This extensive article titled the New Nike from Business Weekly on the Nike Company describes the history and the structure of the company in many places throughout the article. Nike is a global company that distributes shoes to countries all over the world for all levels of athletes from the everyday runner to Olympic superstars. The Nike Corporation studies international markets to meet the demands of many different consumer groups. Nike also owns other large shoe companies such as Converse, Hurley, and Cole Hann which makes them an enormous company that is responsible for many different branches and markets. The structure of Nike has developed over time based off of the demand for their product.
The company took off and really made a name for itself with the Air Jordan shoe but when Jordan retired in 2003 from basketball sales declined as consumers began to favor brands such as Sketchers, K-Swiss, and New Balance. During this time Nike began to struggle greatly. Co-founder of the company Phil Knight was forced to address his employees and tell them that the company was struggling greatly with no easy way out. A new executive team was put together with a variety of members including veteran Nike employees and executives from other large companies such as Ralph Lauren and Pepsi. One of these newly added members, Thomas E. Clark, is now the head of the Nike new ventures division.
Before the reorganization of Nike local offices were encouraged to spend as much as they wanted on local projects in attempts to promote the brand. However, this was costly and often times ended up making Nike look less desirable, as a result a unique matrix structure was set up within Nike. Corporate headquarters told branch offices which products to push based off their location and which marking tactics to use. However, the regional offices were allowed some leeway in these orders if they believed that the market would respond better to slightly different tactics. In addition to company reorganization Nike also installed a new computer system that was much more efficient and increased the production of sneakers worldwide. Nike is still eager to more towards a more consumer based structure however, they now realize that there must be a balance between creativity and structure within the company.
I think that this article on Nike was very interesting because I never realized how much Nike suffered from Michael Jordan retiring from basketball. I believe that the company has done a good job with reorganizing and setting up a strong structure for a successful company. I am interested to see how the company will change in the future with the development of even better shoes such as the Nike Free which was mentioned in the end of the article. I also believe that Nike can continue to market Nike Shoxs for years because of their popularity and variety in styles. It will be interesting to see how the Nike Company structure changes as they begin to develop more shoes and if they continue to be the most successful shoe corporation within so many different international markets.
Caroline White
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_38/b3900001_mz001.htm
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