Nike is the largest sportswear company in the world, an American brand built in Oregon in 1964, and in India it sells shoes mostly between ₹7,000 and ₹10,000. It is also, in India, a business that has lost money for most of the last decade, closed more stores than it opened, walked away from the Indian cricket team, and in February 2026 handed its own website to a beauty retailer. The gap between what Nike is globally and what Nike is here is the most interesting thing about it.
Nike is the biggest sportswear brand in the world and the fourth-biggest in India, behind Decathlon, Puma and adidas. Its Indian arm has lost money for three straight filed years, and it passes the full 38.5% import duty through to the shelf, so an Air Force 1 costs about ₹9,695 here against $115 in America. Buy it for the shoe, not for the value.
Snapshot
- Founded
- 25 January 1964, Portland, Oregon, USA — as Blue Ribbon Sports
- Founder
- Philip H. Knight and William J. “Bill” Bowerman
- Headquarters
- Beaverton, Oregon, USA
- Current owner
- NIKE, Inc. — Class B stock listed on the NYSE as NKE; Class A unlisted and family-controlled
- Global revenue
- $46.3 billion in FY2025, the year ended 31 May 2025, down 10%
- India entity
- Nike India Private Limited, incorporated 17 August 2004, Bengaluru
- In India since
- 1995, initially through a licensee — see below
- Category
- Footwear and sportswear
- Price band in India
- ₹5,995 to ₹13,995 for shoes; the core Air Force 1 and Air Max models sit at ₹7,495 to ₹9,995
- Available in India
- Official — nike.in, brand stores, and authorised marketplace storefronts
How it started
Nike began as an import business built on an argument. In 1962 Phil Knight, then a Stanford business student and a middle-distance runner, wrote a paper arguing that Japanese-made running shoes could undercut the German brands — adidas and Puma — the way Japanese cameras had undercut German ones. He then went to Japan and did it.
His partner was Bill Bowerman, his old track coach at the University of Oregon, who had been posting Knight experimental prototypes since August 1958. On 25 January 1964 the two men shook hands at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Portland and put in $500 each. The company was called Blue Ribbon Sports, and its product was not its own: it imported Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan, which Knight sold out of the boot of his car at track meets.
The name Nike arrived in 1971, proposed — by trade-press accounts — by Jeff Johnson, the company’s first full-time employee, who said it came to him in a dream. Nike is the Greek goddess of victory. Nike’s own newsroom does not corroborate the dream, so treat it as sneaker-press folklore rather than company record.
The Swoosh is better documented, and cheaper than the legend suggests. Knight hired Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University who had been doing charts and brochures for Blue Ribbon Sports at $2 an hour. In February 1971 she produced about six marks. She billed $35. Knight’s reaction, recorded on Nike’s own site: “Well, I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” The first shoe to carry it was a black soccer cleat made in Mexico, sold in 1971 for $16.95. Davidson was later given stock; she told NPR she is “not quite a millionaire” from it. The widely repeated detail that she received exactly 500 shares at the IPO does not appear in any citable source, and we have left it out.
The split that made Nike a manufacturer
- Blue Ribbon Sports1964, importing Onitsuka Tiger for America
- The Cortez dispute1971 to 1974, the supplier turns rival
- Nike as its own brandFree of the supplier that made its shoes
- The world’s largest sportswear company$46.3 billion in FY2025
One sentence, because it explains the rest of the audit: Nike became Nike by losing its supplier.
Blue Ribbon Sports had a structural problem: it did not make anything. From 1963–64 it distributed Onitsuka Tiger in the United States, and from 1966 it held exclusive American rights to Tiger’s track-and-field line. It was, functionally, a Japanese company’s importer.
In 1968 Bowerman proposed the shoe that became the Cortez — designed on the American side, manufactured by Onitsuka. That shoe is the object of the fight that followed. Blue Ribbon Sports was quietly building its own brand while still selling Onitsuka’s; Onitsuka had been sounding out other American distributors.
The case ended in the American courts. Nike kept the Cortez name, and Onitsuka renamed its version the Corsair.
Bowerman called the case win-or-die. He was right, but the more important consequence was mechanical: you cannot be somebody’s distributor and their competitor. The lawsuit forced Nike to own a product.
