In 2016, Shoe Dog, a memoir by the creator of Nike, was published, authored by Nike founder Phil Knight. The story picks up early in Knight’s adulthood, after he had graduated from college (Oregon) and business school (Stanford). Despite some pretensions to a less than affluent upbringing, Knight was able to convince his father to fund a trip around the world. This occasioned the first use of one of Knight’s conceits: that he isn’t (wasn’t?) good at selling. And not for the last time, Knight was able to persuade someone to do something despite his belief that he had zero chance of success.
I read the book based on two recommendations: Warren Buffet and my son. That I didn’t love the book does not diminish the affection I have for either of them. The overall tale is compelling: a nimble (and at time mendacious) little company is always on the edge of doom, buffeted by hostile bankers, predatory competitors and, at times, rapacious suppliers. If that story line interests you, read the book, you will enjoy it, even though the book ends well short of Nike’s period of dominance.
If you’re a bit less credulous, you might not like it so much. I was constantly on hyperbole alert. Upon spending the night in the Philippines, but lamentably not in the hotel suite preferred by Douglas MacArthur, Knight wrote: “I vowed. One day I shall return.”[1] One of his earliest hires, an accountant named Delbert J. Hayes, was, in Knight’s eyes, “the best accountant in the [Portland Price Waterhouse] office,” which is entirely possible, who “made accounting an art,” which is not.[2] Prior to meeting a man named Sole, who was the protégé of a “genuine, head-to-toe shoe dog” (undefined), Knight stated “Given the man’s reputation, I was expecting some kind of godlike figure with fifteen arms, each one waving a wand made out of shoe trees.”[3]
Knight’s memory is both stupefyingly good and astonishingly bad. Writing 58 years or so after the fact, he recalled meeting his wife-to-be and especially “one long moment of eye contact that kept [him] awake that night.”[4] One of his employees was such a good negotiator that Knight wrote “Every time, Strasser walked away with more than we’d ever hoped.”[5] Great memory remembering “every time,” and hyperbole or a clear case of not hoping for enough. At other times, Knight’s memory fails him, for instance when he was responsible for getting kicked out of a club, but couldn’t remember why. Or when his colleague Johnson, who writes letters about everything, suddenly shows up at a meeting (from across the country) and nobody understands why he was there. Or when a colleague (Bork) was no longer working at the company and Knight can’t remember whether he quit or was fired.
Knight’s memory got me thinking about my own and feeling a bit empathetic. I have some very specific memories, for example: my kindergarten teacher telling us to cross our heart “with the hand you write with” before reciting the pledge of allegiance. But otherwise, although I know certain things about that year, I have no other specific memories. I know the names of many of the other kids who were in my class (small town), but I don’t remember anything any of them did or said. So maybe I should be a bit easier on Knight. But – no, his memory is just too selective and too self-adulatory.
Knight also left too many issues unexplained. He comments throughout, and his bankers complain throughout, that the company was growing too fast for its equity. I understand the issue, having taken a class on cash flow analysis back when I worked for a commercial bank, but Knight never explains it – and it’s not that hard. The problem is that a growing company can be profitable but have so much money tied up in inventory and accounts receivable that it has no cash to pay its bills. One freaking sentence somewhere in the book would have shown why he couldn’t (at times) pay his bills, but he didn’t do it.
There were too many forced sports or war metaphors. Some were just plain stupid. Some were both forced and stupid. He had a meeting with Onitsuka, his supplier. He had been to the company before and had always met in the same conference room. But this meeting was in a newly designed and furnished conference room, which “was like prepping for a meet at Oregon State and learning at the last minute that it had been moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.”[6]
I should be kinder to an old man who is reminiscing about the good old days and spinning a yarn about the birth of a company that retains considerable prominence. But then, Knight should have more respect for facts. He wrote about a typhoon that “completely wiped away the Japanese islands of Honshu and Kyushu.” Honshu still very much exists and, at 88,000 square miles, remains the largest island in Japan. He also describes Saco, Maine as a little town in the backwoods of Maine. Actually, Saco (pronounced socko) is neither small nor in the backwoods, it’s on the ocean and, combined with sister city Biddeford, comprises the second biggest metro area in Maine. Did anyone edit this book?
I could go on and on, but have been harsh enough already.[7] Even so, the book has a sense of urgency and wonder that compel the reader to root for Knight and his “crazy idea,” which incidentally made him the 25th richest person in the world.[8]
[1] P. 32. Allusions to history, and particularly to war, abound throughout the book.
[2] P. 82. He never gives any examples of how Hayes’s artistry.
[3] P. 186-188. Ok, this example is obviously intentional exaggeration, but to what effect?
[4] P. 123. I don’t know either Mr. or Mrs. Knight, but this seems like matrimonial pandering.
[5] P. 307 At least he gives an example of Strasser’s negotiation style.
[6] P. 99 The conference rooms were in the same building, not almost 900 miles apart like Corvallis and Los Angeles.
[7] For a very different (laudatory) review of the book, see https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2017/03/16/in-his-brilliant-history-of-nike-phil-knight-expertly-explains-economics/?sh=372c38c8361a
[8] https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/