Nike

0:00This is Britain's growth moment. Do you want to be part of it? On 26th of March, 750 of the UK's most ambitious founders, CEOs and investors will gather in London to shape the future of mid-sized business. The company's driving our nation's success. The Business Leader Summit 2026 isn't just another conference. It's a day built around the three forces that define growth, ambition, policy and capital. And as one of our valued podcast listeners, you can be there in person. To secure a discounted ticket, visit the events section of our business leader website and use this code. BLPODCAST, all one word, all uppercase.

0:41We look forward to seeing you there. 1984 has been a tough year. Our sales are down, our growth is down. Sonny, I brought you in here to grow the basketball business. People don't know what the hell a Nike is. What's a Converse? NBA all-star shoe. There's nothing cool about Nike. you would have to have a pretty compelling pitch. I can tell them the one thing the other companies can't compete with. Our basketball division is terrible. I do not love it. That's a trailer from the film Air, which tells the story of how Nike signed a budding young basketball star called Michael Jordan in 1984 and changed the course of its history.

1:21As we will hear, the film is not an entirely accurate description of what happened. But this moment was undoubtedly key in the story of how Nike became one of the biggest brands in the world.

1:41Hello and welcome to the Business Leader Podcast, where we look at the stories and strategies behind how modern businesses were built. I'm Graeme Ruddick. In this episode, we're going to look at the story behind Nike with historian Scott Reams. Scott Reams became Nike's first ever historian in 2004 and he helped Phil Knight, the co-founder and chief executive, write his brilliant book Shoe Dog about the story of how Nike was created. Nike started as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964 and the Nike name only emerged in the 1970s. Today Nike is valued on the stock market in the US at more than 100 billion dollars and in its last financial year it reported annual revenues of 46 billion.

2:28I first started Nike in 1992. I was hired as the marketing and events manager for the first two Nike town stores in Portland and Chicago. And I enjoyed it. But as we started getting more Nike towns in the system, I was doing more events. I was flying to more cities. I was like, I'm going to need some help and decided eventually that it was probably time for me to move into another role. So I moved into the sports marketing role for two or three years. And that led to a job in the public relations department. And it was there that I really started getting close to and working a lot with Phil Knight and Mark Parkins, the senior leaders of the team.

3:02And when I would facilitate their interviews with different media outlets, I would just make little notes, like the stories would drift from the retelling of how Nike started and how much we paid for the swoosh was$50 to one publication,$75 to another,$35 to the third. I just kind of made little notes, like that's odd. we don't seem to have a real good strong grasp on our own history so as i got to know mr knight better into into the 2000s so 2003 2004 i basically had a proposal that we needed to capture our oral history because it was a lot of it was just people's stories and you know people like like today just sitting here talking about nike history but there wasn't a lot of cross referencing a lot of double checking a lot of uh you know verifying and so i that was the gist of my suggestion was that the archive department, which did exist, needed in a historian role, a person who would then capture the stories behind the products and behind the designers, behind the people, the athletes, et cetera.

4:03And Phil thought about it. And a few months later, I got a call from the director of corporate services, which oversaw the archives. He said, I've got a headcount approved for this role. Are you interested? And I said, yes. And I started that in the end of 2004 and did that for 17 years till I retired. When you're putting the history together, am I right, you spoke to well over a thousand people? Probably around a thousand. And as I got to more and more under my belt, more interviews under my belt, I started learning more stories. And I started learning there were more people involved in certain stories and people whose names I hadn't heard before.

4:37So I started reaching out to them and then adding their voices to the choir, if you will. And then conversely, it was the other way around. People knew what I was doing. And they'd say, hey, Suzanne's in town. She was the one that have this idea or that idea you really should talk to her and then it expanded into like widening kennedy the ad agency that we've worked with for so many years so like you really should talk to so and so who did that particular ad so it became this uh swirling um continuum of people coming reaching out to me and then people my reaching out to them when i had a specific story or a specific part of the nike history that i needed to delve further into because we we really had a lot of i don't want to say one dimensional but we would have like one person's recollection of a particular shoe, particular ad campaign.

