Tinker Hatfield

Tinker's Three Most Successful Shoe Designs

Below You Will Learn the Importance of Tinker Hatfield and His Significance at Nike

BEFORE NIKE

Tinker ran track at the University of Oregon for coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. At one time Tinker held the pole-vault record at the University of Oregon. Bill Bowerman, at the time, was creating new track spikes for his track and field athletes to be better runners. Tinker saw this as an opportunity and approached Bowerman to show him some of his designs that had drawn. Tinker Hatfield graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Architecture from the University of Oregon School of Architecture.

BEGINNING DAYS AT NIKE

After graduating, Tinker's main objective as a designer was not to become "self expressive", but to solve a problem for someone else. Nike started to worry after Reebok took over in popularity and they had to start laying off employees left and right. Tinker was given the opportunity to be apart of a 24 hour design contest. Two days after the contest Tinker was told that he would be a shoe designer for Nike. From there on out and ended up being the lead designer.