The turning points
Six moments explain why Nike is shaped the way it is. Each one cost something.
The waffle sole, patented 1974. Bowerman’s US patent 3,793,750 — filed 30 August 1972, granted 26 February 1974 — claims a lightweight upper with polygon studs for traction on artificial turf. It gave a distribution company something it owned outright and competitors could not legally copy. It is also what made the Onitsuka break inevitable.
The 1980 listing. Nike went public in December 1980, within days of Apple. The structure created then is what still governs the company: two share classes, with the founder’s side controlling the board. Growth capital without loss of control. We have left out the widely quoted IPO date, share price and share count, because none of them could be traced to a filing.
Michael Jordan, 1984. The deal was $500,000 a year for five years, around $7 million including stock options, negotiated by agent David Falk. Converse offered roughly $100,000 a year. adidas, mid-crisis after its founder’s death, made no offer at all. Falk also extracted a commitment that Nike spend $1 million marketing the shoe in its first six months. Nike could exit early if Jordan missed Rookie of the Year, All-Star selection and a 20-point average; Jordan kept the last two years if the shoe did $4 million in year three. It did about $130 million of gear in year one.
What changed was not the money. It was the mechanism: the athlete got a royalty and a signature line rather than a fee. Every signature shoe in every sport since is a copy of that contract. The cost is that Nike became structurally dependent on one man’s story, and on a Jordan Brand it must keep feeding.
Visible Air, 1987. Nike had air cushioning and nobody could see it. Tinker Hatfield, an architecture graduate, cut away part of the midsole on the Air Max 1 to expose the bag. His stated inspiration was the Centre Pompidou in Paris — a building turned inside out, pipes and escalators on the outside. Technology became styling. Boost, gel windows, carbon plates: all downstream of that cut.
The factory crisis, 1996–98. On 8 November 1997 the New York Times reported a leaked Ernst & Young audit of the Tae Kwang Vina plant in Vietnam: toluene at 6 to 177 times Vietnamese legal limits, 77% of employees with respiratory problems, 65-hour weeks, $10 a week. On 12 May 1998 Knight stood at the National Press Club and committed Nike to a minimum age of 18 in footwear factories, US occupational air-quality standards, independent monitoring and worker education. He did not commit to a living wage. Wages then averaged $1.60 a day against campaigners’ demand of $3.00. That omission is still the live complaint against Nike today.
The direct-to-consumer pivot, and its reversal. In October 2017 Nike announced Consumer Direct Offense — double innovation, double speed, double direct connections. It cut wholesale deliberately: Nike’s share of Foot Locker’s purchases went from 75% in 2020 to 70% in 2021, guided to 60% and then around 55%. By 2023 it was rebuilding those relationships, returning to DSW and Macy’s, and under Elliott Hill it went back onto Amazon in autumn 2025. FY2025 wholesale revenue still fell 7%, and group revenue fell 10%.
Hold that last one, because India is where the same admission is most complete.
Going global
Nike’s route out of America was not a marketing story, it was a manufacturing one. The company began as an importer of Japanese shoes and never stopped being an outsourcer — it has essentially always had other people’s factories make its products, first in Japan, then across South Korea and Taiwan, then Indonesia, Vietnam and China as costs moved. That model is why Nike could scale faster than any rival, and it is also the direct cause of the 1990s labour crisis. The two facts are the same fact.
Distribution went the other way: from running clubs to mass retail to sport-by-sport conquest, each new market entered on the back of whichever sport that country cared about. Basketball in America, football in Europe, and — the decision that shaped its India story — cricket in India.
How Nike came to India
Nike entered India in 1995 through a licensee rather than on its own, and thirty years later it is still not fully in control of its own distribution here. That single thread explains almost everything else.
The licensee was Sierra Industrial Enterprises, later SSIPL. Its own published milestones tell the story cleanly: founded 1994 as Moja Shoes, first factory at Kundli in Haryana in 1995, “first authorised manufacturer for Nike in India” in 1996, first Nike store at South Extension in Delhi in 1998, hundredth store in 2009. Business Standard dates the arrangement to 1996 and describes it as a seven-year licence; the licensee’s own record says 1995. We report both, because both are citable and they genuinely disagree.
