Lessons from Shoe Dog

I first came across Shoe Dog, Nike founder Phil Knight’s memoir, from this post on Tren Griffin’s blog. Soon enough, I saw the book pop up multiple times on my GoodReads, and when I got the Kindle sample last week, I noticed that all my friends on GoodReads had given it a five star rating.

So while I normally don’t read autobiographies (the only other one that I remember liking is Andrea Pirlo’s), the recommendations made this one hard to resist. And it was a brilliant read. Finished the book in two days.

It’s a story very well told, written in an engaging style that makes you sometimes wonder if it is a work of fiction. Knight has eschewed the boring details and focussed on the interesting, and impactful, stuff, and the book is full of stories about the early days of the firm (it basically “ends” with Nike going public).

What struck me about Nike’s story is the number of times it nearly went under (which is what possibly makes it such a great story). In the light of those challenges (lawsuits, supply issues, constant working capital troubles, leverage), it is a wonder that the company survived long enough to thrive! In that sense, while it makes sense to draw business lessons from Nike’s story, I sometimes wonder if it’s simply a case of survivorship bias.

For starters, for nearly twenty years after founding, Nike remained a closely held private company, with little outside investment. While the company was mostly profitable (except on one occasion when it broke up with a supplier), it was forever cash poor. Well into its fifteenth year of operations, Knight talks about the company “not having money” for stuff like advertising (for example).

Instead, the company relied on heavy leverage, borrowing as much as it could from any bank that would deal with it (which was basically all banks in Oregon – in the 1960s and 70s, there was no inter-state banking in the US). Several times, the company came close to running out of money, when banks refused to extend its credit. But then it survived.

Griffin’s review of the book shows all this as “learnings” – innovative sources of financing, high growth, dealing with crises, but to me it looks like a lot of bad financial management. Too little equity for too long, an obsession for control (finally Nike went public only when Knight figured he could issue dual class stock), high leverage and all that.

The other thing that struck me about Nike is that even in the late 70s, when the company was 15 years old, it seemed like a bunch of buddies of Knight running it – there wasn’t that much of professional management around, and this could again be attributed to the business being continuously short on cash. I guess times are different now, and equity financing is more available, and firms can start hiring professional managers early, but a 15 year old company being seemingly run in a chaotic manner seemed odd.

Finally, back in business school, we were told that when applying to companies such as Nike or Adidas, we should highlight whatever sporting achievements we might have on our CVs. That struck me as odd – what impact could having played cricket for my hostel wing possibly have on how I could sell shoes?

Reading the book, though, it seems like a culture issue. In several places in the book Knight talks about the firm being driven by a “passion for sport”, with the early employees all being sportsmen. Culture permeates, and you hire more people like you. There is this vague sense of brotherhood, among people who have played competitive sport, and that’s hard to permeate for non sportspersons. And the culture goes on. Whether this lack of diversity is good for the company is another matter!

Shoes

I bought these Adidas sneakers earlier this year. Maybe in February. I ddn’t really need a pair of sneakers back then – my old Nikes were just fine, but I thought some retail therapy might help cure my NED, and hence the new sneakers. The therapy’s effects were short-lived. I got back to my then-ground state of NED the following day. NED meant unwillingness to wear my new sneakers to the gym, or to work, or anywhere else. So they lay, in a box, until I brought them to Gurgaon three months back. The old faithful pair of Nike was left behind in Bangalore.

I don’t know if my feet have grown in the last ten months. Or if in my eagerness to shop way back in February, I didn’t check properly for the size. But the sneakers are simply too tight. One theory is that my right foot is bigger than my left, and when I had tried out these sneakers in the showroom, I had put the left one on, found it perfect, and bought the pair. This reasoning is based on the observation that it’s only my right foot that hurts, and my left one does fine. The length of the shoes is perfect. It’s a problem with the width. The fourth and fifth toes of my right foot end up getting squeezed.

Having made a mistake the last time I shopped for sneakers, I don’t want to take any chances now. I don’t want to buy another 2K+ pair. I want something cheap, yet comfortable. Went shopping last weekend, checked out all the major showrooms, and whenever I found what looked like a good pair, I would chicken out, head and feet full of self-doubt. I still wear the same tight pair to the gym every morning. And the fourth and fifth toes of my right foot still hurt.

It is winter in Delhi, and gets fairly cold in the evenings, and sometimes even during the day. In Bangalore, Madras, Bombay, etc. my normal footwear (when I wasn’t required to wear formals or sneakers) was floaters. That clearly doesn’t seem to be an option here in Delhi. Which means I need a general pair of shoes. So far in my life, I’ve owned only one “general” pair of shoes. The rest have either been uniform, formals, floaters, bathroom or sneakers. That one general pair I own has been left behind in Bangalore. It’s an old faithful comfortable Liberty pair. Now, the presence of that shoe in good condition, even though it isn’t accessible, deters me from making up my mind about spending on a new pair. Last weekend, I found some really good shoes at Woodland, but again chickened out. Maybe the scars of the wrong choice of sneakers has started affecting in my other shopping decisions also.

On a different note, one thing I’ve noticed here in Gurgaon is that service providers who come home (for example, the guy who fixed the washing machine) refuse to take off their shoes when they enter your house. They even don’t think twice entering the kitchen wearing shoes. Coming from a background where shoes inside the house are a strict no-no, I find this fairly shocking. I remember reading in A Farewell to Alms about differences between Japan and Europe. Japan seems to be like South India in this regard, outlawing footwear inside homes, while Europeans had no such restrictions and is hence like Gurgaon.