5:21You know, so again, it wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was just one perspective. And I quickly learned after I got a chance to talk to two to four, eight people that all worked on the same campaign that I got different stories. Sometimes they corroborated each other. Sometimes they conflicted with each other, you know. So that was a challenge to me to figure out, okay, well, whose memory is accurate? And then how do we frame that story so we get the best possible, most accurate story especially when we don't have a lot of written corroboration to back it up. One of the things that Scott Reams was able to do was get the story behind how the Nike name and its iconic swoosh logo came to be.

5:59He got the four key people behind the name and logo together in a room for the first time since 1971.

6:08Yes, that was an amazing day. And I didn't realize until after we had finished recording that that was, that they all said that was the first time the four of them had been in the same room. And this was, I think, in 2011, maybe late 2010. So for almost 40 years had passed since the four of these four people had been in the same room since the day they chose the swoosh back in 1971, because the four people were Phil Knight, of course, Jeff Johnson, who was the first full-time employee, and Bob Waddell, who was the fourth full-time employee, and Carolyn Davidson, who was the graphic artist graphic designer a freelancer that they had hired and she was the one that designed the mark that became the swoosh so it wasn't that unusual that they wouldn't necessarily all be together because carolyn didn't work for nike she was just brought in for projects and jeff johnson retired in 1983 and moved to the east coast so it was just one of those things i just happened to find out that jeff was coming back from the east coast to to visit campus bob Waddell lives in central Oregon, about two and a half, three hours from Portland.

7:09He happened to be in Portland as well. Carolyn lives here. And of course, Phil does too. And I just, I just threw out a, Hey, what if, you know, can we get you guys all together in a studio? And so we did. And for two hours, I basically told him after we finished micing them all up, I said, no, no one is leaving the studio until you all agree on how the name Nike came to be and how the swoosh was chosen. And they all laughed, but it was a, it was a good 90 minutes before they all came to consensus because there was a there's some spirited disagreement about uh so so what was the consensus consensus was that first off that phil knight knew that the company he was working with onetsica which now makes which now makes asics or is asics but was back then called the tiger brand running shoes that his company phil knight's company blue ribbon sports was the u.s distributor of tiger brand running shoes from its inception from blue ribbons inception 1964 until the early So Phil learned that Onitsuka, when the next contract came up for renewal in 1972, was not going to continue the exclusive countrywide distributorship for Blue Ribbon Sports.

8:17It was going to split it up. And that would have been a real step backwards for Blue Ribbon Sports and Phil. So Phil decided that the only way that his company would be successful is if it could create and market its own brand. and that led to needing its own mark and that led to the conversation with carolyn davidson and that led to the conversation they had in the conference room back in 1971 where they she came together with us five or six different drawings and none of them really wowed the crowd but the little check mark that they chose was the one that as phil said was the least objectionable and it was the one he said maybe it'll grow on me um and so that was the mark so the mark is going on a shoe it's a shoe that phil had already chosen it's a black soccer cleat and it needed its own you know the mark to be stoned or sewn or stitched on it and then the shoe needed to be named and this is where it gets the history gets kind of muddled because the company at the time was blue ribbon sports the shoe with the swoosh on it was called the nike right so it was the nike cleat just like it'd be the tiembo or any you know any other name of a of a football cleat.

9:28But it's over time, people have mistakenly said that Nike, Blue Ribbon Sports became Nike, right? It just, that was not the original intent of getting the name Nike. That was to name the shoe. Over time, when the Nike shoe had run its course over a few months, they just, they liked the name Nike. And so they used the name Nike for the line of shoes when they created the swoosh on other shoes, like running shoes and basketball shoes. It was the Nike Boston, than Nike, Cortez, you know, so it was, again, still sold by Blue Ribbon Sports, but it was now the Nike line of product. And then throughout the 70s, it just morphed over time.

10:06And people started referring to the company more as Nike until it actually became Nike Incorporated, Nike Inc. in 1978. So it's a transformation over time as opposed to like a, we're changing our name. You've mentioned Phil Knight a few times already. And this is a broad question, so apologies, but like what what was he like as a founder and ceo what what were his unique characteristics or that you think were really key to the success of this business well and this came out in shoe dog his memoir quite a bit um he was not i mean he was an entrepreneur but he wasn't omniscient right i mean he there was no uh blueprint on how to create a successful athletic footwear company um other brands had just grown over time you know like at adi and puma etc so it wasn't like you You could just read how to build your successful footwear franchise.