Nike India Private Limited was incorporated in Bengaluru on 17 August 2004. In 2014 Nike filed with the Indian government to open fully owned stores under the single-brand retail policy, having until then run entirely through local distributors and retail partners. Its own line at the time was that the partner model “works well for us”.
Then it unwound. SSIPL records selling its Nike retail arm in 2021 and its manufacturing business in 2023, while adding a Nike Performance Shoes licence in 2022. Today SSIPL describes itself as licensee and distributor for Nike Accessories. A relationship that began with making and selling Nike shoes in India has narrowed to accessories.
And on 30 January 2026 the Nike India website went dark for a cut-over. It came back as nike.in, operated by Nykaa — the beauty and fashion retailer. Nike By You customisation, SNKRS Web and even Nike member logins were discontinued in India. What replaced them: free shipping, free exchanges, two-day metro delivery. The commercial terms have never been disclosed, no exchange filing describes the arrangement, and neither company is quoted on the record in any coverage we could find. What is verifiable is that nike.com/in now redirects to nike.in, and that the storefront serves its product images from Nykaa’s own image domains while carrying a Nike copyright line.
The numbers nobody prints
Nike India Private Limited employs about 41 people and files these accounts, but much of what Indians buy passes through distributors and marketplace sellers that never touch this balance sheet. Treat the figures as the only audited Indian numbers there are, not as the size of Nike in India.
Nike India’s filed accounts are unflattering, which is presumably why most Indian coverage skips them.
| Year to 31 March | Revenue | Net profit |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | ₹760.0 crore | ₹32.9 crore |
| 2021 | ₹555.0 crore | ₹53.9 crore |
| 2022 | ₹739.2 crore | ₹32.4 crore |
| 2023 | ₹1,133.6 crore | −₹82.8 crore |
| 2024 | ₹1,179.6 crore | −₹116.9 crore |
Figures from Nike India Private Limited’s filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. A figure of ₹1,380 crore for FY2025 is circulating widely across Indian coverage. We traced it to a newsletter that cites no source for it, could find no filing-based report of it in any Indian business paper, and are therefore not printing it as fact. The most recent verified number is FY2024.
For scale: Decathlon India reported ₹4,133 crore in the year to March 2025, with a ₹65 crore net loss. Puma India reported ₹3,274 crore. When Puma crossed ₹2,980 crore in its 2022 calendar year, Storyboard18 reported from registrar filings that it exceeded the combined Indian revenues of Nike, adidas and Reebok. One caution that most league tables ignore: Puma reports on a calendar year and Nike India on an Indian financial year, so any ranking of the two is indicative, not exact.
The store estate went the same way. Nike India had a little over 150 outlets in 2010 and a stated plan to reach 350 by 2015. Instead it shut roughly 200 from 2017, per Outlook Business, arriving back at about 150; Indian Retailer reported 35% of stores closing in 2016 and a plan to go to around 100. Nike’s own annual report discloses no India store count at all.
And then there is cricket. Nike won the Indian team kit in December 2005 for $43 million, outbidding adidas and Reebok, and held it until 2020. The final four-year deal was worth ₹370 crore. When COVID hit, Nike asked for an extension at a discount to recover lost time, the BCCI refused and reopened bidding, and Nike declined to bid. The detail that matters: cricket never accounted for more than about 2% of Nike India’s revenue.
The most expensive marketing asset in Indian sport sold almost no shoes.
Who owns it now
Nike’s Class B stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Its Class A stock does not trade at all, and that is the whole point.
As of 9 July 2025 there were 288,887,752 Class A shares and 1,188,015,740 Class B — Class A is under a fifth of the equity. Both classes carry one vote per share on ordinary business, but directors are elected separately, and under the FY2025 proxy Class A holders elect nine of the twelve directors. Class A is, in Nike’s own words, “primarily held by Swoosh, LLC”, the vehicle Phil Knight formed in 2015 to hold the majority of his Class A stock.
We have not read the proxy’s ownership table, so we are not printing Knight’s exact percentage. The structural fact needs no percentage: a share class representing less than 20% of the company’s equity elects three-quarters of its board, and one family vehicle holds most of that class.
