Nike is king. From its dominance in the athletic world, its popularity amongst consumers, and being one of the most globally recognized brands, Nike is riding a wave of success that shows no signs of slowing down. But it wasn't always wasn't like that.
In the late '90s, Nike was embroiled in controversy over its reported use of sweatshops, an issue that threatened to derail Nike's popularity and undoubtedly hurt its company image. In a recent report by Business Insider, we're able to read just some of the things Nike has done to improve and change the way people perceive the brand.
"The sweatshop perception was one of the biggest challenges Nike has faced,"University of Southern California professor Jeetendr Sehdev said. "It seemed impossible they could ever shake the perception."
Nike used sweatshops. There's no denying that. BI's report mentions the 14 cents an hour earned by Indonesian workers, while also referencing a New York Times article from 1997 that documented abuse of workers by a Vietnamese sub-contractor. It's a part of Nike's history that the brand isn't proud of. But since then, it has doing its part of upgrade its overseas conditions and to help make sure that the abuses of the past never occur again.
In 1998, Nike's Phil Knight helped lead the change in the company. Knight vowed Nike would be more upfront with the issues, promising to be more transparent in overseas dealings and becoming more committed to addressing and improving the issues and abuses it was confronted with and accused of.
"The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse," Knight said. "I truly believe the American consumer doesn’t want to buy products made under abusive conditions."
Since then, Nike has done just that having raised minimum wage rates, improving factory conditions, and ensuring the factories have clean air. Also, Nike also publishes public reports documenting its general responsibility and factory conditions following through on the promise of being more transparent.
It's a change we can all get behind.
[via Business Insider]
