role
During the 2009–2010 period, Knight was the largest single contributor to the campaign to defeat Oregon Ballot Measures 66 and 67, which, once passed, increased income tax on some corporations and high-income individuals.
In June 2015, Knight and Nike announced that he would step down as the company’s chairman, with president and CEO Mark Parker to succeed him. Knight’s retirement from the Nike board took effect at the end of June 2016. In September 2017, Knight decided to come out of retirement to put black back in the UNC jerseys for the Phil Knight Classic in Portland, Oregon.
Memoir
Knight’s memoir, Shoe Dog, was released on April 26, 2016, by Simon & Schuster, was rated fifth on The New York Times Best Seller list for business books in July 2018, and details the building of the Nike brand, from importing Japanese shoes to being part of a federal investigation.
Milestones
- 1938 Born in Portland to William and Lola Knight.
- 1964 Starts Blue Ribbon Sports with his former college track coach.
- 1971 Buys swoosh logo for $35 from design student Carolyn Davidson.
- 1972 Blue Ribbon Sports is renamed Nike.
- 1980 Nike sells shares in an initial public offering.
- 1984 Signs Michael Jordan to an endorsement contract.
- 1988 “Just do it” slogan is written by ad agency Wieden & Kennedy.
- 2016 Steps down as chairman of Nike.
