50 Fun Facts About Brand

Nike was founded in 1964 under what name?

Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman started out selling Japanese Onitsuka Tiger shoes from the boot of Knight's car at track meets.

How much was design student Carolyn Davidson paid in 1971 for creating the Nike Swoosh?

Knight's verdict at the time was "Well, I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me"; in 1983 he gave her a diamond Swoosh ring and company stock.

Nike's Swoosh was meant to suggest the wings of which figure?

Nike herself gives the company its name; Davidson designed the mark to convey motion.

Adidas takes its name from its founder. What was he called?

He started making sports shoes in his mother's laundry room in Herzogenaurach after World War I.

When the Dassler brothers fell out in 1947, Rudolf founded a rival firm that became which brand?

He first called it Ruda, from Rudolf Dassler; the two companies still face each other across the same small German town.

Adidas bought its three-stripes mark in 1952 from a Finnish company for about €1,600 and what else?

Karhu Sports sold it; Dassler later called Adidas "the three stripes company".

Apple's forgotten third co-founder sold his stake back to Jobs and Wozniak for how much?

Ronald Wayne walked away in 1976; Jobs had sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak his calculator to fund the first computers.

What did Steve Jobs sell to help finance production of the Apple I?

Wozniak chipped in by selling his HP-65 calculator.

Amazon was registered in 1994 under what original name?

Bezos picked Seattle for its tech talent and its closeness to a big book distributor in Oregon.

Google's name is a misspelling of which mathematical term?

A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeros, chosen to suggest searching a huge number of websites.

Google's first outside investment, $100,000 in 1998, came from a co-founder of which company?

Andy Bechtolsheim's cheque prompted Page and Brin to incorporate so they could cash it; Jeff Bezos was an early angel too.

Starbucks opened in 1971 at which Seattle landmark?

For its first decade it sold beans and equipment, not espresso; the shift to cafés came under Howard Schultz.

The creature on the Starbucks logo is what?

In the first version she was topless with a fully visible double fish tail; the design has been simplified several times since.

Richard and Maurice McDonald opened the first McDonald's in 1940 in which California city?

Ray Kroc became their franchise agent in 1955 and bought them out in 1961.

The McDonald's Golden Arches design was introduced in which year?

Ray Kroc opened his first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, two years later.

Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta by John Pemberton and originally marketed as what?

He sold the rights to Asa Candler in 1888, and the first-ever coupon, for a free glass, went out the same year.

Coca-Cola's disastrous 1985 recipe change was marketed as what?

Blind taste tests actually favoured it, but nostalgia forced the company to bring back the old formula as Coca-Cola Classic.

Pepsi was invented in 1893 by pharmacist Caleb Bradham and first sold as what?

He renamed it Pepsi-Cola in 1898 for its supposed digestive benefits; the company went bankrupt in 1923.

IKEA is an acronym. The I and K stand for founder Ingvar Kamprad; the E and A stand for what?

Elmtaryd was the farm where he was born and Agunnaryd his hometown in Småland; he founded the firm at 17 as a mail-order business.

The name Lego comes from a Danish phrase meaning what?

Carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen began making wooden toys in Billund in 1932; plastic came in 1947.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make what?

It moved into toys in the 1960s and video games only in the 1970s.

The Toyoda family renamed the car brand Toyota in 1936 partly because the new spelling took how many brush strokes?

Eight is a lucky number, and the voiceless T was thought to sound clearer than the muddy D.

Toyota's start-up capital for building cars came from selling the patent for what?

Sakichi Toyoda's 1924 loom stopped itself when a thread broke, a principle later built into the Toyota Production System.

The Mercedes name comes from the daughter of which Austrian businessman?

He named the 1901 Mercedes 35 hp after Mercédès Jellinek and registered the trademark in 1902.

What is Mercedes-Benz's official slogan?

The brand traces its roots to Karl Benz's 1886 Patent-Motorwagen, widely called the first car.

Ferrari's Prancing Horse is a black horse on a background of what colour?

The shield version carries the Italian tricolour above the horse and the letters SF, for Scuderia Ferrari, below.

Rolex began in London in 1905 under what name?

