What Was the First Nike Store Like?

David Senra says the first Nike store was a sanctuary for runners. Jeff Johnson opened it after hitting sales targets Phil Knight set, and the store celebrated runners instead of only selling them shoes.

Johnson kept a Rolodex of customers. In a new city he looked up who lived there and knocked on the door. Many of the buyers were college kids or even younger. The kid was often out, and the parents invited Johnson to dinner, so the buyer came home to find his shoe salesman eating with his parents. Johnson kept telling Knight they needed a store. Knight set ambitious sales targets and said Johnson could open the store if he hit them. Johnson hit them. He bought the most comfortable chairs he could find at yard sales, built a place for runners to hang out and talk, and filled shelves with books every runner should read, many of them first editions from his own library. Services ran Monday through Saturday, 9 to 6.

No such sanctuary for runners had existed. Senra says celebrating runners and their shoes is a key to Nike's marketing. Johnson, who Senra calls the aspiring cult leader of runners, finally had his church.