Nike sells shoes, but in recent years has peddled leftist ideology.
CEO Elliott Hill recently told employees that the company had spent the past year putting sports back at the center of its business. So … where had sports been?
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Matt Calkins, writing at OutKick, suggests Hill may have been acknowledging that Nike had wandered too far into politics. With its stock at a 12-year low, the company could definitely use less controversy and more customers.
Mind you, Hill didn’t actually say that going woke caused Nike’s problems. There are other explanations, including disappointing products, strained relationships with retailers, and trouble in China.
But something else in Hill’s memo deserves attention: More employees will lose their jobs.
That’s the part that gets lost when a company’s troubles become a political scoreboard. Conservatives may enjoy watching Nike struggle, and execs may talk about a fresh start, but somewhere there is a human being wondering whether to put off replacing the car.
That employee likely didn’t choose Nike’s political messaging. He may have even thought it was stupid. He probably didn’t decide which shoes to make or which retailers the company could afford to alienate, either.
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He just showed up and did his job. And now he gets to find out whether he still has one.
Sometimes layoffs are necessary. But the people who made the decisions ought to explain what went wrong and answer for their part in it.
Announcing that a sports company will concentrate on sports doesn’t do it.
Nike’s most famous spokesman once offered a useful reminder: “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Michael Jordan said in 1990, when he declined to publicly endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt for the Senate. Jordan later explained that he was joking with teammates and had contributed to Gantt’s campaign. Still, the joke contained a business truth. He was selling Nike Air Jordans to people who didn’t all vote alike.
There’s nothing small or shameful about making good shoes, selling them at a profit, and keeping people employed. Do that well and you’ve done something useful for thousands of families. That should be enough.
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Nike already has a famous slogan. For the executive offices, here’s a revision:
Just do your job.