Hans Wilsdorf registered the Rolex name in 1908; the waterproof Oyster came in 1926.

Rolex's first ambassador, Mercedes Gleitze, wore an Oyster around her neck in 1927 doing what?

Rolex had been proving the watch was waterproof by displaying it inside aquariums in shop windows.

Ray-Ban's Aviator sunglasses were originally developed for whom?

Bausch & Lomb created them in 1936 after Colonel John Macready asked for lenses to cut the glare of the sky; Luxottica bought the brand in 1999.

The Band-Aid was invented in 1920 by a Johnson & Johnson employee for whom?

Earle Dickson's wife Josephine kept cutting and burning herself cooking, so he stuck gauze onto strips of surgical tape.

Kleenex tissues were first marketed in 1924 for what purpose?

The material began as a World War I gas-mask filter and became the sanitary pad Kotex before it became a tissue.

The name Velcro is a blend of two French words meaning what?

Swiss engineer George de Mestral got the idea from burrs stuck to his dog after a hunting trip in the Alps.

Hot-tub brand Jacuzzi was founded in 1915 by seven Italian immigrant brothers making what?

In 1948 the family built a water pump to ease a relative's rheumatoid arthritis, and hydrotherapy followed.

Bill Bowerman's 1972 waffle-tread Nike shoe was nicknamed after what, because of its prints?

The waffle sole led to the Waffle Trainer of 1974, which drove the company's early growth.

Ray-Ban was created in 1936 by which American optical company?

Bausch & Lomb sold the brand to Italy's Luxottica in 1999 for a reported $640 million.

What motto did Lego adopt in 1936?

Ole Kirk Christiansen coined it to stop his employees skimping on quality.

IKEA's first store opened in 1958 in which small Swedish town?

IKEA has been the world's largest furniture retailer since 2008.

Pepsi-Cola got its name in 1898 from what supposed benefit?

Caleb Bradham had wanted a fountain drink that would aid digestion and boost energy.

Which French fashion house, founded in 1910, is famous for its No. 5 perfume and tweed suit?

It is still privately owned by the Wertheimer brothers and licenses its eyewear to Luxottica.

Rolex patented a self-winding "Perpetual" rotor in which year?

The semicircular plate swings with gravity to wind the watch, and the Oyster became the Oyster Perpetual.

According to its founder, the Korean name Samsung means what?

Lee Byung-chul started it in 1938 as a 40-employee trading company dealing in dried fish, groceries and noodles.

Nokia was established in Finland in 1865 as what kind of business?

Rubber and cables came later; the firm took its name from the town near its second mill, and only focused on telecoms from the 1990s.

Before building supercars in 1963, Ferruccio Lamborghini made his fortune manufacturing what?

Lamborghini Trattori, founded in 1948, still builds them in Pieve di Cento and has been a separate company from the car maker since 1973.

The made-up name Häagen-Dazs was meant to sound like it came from which country?

Bronx ice-cream maker Reuben Mattus said it honoured Denmark's treatment of Jews in WWII, though neither 'ä' nor 'zs' exists in Danish.

The camera brand Canon takes its name from Kannon, who is what?

The company's 1934 prototype, Japan's first 35mm focal-plane-shutter camera, was called the Kwanon; its first lenses came from future rival Nikon.

Before 1946, the Dallas chain that became 7-Eleven traded under what name?

Customers 'toted' away purchases past Alaskan totem poles out front; the new name advertised unheard-of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. hours.

Software company Adobe is named after what?

John Warnock and Charles Geschke started the firm in Warnock's garage in 1982 after leaving Xerox PARC to sell PostScript.

The name Sony blends the Latin word 'sonus' with which bit of 1950s American slang?

Founders Morita and Ibuka nearly used their initials TTK, but a Tokyo railway company already went by that name.

Pringles packaging inventor Fredric Baur asked for his ashes to be placed where?

Baur spent two years perfecting the saddle-shaped chip in the 1950s but never cracked the taste; colleague Alexander Liepa's name is on the patent.

After failing to buy Adobe outright for $5 million in 1982, Steve Jobs settled for what stake?

He paid five times the company's valuation plus a five-year PostScript licence in advance, making Adobe the first Silicon Valley firm profitable in year one.