Can Nike veteran Elliott Hill turn ‘the swoosh’ around?

Nike’s outgoing chief executive, John Donahoe, is an Ivy League-educated former tech executive and Bain consultant. The man who will take his place, Elliott Hill, started at Nike as an intern and spent his entire career at “the swoosh”, bar a brief stint as an assistant trainer for the Dallas Cowboys football team.

The difference in profiles is stark, and one that Nike hopes will reassure shareholders while energising staff for the monumental task ahead — shaking off an existential crisis that has threatened its position as the world’s biggest sportswear maker and one of its most recognisable brands. Sales have been slowing, its products have fallen out of fashion and its retail strategy has been out of step with consumer preferences.

To regain its authority in the industry, the board decided, Nike needed an experienced insider rather than a professional executive to lead it. Despite his history with Nike, however, Hill will have his work cut out for him.

Current and former employees, people familiar with the executive transition and initial readouts from Wall Street analysts signal that Hill will receive a warm welcome from staff when he takes the helm on October 14. The reaction to hiring back Hill — who is coming out of retirement — was overwhelmingly positive within Nike, according to one current employee. “Elliott is truly a revered leader at the company,” they said.

“I worked with so many people during my three decades at Nike, and Elliott was by far one of the most inspirational, most supportive and most down-to-earth colleagues I ever knew,” Scott Reames, Nike’s internal historian who retired in 2021, said in an email. “Judging by the way my phone has been blowing up since the announcement I am FAR from alone on this!”

The abrupt executive transition comes after months of speculation on Wall Street about Donahoe’s future at Nike. At the time of his appointment, in late 2019, the company had already articulated goals of hitting $50bn in revenue and ramping up online sales directly to consumers — benchmarks that an experienced executive with stints at Bain and eBay would be well qualified to achieve. 

Donahoe met those demands ably, steering Nike through the Covid-19 pandemic and even managing to return to sales growth by the end of 2020, less than a year into the role. As diversity, equity and inclusion became a focus of large companies, he won early praise from staffers for listening to their concerns.

But his downfall was his known weakness: unlike previous Nike leaders, such as his predecessor Mark Parker, Donahoe was not a “product guy”, someone with their finger on the pulse of design. Retailers from JD Sports to Foot Locker spoke freely in recent months of hotter sneakers from Adidas, On, New Balance and Hoka. 

Nike’s decision to vacate shelf space at partner retailers in favour of its own direct-selling strategy — which predated Donahoe but accelerated under his leadership — only opened the doors for competitors to take market share.

Even Donahoe’s management style marked him as an outsider. From the start of his brief reign, he told employees he wanted new ideas presented in black-and-white, bullet-pointed PowerPoints, rather than colourful, creative pitches.

Board members were actively discussing succession plans this summer, one person said, and also considered two other internal Nike candidates, Craig Williams, president of geographies and marketplace, and Heidi O’Neill, president of consumer, product and brand. But Williams, who joined in 2019 from Coca-Cola, and O’Neill, who came to Nike in 1998 from Levi Strauss, could not match Hill’s decades of experience.

In a post on X, former Nike marketing staffer Kyle Stack wrote that “to have a 30-year Nike vet lead the company is reassuring . . . Hill experienced Nike’s frenetic growth in the ‘90s as part of the sales org. He understands the business as well as anyone.”

Hill, who turns 61 on October 2, will become Nike’s fifth-ever chief executive, and the third Nike lifer after co-founder Phil Knight and Parker. The only Nike CEO before Donahoe to join from outside the company was William Perez, a former SC Johnson executive who lasted in the top job for just over a year.

Nike has hired back other executives with ample internal experience over the past year, including Tom Peddie, former vice-president of North America, who will help the company rebalance its wholesale partnerships.

Nike’s efforts to turn itself round are entering a crucial stretch. The company is expected to report quarterly earnings on October 1, detailing the important back-to-school period that analysts look to for indications of demand for basketball shoes and hoodies. Nike has also set its first investor day in nine years for November, where it will lay out a vision in greater detail for shareholders who have grown worried about the recent stock slides. 

Shares of Nike are down more than 20 per cent in 2024, though the stock rose 6 per cent on Friday.

Jay Sole, managing director at UBS, wrote on Friday that “Hill is an experienced, effective leader who could put Nike back on a growth path.” However, that “sentiment could turn more bearish as the market realises Nike’s fundamentals likely aren’t great and there are probably no quick-fixes to Nike’s issues”, he added.  

Sole pointed out that Hill’s experience in sales, rather than product development, could be a weak point for the company that has been slow to introduce compelling new sneakers in recent months.

Changes atop Nike will not stop the tide of competitors eating into its popularity. “What is unchanged is the heightened competitive environment framed by emergent brands and certain resurgent legacy brands,” wrote John Kernan, managing director of TD Cowen.