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A good story and a great reminder that choice of founder partner is crucial to your success. Let's not forget Bill Bowerman. His wife Barbara's waffle iron is

A good story and a great reminder that choice of founder partner is crucial to your success. Let's not forget Bill Bowerman. His wife Barbara's waffle iron is in the same league of corporate lore as Hewlett-Packard's one-car garage. And the reason Nike's address is One Bowerman Way, Beaverton, Oregon.

defen 7y ago
Dude is a legend. One of my favorite parts in Wild Wild Country is when they're interviewing "local rancher" Jon Bowerman. Paraphrasing, but there's a part where he's talking about his father and it goes something like: "He fought in the war...went behind enemy lines in Italy and convinced the German 8th Army to surrender. Then he led the Ducks to 4 national championships and became US Olympic coach, but retired heartbroken after Munich. Then one day he was in the garage and melted some old retreat rubber with a waffle iron and glued it to an old worn out shoe. The result became...uh...Nike""
- johnohara 7y ago
  You would have liked Arthur Lydiard as well.
mikestew 7y ago
His wife Barbara's waffle iron... That legend has always bugged me. If one used a waffle iron to make running shoe soles, the result would not look like a Nike Waffle Trainer. It would look like, well, a waffle. The soles of Nike Waffle Trainers looked like one took a waffle iron and made it out of rubber. IOW, the legendary mold and result would have to be reversed from reality. I mean, have I been thinking about this wrong for forty years? You can't make a Nike Waffle Trainer from a waffle iron, right?
- johnohara 7y ago
  It was exactly like him to pour a bunch of latex rubber into a waffle iron to see if his idea was feasible. It is how his mind worked. My understanding is he ruined three waffle irons before he had a workable piece, including the first one which never opened. I'm not sure if that's accurate but it would definitely be consistent with how he "bird-dogged" a problem. He had been experimenting with rubberized materials before the waffle iron, using it at first to resurface the track at Marist High School in Eugene after making numerous test pads and coated them with different formulations to see which ones worked best over concrete. At the time, running tracks were usually packed clay, cinders, or other "fines". Great for training by the way (fewer impact injuries) but terrible for breaking 4 minute miles or going under 10.00s in the 100m. He shifted his attention to shoes after spending time in New Zealand with Lydiard. Lydiard was a cobbler of women's shoes and showed Bill how they were made. Bill's philosophy of making shoes lighter and lighter was no joke. He was "Bill Bowerman serious" and firmly believed athletes needed every form of optimization in order to perform their best, including going so far as to measure the weight difference between wet and dry socks over the distance of a marathon, multiplied by the number of times the leg had to lift the foot, in an attempt to understand how athlete energy is allocated during a race.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    I don't think you understand, or just chose to ignore, my question.
    - johnohara 7y ago
      https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a21841/nike-waffle-iron/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a21841/n... Many years had passed since the Bowermans moved out of the house where the waffle story happened. Located in the western Oregon town of Coburg (population: 1,000), the house was remote, up on a hill and only accessible by a thin one-lane road. There was no way a garbage truck could reach the property, so they often just buried trash in a pit out back. The long-married couple eventually moved away to Fossil, where Bill died in 1999 and Barbara in 2010. But their son, Tom, lived on the family property in Coburg and decided to expand the carport. Digging alongside the house, he came across a treasure trove of Nike history buried alongside the house. There were crudely cobbled-together shoes, old prototype metal plates, cracking rubber soles, peeling molds, and a rusty old waffle iron. Thanks to the distinctive 1930s design, Reames knew this was the appliance that created the Nike we know today.

defen 7y ago

Dude is a legend. One of my favorite parts in Wild Wild Country is when they're interviewing "local rancher" Jon Bowerman. Paraphrasing, but there's a part where he's talking about his father and it goes something like: "He fought in the war...went behind enemy lines in Italy and convinced the German 8th Army to surrender. Then he led the Ducks to 4 national championships and became US Olympic coach, but retired heartbroken after Munich. Then one day he was in the garage and melted some old retreat rubber with a waffle iron and glued it to an old worn out shoe. The result became...uh...Nike""

johnohara 7y ago
You would have liked Arthur Lydiard as well.

mikestew 7y ago

His wife Barbara's waffle iron... That legend has always bugged me. If one used a waffle iron to make running shoe soles, the result would not look like a Nike Waffle Trainer. It would look like, well, a waffle. The soles of Nike Waffle Trainers looked like one took a waffle iron and made it out of rubber. IOW, the legendary mold and result would have to be reversed from reality. I mean, have I been thinking about this wrong for forty years? You can't make a Nike Waffle Trainer from a waffle iron, right?

johnohara 7y ago
It was exactly like him to pour a bunch of latex rubber into a waffle iron to see if his idea was feasible. It is how his mind worked. My understanding is he ruined three waffle irons before he had a workable piece, including the first one which never opened. I'm not sure if that's accurate but it would definitely be consistent with how he "bird-dogged" a problem. He had been experimenting with rubberized materials before the waffle iron, using it at first to resurface the track at Marist High School in Eugene after making numerous test pads and coated them with different formulations to see which ones worked best over concrete. At the time, running tracks were usually packed clay, cinders, or other "fines". Great for training by the way (fewer impact injuries) but terrible for breaking 4 minute miles or going under 10.00s in the 100m. He shifted his attention to shoes after spending time in New Zealand with Lydiard. Lydiard was a cobbler of women's shoes and showed Bill how they were made. Bill's philosophy of making shoes lighter and lighter was no joke. He was "Bill Bowerman serious" and firmly believed athletes needed every form of optimization in order to perform their best, including going so far as to measure the weight difference between wet and dry socks over the distance of a marathon, multiplied by the number of times the leg had to lift the foot, in an attempt to understand how athlete energy is allocated during a race.
- mikestew 7y ago
  I don't think you understand, or just chose to ignore, my question.
  - johnohara 7y ago
    https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a21841/nike-waffle-iron/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a21841/n... Many years had passed since the Bowermans moved out of the house where the waffle story happened. Located in the western Oregon town of Coburg (population: 1,000), the house was remote, up on a hill and only accessible by a thin one-lane road. There was no way a garbage truck could reach the property, so they often just buried trash in a pit out back. The long-married couple eventually moved away to Fossil, where Bill died in 1999 and Barbara in 2010. But their son, Tom, lived on the family property in Coburg and decided to expand the carport. Digging alongside the house, he came across a treasure trove of Nike history buried alongside the house. There were crudely cobbled-together shoes, old prototype metal plates, cracking rubber soles, peeling molds, and a rusty old waffle iron. Thanks to the distinctive 1930s design, Reames knew this was the appliance that created the Nike we know today.