Elliott Hill, a Nike veteran of about 32 years who had retired in 2020, returned as chief executive on 14 October 2024, replacing John Donahoe. Converse has belonged to Nike since 2003, bought for around $305 million; it turned over $1.692 billion in FY2025, down 19% — under 4% of the group and shrinking faster than its parent.
The models that matter
Nike’s India storefront lists roughly 3,800 items across its nine main categories as of 20 August 2026 — 723 men’s shoes, 517 women’s, 242 kids’. That is an upper bound rather than a clean count, because unisex styles appear under more than one category. The Air Force 1 alone accounts for 89 listings.
Five shoes carry the brand. What matters is not how they look but what each one changed.
| Model | Launched | What it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Cortez | 1972 | The shoe the Onitsuka lawsuit was fought over — it forced Nike to stop importing and start making. Later adopted whole by Chicano streetwear in Southern California |
| Air Force 1 | October 1982 | First basketball shoe with a Nike Air unit. Its 1985 “Shoe of the Month” limited releases invented the drop |
| Air Jordan 1 | 1984–85 | The first shoe sold on a person rather than a technology |
| Dunk | 1985 | The College Colors programme proved a colourway is a product, not a variant |
| Air Max 1 | 1987 | Cut the midsole open so you could see the air. Made engineering visible |
On the Indian shelf, that canon is thinner than it looks. The Air Force 1 is everywhere, Air Max is well stocked, and Jordan has its own section of about 316 listings. But Nike By You customisation and SNKRS — the channel through which limited Dunks and Jordans are actually released worldwide — were switched off in India in February 2026. The models that built the brand’s scarcity economy are the ones an Indian buyer now has the least access to.
The “banned” Air Jordan, and what actually happened
The story every listicle repeats is that the NBA banned the Air Jordan 1 and fined Michael Jordan $5,000 a game. It is substantially false, and Nike says so on its own website.
The shoe the league objected to was the black-and-red Air Ship, a pre-Air Jordan model, worn on or around 18 October 1984 in a preseason game. The rule was a uniformity requirement — shoes had to be at least 51% white and match the team’s colours. The evidence is a letter dated 25 February 1985 from NBA executive vice-president Russ Granik to Nike’s Rob Strasser. There is no evidence any fine was ever levied or paid, and no known footage of Jordan wearing the black-and-red Air Jordan 1 in an NBA game. Nike’s own editorial concedes it “embraced the story and blurred the lines”.
A letter about a different shoe became the most successful advertisement in footwear history. That is a better story than the myth, and it happens to be true.
What Nike costs in India
Prices checked on nike.in and nike.com on 20 August 2026.
- United States list
- $115, about ₹10,996
- Indian MRP
- ₹9,695
- Gap, after stripping 18% GST
- +9%
- Checked on
- 20 August 2026
| Model | India | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Air Force 1 ’07 (men’s) | ₹7,495 for the base colourway; most colourways ₹9,695 | $115 |
| Air Max 90 (men’s) | ₹9,995 | $135 |
| Air Force 1 range overall | ₹5,995 (kids) to ₹13,995 | — |
Two honest caveats before anyone does the arithmetic. Indian prices are MRP and include all taxes; American prices exclude state sales tax, which is added at the till. And the US site was running a 25% promotional code when we checked, which is not a like-for-like comparison. We have not converted the dollar figures, because doing so responsibly needs a dated reference rate.
What we can show is the part of the gap that is knowable. An imported sneaker landing in India pays 20% basic customs duty plus an 18.5% Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess on its landed value — 38.5% in total, with social welfare surcharge waived on footwear since February 2025. Then 18% GST applies at retail on any pair selling above ₹2,500, which is every shoe in the table. The 38.5% is the part that permanently raises the price; the GST is the same tax an Indian buyer pays on anything.
There is also a barrier that never shows up on a price tag. Since August 2024 a Quality Control Order has required covered footwear sold in India to carry the ISI mark under a BIS licence held by the specific factory that made it. A brand can only ship India-bound stock from lines that hold that licence. That is a large part of why the Indian assortment is narrower than the global one, and why launches arrive late here.
So is Indian pricing fair? Broadly, yes — and that is the uncomfortable answer. Roughly 38.5% of duty on landed cost plus 18% GST accounts for most of the gap between $115 and ₹9,695 without any gouging. What Nike has not done is give Indian buyers anything extra for the premium: not customisation, not SNKRS access, not the release calendar. You pay an import price for a reduced product.
