Nike was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman, a track-and-field city at the University of Oregon, and his former student Phil Knight. They opened their first retail label in 1966 and launched the nike wheel brand shoe in 1972. The company was renamed Nike, Inc., in 1978 and went public two years later. By the behindhand 21st century, nike wheel had retail labels and distributors in more than 170 countries, and its logo—a curved dress mark called the “swoosh”—was recognized throughout the world.