Former Nike employees are ‘elated’ over new CEO Elliott Hill

This former employee said they were “elated” at the news, describing how Hill had championed a project that this former employee had spearheaded. By contrast, this person said that when Donahoe took over as CEO, he killed the project because it was “too small.” 

Others felt a similarly positive sentiment toward Hill.

Hill is “exactly the right person for that role,” said Stephen Holmberg, who worked at Nike for over 16 years as director of marketplace trends and consumer insights. He characterized Hill as a widely beloved leader within the company. 

“Elliott is the perfect short-term solution, a born-and-bred Nike person,” said LiQuan Hunt, who worked as a product lifecycle manager from 2018 to 2020. 

Modern Retail spoke with a half-dozen former Nike employees in total. Many said that they felt like under Donahoe’s tenure, Nike took fewer risks and didn’t do as good of a job of connecting to some of the key sporting communities that make up Nike’s consumer base. Some cited specific examples of initiatives that Donahoe killed, as well as a growing culture clash between a data-driven CEO with a tech background and longtime Nike employees who had fine-tuned their gut instincts over the years to suss out what would resonate with the brand’s customers. 

Before joining Nike, Donahoe was the CEO of eBay from 2018 to 2015. He joined Nike’s board in 2014 and was named the CEO in 2020. In contrast, Hill has over three decades at Nike — working his way up from an apparel sales intern to the president of its consumer marketplace. He left in 2020, shortly after Donahoe was named CEO.

Nike did not respond to a request for comment by press time. But Mark Parker, Nike’s executive chairman, said in an earlier statement, “I am excited to welcome Elliott back to Nike.” The statement continued, “given our needs for the future, the past performance of the business and after conducting a thoughtful succession process, the Board concluded it was clear Elliott’s global expertise, leadership style and deep understanding of our industry and partners… make him the right person to lead Nike’s next stage of growth.”

Unpacking Nike’s missteps 

A lot of ink has been spilled over the past year about what exactly has gone wrong with Nike; a Bloomberg feature characterized Donahoe as “the man who made Nike uncool.”  

There were some financial missteps. Over the past year, the company reported a series of slight sales decreases, which proved worrisome to Wall Street analysts, employees and other industry observers used to Nike crushing the competition. In March, Nike posted its first digital decline for the Nike brand in nine years. And Nike’s revenue for its most recent quarter was down 2% year over year on a reported basis. In response, Nike has cut costs to improve its bottom line; in December, Nike announced it would cut up to $2 billion in costs over the next three years in an attempt to streamline the business. 

Under Donahoe’s tenure, there’s also been a back-and-forth in terms of how much Nike wants to depend on wholesale versus direct-to-consumer. 

Donahoe joined Nike at a time when the sneaker giant was specifically interested in ramping up its DTC business, which required Nike to make investments in its digital business. 

Three years before Donahoe assumed the position, Nike announced its “Consumer Direct Offense” strategy, which involved ramping up the company’s digital presence and having more “one-on-one connections” with consumers. When announcing Donahoe’s appointment, Mark Parker — Nike’s then-CEO — said Donahoe was “ideally suited” to act on these goals.

But there was a fear that, in its quest to generate more DTC sales, Nike cut too fast too quickly. In 2021, Nike started cutting some wholesale partners in a quest to focus more on its DTC business. But by 2023, it was starting to bring back some of those wholesale partners, like DSW, into the fold. 

Sam Poser, an equity analyst at Williams Trading LLC, told Modern Retail earlier this year that he also felt that Nike got rid of “a​​ lot of very tenured Nike people.” As part of its shift to DTC — and as a way to cut costs as sales were declining — Nike has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs over the past nearly two years. In turn, Poser felt that Nike got rid of too many people with deep institutional knowledge of key franchises like the Jordan brand, as well as how to best manage supply chains. 

Lastly, there was a general feeling that in certain categories, like running, Nike had ceded ground to competitors like Hoka and On, who had done a better job of connecting with organic groups like run clubs and championing their technical innovation. 