Who Nike is actually for
Nike is for the buyer who wants the specific design language — Air Force 1, Air Max, Dunk, Jordan — and understands they are paying an import premium for it. On that basis it is a fair purchase. The shoes are well made, sizing is consistent, and the resale value of the core silhouettes is real in a way no Indian brand’s is.
It is also, quietly, a good running proposition at the top end. Nike’s carbon-plated racing shoes are so effective that World Athletics wrote rules around them in January 2020, capping soles at 40mm and one plate. If you are chasing a marathon time, that matters more than anything in this audit.
Skip Nike if you want value per rupee. At ₹7,500 to ₹10,000 you are in the band where Campus and Sparx sell three pairs, and for gym-and-errands wear the difference in outcome is small. Skip it too if you want the sneaker culture rather than the sneakers — with SNKRS gone from India, the drops, raffles and limited colourways that make Nike interesting elsewhere mostly are not available to you here.
Reputation and controversies
Nike has more documented controversy than any brand on this site, and most Indian coverage of it contains none.
Labour, then. The 1997 Vietnam audit leak and Knight’s 1998 commitments are covered above. What followed was a legal fight with an activist, Marc Kasky, over whether Nike’s public defence of its own labour record was commercial speech and therefore actionable if false. The California Supreme Court said it was. The US Supreme Court took the case and then dismissed it without ruling on 26 June 2003. Nike settled on 12 September 2003, paying $1.5 million to the Fair Labor Association.
Labour, now. This is the live one. Campaigners and institutional investors have pressed Nike since September 2023 over roughly $2.2 million owed to more than 4,000 workers: 1,284 at Violet Apparel in Cambodia, owed $1.4 million in terminal compensation after a sudden closure in July 2020, and over 3,000 at Hong Seng Knitting in Thailand with around $800,000 withheld. Nike said it had no evidence of sourcing from Violet Apparel after 2006, though its own 2007–08 supply-chain disclosures list the factory. On Hong Seng it argued non-payment was lawful because workers chose not to be paid after signing voluntary-leave forms; the Worker Rights Consortium called that coerced. In December 2025 Hong Seng workers received compensation exceeding what the Fair Labor Association had recommended.
Xinjiang. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s March 2020 report named Nike among 82 companies, reporting that supplier Qingdao Taekwang employed around 600 Uyghur workers from Xinjiang, in a facility described as having watchtowers and razor wire, with evening political education and workers unable to return home. Nike later said the supplier had stopped hiring from the region; critics said proof was outstanding.
Environmental claims. A US consumer suit over the marketing of Nike’s “Sustainability Collection” ended in Nike’s favour: dismissed in March 2024, affirmed on appeal in November 2025. Read that precisely — it was dismissed because the plaintiff failed to plead that the products lacked recycled or organic fibres, not because a court found Nike’s claims true.
Competition and trademarks. The European Commission fined Nike €12.5 million in March 2019 for banning traders from selling licensed club merchandise across EU borders. Nike won a restraining order and a recall against MSCHF in April 2021 over Lil Nas X’s “Satan Shoes”, 666 modified Air Max 97s at $1,018. In March 2025 a New York court granted Nike summary judgment against StockX on counterfeiting for 37 pairs.
Athletes. In September 2019 USADA banned Alberto Salazar, head of the Nike Oregon Project, for four years; Nike backed his appeal and dissolved the project. In 2019 Allyson Felix wrote that Nike had offered her 70% of her previous salary with no protection around pregnancy; by that August Nike had extended guaranteed pay for pregnant athletes from 12 to 18 months.
Advertising. Nike’s 1987 use of the Beatles’ original “Revolution” master drew a $15 million suit from Apple Records, settled confidentially — and created the modern music-licensing industry in advertising. Its 2018 Colin Kaepernick campaign drew boycott calls and burning-shoe videos; online sales rose 31% over that Labour Day weekend.
Counterfeits. Nike is the brand most often named in customs seizure statistics. We are not printing a market-size figure, because every one we found traced to a content farm, and specialists caution that seizure counts measure enforcement attention as much as fake volume.
What it gave sport and fashion
Four things, each of which the rest of the industry then copied.
