Nike Company: Supply Chain Management

Introduction

The first part of this essay shows the background of Nike, it contains the information of Nike, includes the founder of Nike, Nike’s early Cooperation, and Nike’s early slogans.

The second section introduces Nike’s evolution, from 1982 till today. Nike worked hard to promote its brand since the company was founded, but in each period, it work on different directions and had different strategies. This part will analyze each different period of Nike and discuss it specifically.

The third part of this essay introduces different factors of some common global manufacturing strategies. If a company wants to success in the global market, these factors must be considered seriously.

The fourth section shows how Nike’s supply chain networks work and explain why companies prefer to set factories in the Asia countries such as China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

The following four parts of this essay discuss how Nike gained benefits by setting factories in these Asia countries: China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. It will also point out the drawback of setting firms in different countries and discuss Nike’s strait or failure.

The next section suggests the global manufacturing strategies that Nike used to increase its revenue. In the early periods, Nike used strong advertising campaigns to promote its brand, but now it added different strategies in it.

The last section is the conclusion of this essay; the comprehensive summaries will be made by each part of this easy.

Background of Nike

Nike has grown from a US-based footwear company in the early 1970s to the number one sport brand in the world today(Dastandee 2013). It rose quickly from small-time sales at track meets to a major publicly-traded Fortune 500 company(Dastandee 2013). Nike is one of the world's largest suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment(Chavis 1998).

Nike was founded by Philip Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman in 1964(Dastandee 2013).It started as Blue Ribbon Sports at the University located in Oregon in 1964(Dastandee 2013). Blue Ribbon Sports initially operated as a distributor for Japanese shoe maker Onitsuka Tiger(Chavis 1998). In their first year in business, they sold 1,300 pairs of Japanese running shoes and grossing $8,000(Dastandee 2013).

In 1966, the first location for the company was set in Santa Monica(Chavis 1998). The relationship between Blue Ribbon Sports and Onitsuka Tiger has come to an end in the year of 1971, since then, the company decided to launch its own line, that’s the start of “Nike”(Chavis 1998). Nike then produced its own brand of products(Dastandee 2013).