Many former employees were initially optimistic about Donahoe’s tenure. “John initially impressed me with his first all-hands,” Hunt said. He said that Donahoe talked about how Nike needed to do a better job of looking like its consumer. 

“I don’t think John Donahoe was a bad man whatsoever; I just don’t think he was equipped for this role,” Hunt went on. “He lacked the vision and the curiosity that Nike naturally has.”  

A new era for Nike

To Holmberg, the ideal Nike CEO is someone who can rally employees the same way a sports team rallies fans, and Hill is up to the task. “He’s a leader that people want to work for,” Holmberg said. “People were very sad to see him go.”

Hill’s appointment to the CEO role also aligns with Nike’s tendency to appoint leaders who have previously worked at the company, as opposed to external hires, Holmberg said. “He is a known quantity who has been a proven leader within the organization,” Homberg said. “Having that background and exposure can potentially help bring Nike back to what it was like in its heyday.” 

Another former Nike employee — who spoke with Modern Retail on the condition of anonymity — said that over the years, the company seemed to lose its authenticity in the quest for profits. From a product perspective, they believed the company seemed to take fewer risks and lost its edge as a frontrunner of cool. 

“When you start to make data-based decisions instead of understanding the culture in your community, I think things start to go south quickly,” the former employee said. “They don’t look at anything behind it but the data. That’s not the correct way to make decisions for a product you want [shoppers] to have an emotional response to.” 

“If you want to be second place all the time, that’s fine,” they said. “But if you want to lead, you have to take risks, and you have to define what’s cool.” 

This person oversaw several teams of creative designers and said it got to the point where they had to deliver messages and directions that the teams knew weren’t going to be successful. 

“It felt like they brought on people who wanted to analyze data, maximize profitability — and that was the absolute core agenda. Anything else was a bit of an inconvenience. I left because I felt morally uncomfortable with the directions I was being given,” they said. 

Hill will have a long list of items to tackle on day one, although it could take years to rightsize Nike’s business, analysts told Modern Retail. “Nothing he needs to do is going to be easy or a quick fix,” Matt Powell, founder of the consultancy Spurwink River, said. “He’s not going to come in and have everything figured out by Thanksgiving. The problems are too deep and broad, but I think he has the vision and the experience to correct the things that need to be corrected.”

As Powell sees it, Nike needs to make a few major changes. One, he said, is refreshing the product. “Adding the 25th color of Jordan [Brand], that’s just making more of the same,” he said. “They’ve got to dig into the vault and find some retro product that feels new to the marketplace.” He also believes that Nike needs to take a step back from key franchises where demand has fallen off. Finally, he thinks Nike should dial down promotions and focus on being a full-price business.

“I think Nike was, for a long time, a company that we referred to as being future-proof,” Jessica Ramírez, senior research analyst at Jane Hali & Associates, told Modern Retail. “But two years ago, we started seeing cracks, and it’s only gotten worse.” Hill, she said, “knows the culture and understands the company, and that’s very much a positive.”

Past employees seem to agree.

“I do know Elliott and am absolutely elated that he is taking over the helm of the company. Elliott is one of the most inspirational leaders Nike has ever had, and his name has been brought up repeatedly over the last few months as the best person to replace John Donahoe,” wrote Scott Reames, who served as Nike’s corporate historian from 2005 to 2021, in an email to Modern Retail. “That is why today’s announcement has been celebrated by so many current and former employees.”

“As a former employee, I have to say — it’s a fantastic decision,” Andrew Estey, who worked at Nike from 1999 to 2005 and served as global design director for Nike Sportswear, wrote to Modern Retail. “It feels like Nike has lost some of its soul over the past few years, and having someone at the helm who truly understands the history and culture will be crucial for the company’s growth and future success.”

One former retail store executive saw parallels to the recent CEO switch at Starbucks, which resulted in the exit of Laxman Narasimhan. “Perhaps this is a return to the power of creative intuition and brand emotion versus digital and data,” the employee said. “Both brands walked away from what made them the best.”