It made the athlete the product. The 1984 Jordan contract gave a player equity in the demand he created, not a fee for showing up. Every signature line since is a derivative of that document.
It made engineering visible. Cutting the Air Max midsole open in 1987 established that a performance claim has to be legible on a shelf. Boost, gel windows and carbon plates all exist in that grammar.
It invented scarcity as a retail mechanic, then proved a colourway is a product. The Air Force 1 “Shoe of the Month” releases and the Dunk’s College Colors programme between them created the drop, the raffle, the resale market — and the entire secondary economy Nike now litigates against.
And, involuntarily, it wrote the supply-chain accountability playbook by failing first. Factory disclosure, third-party auditing and the compliance apparatus the whole apparel industry runs on came out of Nike’s 1998 concessions. That is a real contribution. It is also incomplete, because the one thing Knight declined to concede in 1998 — a living wage — is exactly what Nike was still arguing about in 2025.
Buying it in India
Follow the Swoosh edge
On a genuine pair the stitching holds a clean line all the way round. Fakes wander, double back, or leave the tail of the Swoosh thicker than the head.
Feel the heel tab
It should be embroidered, with thread you can feel. A printed heel tab is a fake, and it is the fastest single check on an Air Force 1.
Look where the midsole meets the upper
Paint should stop cleanly. Pooling, bleeding or a wavy line is a moulding and finishing failure that counterfeiters rarely fix.
Match the style code to the shoe
The code on the box label must correspond to the model and colourway inside. Mismatches are common and decisive.
Buy from nike.in, a Nike store, or the official Nike storefronts on the major marketplaces. Because nike.in is now operated by Nykaa, orders there are fulfilled through Nykaa’s logistics — that is the official channel, not a workaround.
Counterfeit risk is the highest of any brand on this site. Price is the loudest signal — a ₹9,695 shoe offered at ₹2,500 is not old stock.
Does buying abroad make sense? Legitimately, yes, and it is worth knowing why. A shipped order is taxed as a personal import and lands somewhere around 31–42% over the foreign price — no real saving. But a traveller carrying shoes back in their luggage has a ₹75,000 general free allowance under the Baggage Rules 2026, and pays nothing. That is the sourced explanation for India’s sneaker grey market: it is not smuggling, it is hand baggage.
Common questions
Why is Nike so expensive in India?
Mostly duty. An imported sneaker pays 20% basic customs duty plus an 18.5% cess on landed value — 38.5% before anyone takes a margin — and then 18% GST at retail on any pair above ₹2,500. That accounts for most of the gap between a $115 US price and a ₹9,695 Indian one.
Is Nike the biggest sportswear brand in India?
No. On the most recent comparable filings Nike India’s revenue is well below Decathlon India’s ₹4,133 crore and Puma India’s ₹3,274 crore. When Puma crossed ₹2,980 crore in 2022, registrar filings showed it exceeded Nike, adidas and Reebok in India combined. Note the two companies report on different year-ends, so the ranking is indicative.
Who runs Nike’s website in India now?
Nykaa. Since February 2026 nike.in is operated by the beauty and fashion retailer, and nike.com/in redirects to it. Nike By You customisation, SNKRS Web and Nike member logins were discontinued in India as part of the change. The commercial terms have not been disclosed.
Was the Air Jordan 1 really banned by the NBA?
Not as told. The league objected to the black-and-red Air Ship, a different and earlier shoe, in October 1984, under a rule requiring shoes to be at least 51% white. There is no evidence any fine was paid, and Nike’s own website acknowledges it blurred the lines.
Does Nike make its shoes in India?
Not for its own retail. Nike has always outsourced manufacturing, and its Indian licensee SSIPL sold its manufacturing business in 2023. Nike’s global factory base is concentrated in Vietnam, China and Indonesia.
Are Nike shoes on Indian marketplaces genuine?
The official brand storefronts are. Third-party sellers on the same platforms are the risk. Check the seller name, compare against the nike.in price, and treat any deep discount on a current model as a warning rather than a bargain.
