The largest sportswear brand on the planet, named after the ancient Greek goddess of victory, has been losing of late. Losing sales, losing customers and losing ground to its rivals. The one-time industry disruptor is now the establishment and in the middle of a tricky turnaround plan aimed at clinging on to market dominance.
Nike's latest financial results show signs a turnaround strategy put in place by company veteran Elliott Hill, who was coaxed out of retirement two years ago to lead the firm, is working - but the pace of change is more marathon than sprint. However, its recovery has been dented by the loss of football star Kylian Mbappé, who ended his 20-year association with the brand last week to join fast-growing Swiss rival, On. The Real Madrid striker's departure raises the question of whether Nike can remain the top logo for not just elite athletes, but also the fans that idolise them.
To be clear, Nike is still a mega brand and popular the world over. But missteps have seen hundreds of billions of dollars wiped off its stock market value as its share price tumbled by 75% over five years. Last month, Nike was ejected from the S&P 100 stock market index of the biggest blue-chip firms in the US.
And can Hill turn things around? Matt Powell, a veteran analyst and adviser in the sports retail industry, reckons Nike has made "several strategic errors" which have been difficult to reverse, including cutting ties with retailers to sell only direct to customers online and making limited editions items more available. "The more broadly available those shoes became, the fewer people were interested," Powell says.
Other self-inflicted wounds he suggests include spending research and development cash on digital operations rather than new products. "They really shut down their innovation on product. Someone jokingly said they were trying to turn Nike into eBay." That jibe was aimed at John Donahoe, the former eBay boss behind Nike's online direct-to-consumer sales pivot, before he made way for Hill.
Donahoe's four years at Nike coincided with the company's share price plunge. His tenure saw sales initially soar, driven by pandemic restrictions that boosted online shopping, but subsequent cost-of-living pressures curbed customer spending. As demand weakened overseas in key markets like China, Nike announced cost cuts and redundancies.
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