EKINs (Nike spelled backwards) are a group of gung-ho Nike employees who started the trend of branding themselves with Nike tattoos.

Last fall Nike management brought three tattoo artists to campus, and about 30 people got the Swoosh tattooed on their legs, according to a former employee.

It's not just a job, it's an attitude.

By Josh Feit

ven by New York City standards, it was an impressive party.

To celebrate the opening of the Manhattan Nike Town at 57th and Madison in October, Nike held a gala. Its five-story footwear cathedral was outfitted with a giant movie screen, automated product displays and 66,000 square feet of Nike gear. More than 400 staffers, VIPs such as Donald Trump and Carl Lewis and select members of the media crowded into the space to toast Nike's new digs.

When Nike CEO Phil Knight walked in, the employees hovering above on the balconies broke into a syncopated cheer: "JUST DO IT! JUST DO IT! JUST DO IT!"

It lasted nearly 10 minutes.

"The chant was echoing all around the building," says Nike employee Vizhier Corpuz. "It was -unbelievable. They had so much pride in the company they were working for. I was almost crying."

To Corpuz, 30, Nike isn't just a 9-to-5 gig.

"The Swoosh represents something other than just a company," she says. "It represents a whole value system."

Nelson Farris, 47-year-old head of corporate education, agrees. The longtime employee, who has a Swoosh tattooed just above his ankle, says working at Nike is a profound experience. "It stops being a job," he says, "and starts to become a way that you are defining the way you are living on earth."

Are we talking about a company that makes sneakers? Or is it the Peace Corps?

As it turns out, the real Nike story isn't about its hyper revenues and profits, nor its unfair labor practices in Southeast Asia, nor its radical redefinition of marketing. Instead, it's how the Beaverton company has done what other billion-dollar firms only dream of: making employees feel like their work has more in common with Mother Teresa than Henry Ford.

Coleman Horn, a former Nike designer who left last year to work at Reebok, says he misses the spirit at Nike, a spirit he has difficulty capturing in words. "It's ineffable," he says. "If it exists at Reebok, I haven't seen any signs of it."

"It's definitely different over there," says John Horan, editor of Sporting Goods Intelligence, the footwear industry bible. "Where else do you have people tattooing themselves with the company logo?"

Roy Agostino, 33, Nike's director of international public relations, says he first realized it was more than just another company when he saw a Nike poster featuring a lone jogger facing off against a steep hill. The poster read, "There is no finish line."

"It was that profound, multidimensional thought," Agostino says with a straight face, "that made me realize, 'Hey this isn't just some typical company.'"

For other employees, it's Nike's rebel spirit-be it challenging NBA officials over shoe styles or shaking up the Olympics committee over uniform and advertising regulations. It's not exactly Muhammad Ali dodging the Vietnam War or African-American athletes raising their fists in protest at the '68 Olympics, but for many, it seems to work.

For Aaron Cooper, whose long, rock-star hair, baggy shorts, Nike socks and 5 o'clock shadow give him the aura of a beach-bum philosopher, the definitive moment came when he first went what some marketers and designers call "bro-ing."

"Bro-ing" is industry chatter for going into the hood and saying, "Hey bro, want to check out some shoes?" It's a play on the term "pro-ing," or "pro deal," which originated in the ski industry around the tradition of letting skiers test out new skis. Every three months, Nike introduces a dozen new basketball shoes, and it has become standard procedure for marketing and design staff to visit Philadelphia, Chicago and New York with bags of samples to get reactions from ghetto kids.

Cooper, a white 26-year-old art-school grad from Pasadena who designs basketball shoes, claims that, for him, going into the city was more than market research. It opened his eyes about the importance of his product. "I don't want this to sound arrogant, because it's not that way," says Cooper, sitting in his workspace on the fourth floor of the Michael Jordan Building. In Harlem last summer, Cooper says, "We go to the playground, and we just dump the shoes out. It's unbelievable. The kids go nuts. That's when you realize the importance of Nike. Having kids tell you Nike is the number one thing in their life-number two is their girlfriend."

Some people see "bro-ing" as crass commercialism, especially because Nike shoes typically cost more than $100. Cooper sees it differently. "It's the broad scope of recognizing them as athletes, not just consumers," he says.

Cooper isn't the only Beaverton employee who believes that Nike deeply affects people's lives. Juliet Hochman, a former Olympic rower, Harvard grad and founder of a grassroots organization that works with kids in South Africa, says, "Nike is like a well-funded nonprofit. Nike is in the business of active hero creation."

For Hochman, providing heroes and role models-especially for young girls-is important work.

Sitting in her cubicle shadowed by a poster from her South Africa days ("Vote for Justice, Democracy and Good Government"), Hochman says she was "walloped by adolescence"-she was an awkward teen, not a "thin, pretty girl that all the boys liked, but clumsy and big instead." Sports, she says, "was the only place I could run to." Sports gave her self-esteem in a world that didn't seem to be offering any.

Today, Hochman, 30, runs PLAYCORE, a Nike program that provides college-age coaches for inner city teen-age boys' and girls' sports leagues.

According to Corpuz, who directs Nike's marketing campaign for the new Women's NBA, "Juliet's work is part of the bottom line, part of marketing the brand." To Hochman, though, the work is about something much more important.

"Yes, we have Nike Swooshes around at the events, and yes, it's important that they associate the event with Nike, but I can't tell you how lucky I feel to be working for this company," Hochman says. "I feel good using the Nike brand as a means to an end. And if the end is improving people's lives, I'm more than happy to do that."

Several former Nike staffers characterize this type of commitment by saying employees like Hochman have "drunk the Kool Aid."

"Yeah, that's true," says ex-staffer Horn, "but they give you good reason."