References
- Nike, “The handshake that started it all” — 1964 founding, Knight and Bowerman, the 1962 Stanford paper
- Nike, Swoosh logo history — Carolyn Davidson, the $35 fee, Knight’s reaction, the first Swoosh shoe
- NPR, 23 June 2011 — Davidson’s later compensation in her own words
- NPR, 15 February 2022 — the Cortez, the Onitsuka dispute and the Corsair, and Chicano adoption
- US Patent 3,793,750, Bowerman, granted 26 February 1974 — the waffle sole
- ESPN, 15 February 2013 — the 1984 Jordan contract terms and competing offers
- Nike, Air Max 1 history — Tinker Hatfield, visible Air, the Centre Pompidou
- New York Times, 8 November 1997 (archived) — the leaked Ernst & Young audit of Tae Kwang Vina
- IPS, 12 May 1998 — Knight’s National Press Club commitments and the living-wage omission
- Nike, Inc. v. Kasky, 539 U.S. 654 (2003) — the commercial speech case
- NIKE, Inc. FY2025 results, year ended 31 May 2025 — group revenue, net income, geography, Converse
- NIKE, Inc. FY2025 proxy statement — dual class structure, director election split, Swoosh, LLC
- SSIPL Group, company milestones — the 1995 Nike licence, first store 1998, sale of the Nike retail arm in 2021
- Business Standard, 1 September 2014 — the seven-year licence account and the 2014 own-stores filing
- Outlook Business, 5 March 2020 — India revenue history, ~200 store closures, cricket at under 2% of revenue
- Nike India Private Limited, MCA filings — incorporation 17 August 2004 and FY2020–FY2024 financials
- Inc42, 30 January 2026 — the Nykaa handover and what was discontinued
- India Retailing, Decathlon India FY25 — ₹4,133 crore revenue, ₹65 crore loss
- Storyboard18, 13 April 2023 — Puma India exceeding Nike, adidas and Reebok combined, from registrar filings
- ESPNcricinfo — the $43 million 2005 India kit deal
- Scroll, 3 August 2020 — how the cricket contract ended
- Nike, Air Force 1 history — Bruce Kilgore, first Air basketball shoe, the 1985 Shoe of the Month programme
- Nike, Dunk history — the College Colors Program and the SB relaunch
- Nike, on the “banned” Air Jordan — the Air Ship, and Nike blurring the lines
- Complex, 18 October 2017 — the Granik letter of 25 February 1985 and the absence of evidence of fines
- Press Information Bureau, GST on footwear — 5% at or below ₹2,500 a pair, 18% above
- CBIC, Budget 2025-26 TRU letter — footwear at 20% BCD plus 18.5% AIDC with nil social welfare surcharge
- Footwear (Quality Control) Order 2024, S.O. 1421(E) — BIS certification in force from 1 August 2024
- Press Information Bureau, 2 February 2026 — Baggage Rules 2026 and the ₹75,000 free allowance
- ASPI, “Uyghurs for Sale”, 1 March 2020 — the Qingdao Taekwang findings
- Business & Human Rights Resource Centre — Violet Apparel and Hong Seng Knitting, and Nike’s response
- Ellis v. Nike USA, Inc. — the sustainability marketing suit, dismissed 2024, affirmed 2025
- European Commission, 25 March 2019 — the €12.5 million cross-border merchandising fine
- NPR, 1 October 2019 — the Salazar ban and the Oregon Project
- Washington Post, 16 August 2019 — maternity protections extended to 18 months
- Marketing Dive, 10 September 2018 — the 31% online sales rise after the Kaepernick campaign
- Sports Illustrated, 31 January 2020 — the 40mm sole and single-plate rules
How we research and verify brand audits:
our methodology.
Nike makes excellent shoes and sells them in India at a price the duty structure largely justifies. On the product alone, it earns its money. What it has not earned is the assumption Indian buyers still make about it — that Nike here is the same proposition as Nike anywhere. It is not. This is a business that has posted losses in its two most recent filed years, sells less in India than Puma or Decathlon, shut roughly 200 stores, walked away from the national cricket team, and has now handed its website, its customisation service and its release platform to a partner while switching off the features that make the brand culturally interesting.
Buy the Air Force 1 because you want an Air Force 1. Do not buy it because you think you are buying into Nike’s global culture, because in India, Nike has been steadily selling that part off.
The world’s biggest sportswear brand is, in India, a wholesale label with a website run by someone else.
