It was to these men that he “mentioned my Crazy Idea.” Simply put, Knight hoped to bring Japanese shoes into the Western marketplace, similar - he thought - to how high-quality Japanese cameras had gradually overwhelmed German cameras in the U.S. Thankfully for Knight, his father, a newspaper editor in Oregon, had a few friends working at the United Press International (UPI). Knight may not have been fluent in Japanese, but he admired Zen philosophy, and during his first few days, he took in temples, shrines and gardens, “trying to soak it all in.” He juxtaposed his harmonic pursuit of peace with a trip to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where businessmen sat in various states of chaos, “waving their arms, pulling their hair, screaming.” “For long, solemn stretches the cabdriver and I said nothing. “Vast sections of the city were total liquid black,” Knight recalled in his memoir, Shoe Dog. He’d had better luck selling securities so, after earning a few commissions, he decided to leave his now-in-love friend behind and see about this “crazy” business idea he had involving running shoes.Īs Knight rode in a taxi toward a “dingy hostel” in Tokyo, he saw that, even 17 years later, the city was still recovering from the bombings during the war. Instead of learning Japanese, Knight had spent the last 10 weeks with a friend in Hawaii, selling encyclopedias door to door, surfing and frequenting dive bars. 22, 1962, Phil Knight, 24, sat on a plane bound for Tokyo.
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