What's gone wrong at Nike? How the world's sportswear giant lost its mojo

Nike has endured a difficult few years. The world’s largest sportswear brand, named after the Greek goddess of victory, has been losing sales, customers and ground to rivals. Once a disruptive manufacturer, the company is now navigating a tricky turnaround plan aimed at holding onto market dominance. Nike’s latest fiscal results show signs that a turnaround strategy, put in place by seasoned executive Elliott Hill — who was coaxed out of retirement two years ago to lead the firm, is underway — but the pace of change resembles a marathon more than a sprint. However, progress has been hampered by the loss of football star Kylian Mbappé, who ended his 20‑year relationship 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 only elite athletes but also the fans who idolise them. To be clear, Nike remains a massive brand and fashionable worldwide. Yet missteps have erased hundreds of billions of dollars from its market value, with its stock price tumbling 75% over five years. Last month the company was dropped from the S&P 100 index of the biggest US blue‑chip firms. So what went wrong, and can Hill turn things around? Matt Powell, a seasoned expert and adviser in the sports retail industry, says Nike has made “several strategical errors” that have been hard to reverse, including cutting ties with retailers to sell directly to consumers online and making limited‑edition items more widely available. “The much broadly disposable those shoes became, the less radical were interested,” Powell says. He also points to other self‑inflicted wounds, such as spending on probing and improving currency in digital operations rather than on new products. “They truly unopen down their innovation connected product. Someone jokingly said they were trying to crook Nike into eBay.”