When Things Don't Go Right What Nike Learned In China
February, 2009
The year was 1980. We were number three in branded U.S. athletic-shoe sales. Our best-selling shoe was the Waffle Trainer. Michael Jordan was a senior at Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina.We believed the rules were set by those who already controlled the game, so we had to figure out a way to leapfrog the competition. We came up with an audacious idea: beat the competition to the People's Republic of China, for both a source and a market (the land of 2 billion feet, don't you kn...
