Shoe Dog: 11. 1971 Summary & Analysis

Kitami accepts Knight’s invitation to the U.S. and plans a visit in March 1971. Knight does everything he can to make sure Kitami loves his stay, including taking him to the Oregon coast. He also shows Kitami the new office in Tigard and introduces him to a number of Blue Ribbon employees. Everything seems to be going relatively well until Knight sits down for a private meeting with Kitami. Kitami is unsatisfied with Blue Ribbon’s numbers, even though their sales have doubled yearly. He says he has talked to other people who think they should be tripling. However, he refuses to say who these other people are.

During their meeting, Kitami leaves Knight’s office for a moment to use the restroom. While Kitami is away, Knight snoops around and looks at the folder Kitami brought with him. In the folder, he finds proof that Kitami is planning to leave Blue Ribbon for a different distributor. For the moment, Knight decides it is best to act as though he does not know what is going on. However, inside, he is enraged.

On the last day of Kitami’s trip, Knight and Penny take him to a dinner at Bowerman’s house. Although there are a few moments when Knight worries the party might spin out of control from too much drinking, Kitami ultimately has a good time. Everyone involved does what they can to suck up to Kitami and make him feel welcome. However, Knight worries it still is not enough.

After Kitami leaves, Knight contacts Delbert Hayes, his former boss and drinking buddy from Price Waterhouse. Knight knows Blue Ribbon’s partnership with Onitsuka will not last much longer, so he needs an exit strategy. Hayes advises Knight to keep everything under wraps for as long as possible. However, Knight does not have to hide his intentions for long because a few days later, Kitami returns to Oregon and asks Knight to sell him Blue Ribbon. Knight immediately declines the offer, so Kitami tells him he plans to find a better distributor.

Three weeks later, Knight does not know what to do. His bank will no longer loan him money, and despite posting $1.3 million in sales in 1971, Blue Ribbon is barely surviving. Home life is also hard for Knight. He tries to make time for Penny and Matthew, but there is very little of it. Still, he always ensures he has time to tell Matthew a bedtime story and talk with Penny about his day.

Knight decides the only way to prevent Blue Ribbon’s destruction is to go behind Onitsuka’s back. He signs a deal with a factory in central Mexico, which technically does not violate his deal with Onitsuka, though he knows Onitsuka will not see it that way. In part, Knight feels bad about betraying Onitsuka, but he feels justified because Onitsuka betrayed him first.

Because Knight needs to create his own brand, so he calls up a young artist named Carolyn Davidson, whom he met at Portland State. He asks Carolyn to create a logo for his new company. In particular, he wants “Something that evokes a sense of motion.” Carolyn creates several different logos and presents them to Knight, including the now-iconic Nike logo. Johnson and Woodell like the Nike logo, but Knight is unsure about it. Ultimately, though, he does not have enough time or money to keep commissioning new logos, so he decides to go with it for the time being.

Next, Knight and his companions need a new name for their offshoot company. They throw a number of options around, but none really stick until Johnson suggests “Nike.” Knight likes the name and thinks about his time in Greece. With a new company name and logo, things start looking up for Knight. Nissho Iwai, a Japanese trading company, helps Knight fix his cashflow problem, and business starts looking up.

However, more problems arise when Knight receives his first batch of shoes from the factory in central Mexico. They are not as durable as Knight hoped they’d be, and they don’t live up to the standard Blue Ribbon set in the past. Still, they were serviceable and soon became popular enough for the starting quarterback at Notre Dame to wear them.

Knight uses his contact as Nissho to help him find better factories to produce his shoes. Eventually, he finds another factory in Japan that is willing to do business with him. However, he worries that Kitami will soon figure out what is happening, as there are only so many shoe factories in Japan.

Knight has to go to Japan for several weeks to look at factories, so he invites Penny to visit him there. They meet at a hotel, and Knight is overjoyed to see her. Unfortunately, shortly after their reunion, Penny goes to use the bathroom and suffers a panic attack. Knight realizes that Blue Ribbon and Matthew have been putting a lot of stress on her, and he worries about her health. While in Japan, Knight meets Fujimoto to ask about Onitsuka’s plan to leave Blue Ribbon. Unfortunately, Fujimoto does not know much more than what Knight already learned from stealing Kitami’s files.

When Knight returns to the U.S., he meets with Woodell and Bowerman to strategize for the coming months. Their meeting sparks a creative streak for Bowerman, who begins working on new shoe designs. In particular, he experiments with pouring different types of plaster and rubber into waffle irons because he thinks the waffle texture will create an excellent running shoe. Quickly, Bowerman’s experiments prove effective, so he asks Knight to send the design to his manufacturers. Knight does as Bowerman says, not realizing that Bowerman has just created one of the most significant shoe designs in history.