10:57And he was an accountant from Portland, Oregon. So it wasn't like he really had been immersed in the footwear industry up to this point. So his knack was that he found people who had just a dogged determination to get things done. He did hire mostly runners. So mostly people within that. because Nike or Blue Ribbon Sports started out as a running shoe company. And then he stayed out of their way, right? So even though that drove Jeff Johnson crazy, the first full-time employee, because Jeff, we have hundreds of letters from Jeff to Phil because Jeff lived in California in Los Angeles. And he basically imploring Phil, please give me advice.

11:42Please tell me what to do. And Phil didn't respond. And it wasn't because he was just being a jerk. He just didn't have the, he didn't know what to tell Jeff. And fortunately for Phil, Jeff was one of those, all right, I'll figure it out. And he did. Right. So Phil had a, whether it was by intent or just by being honest, he goes, I can't give you advice because I don't know what to tell you. And Jeff then figured things out on his own. And then, you know, Phil did, as he got more and more comfortable and more knowledgeable about the industry, he did start having more feedback for Jeff. But a lot of it was, and same with Bob Waddell and some of the early employees, it was just literally just trusting their gut instinct because they were runners and they would come back say well here's what i would do here's i think we should do and a lot of times phil would would do that and it would be it was turned out in most cases to be the right move did he keep that approach as the business got big and bigger as in hiring people around him and and let them sort of thrive or as the business got bigger and he got more experience did he start to become sort of more, not forceful, but more sort of offering more advice and insight.

12:46He did. And he also, with the growth and with the size of the company getting larger, he was able to hire people, especially once it became an established company. He was able to bring in footwear designers who were trained as footwear designers, not like Jeff Johnson, who was an anthropology major, right? I mean, it's like, you know, some of our earliest footwear designers didn't have any background in footwear design. And so once we had grown into the 70s and then into the 80s, we're hiring people with marketing expertise and design expertise. How he specifically chose them, we never really talked person by person, but there definitely is a profile, if you will, of a successful Nike person.

13:28And that usually is somebody who doesn't need to be spoon fed. She doesn't need to be, I mean, she's given some freedom to make decisions. They're allowed to experiment, if you will. I mean, both Phil Knight and Dan Wyden, Ed Wyden Kennedy, had different phrases, but essentially the same gist was, it's okay to fail, you know, but make sure it's for the right reasons and then learn from it. So that was very freeing, I think, for some of the early folks that there wasn't this terror, if you will, of making a wrong mistake. You know, I mean, it was not good, but it was definitely like well none of us really has the blueprint so let's all figure this out and so he did hire people who were not afraid to take those chances and it and again nine times out of ten it worked out pretty well nike enjoyed rapid growth in the 1970s but the 1980s brought challenges including the rise of reebok this would prove to be a crucial defining period for nike one that would lay the foundations for it to go from good to great.

14:36Well, the 1980s were definitely a period of transition for a lot of reasons, right? So 1970s, we're getting started. We're mostly running shoes. We did have early tennis and a couple of basketball shoes, but they really weren't industry leaders. They were more of just adding to the mix. So it was really the running shoes that were carrying the freight for Nike in the 70s. The 80s, we started branching out. We brought the Air technology in in late 1978, early 1979 with the tailwind. But that was, again, for a running shoe. So by 1982, the Air Force One is released, and that's the first Nike basketball shoe with Air.

15:16And then, of course, a couple of years later, there's this basketball player for the Chicago Bulls who came out. We came out with the first shoe name for Michael Jordan and Air Jordan in 1984, which is then he wore in 84 and then came out in retail in 85. So we had periods and we had moments of great success because the first Air Jordan was crazy off the charts in terms of sales. But at the same time, Nike badly miscalculated on what we thought was just a fad of aerobics. And so we didn't really create product that was anywhere close to the competitors in that industry. And Reebok just went crazy, right?

15:55I mean, people, it became way more than a fad and they sold a ton of their shoes. And we found ourselves now in second place, which is not a place that Nike wants to be. And we'd also, at that point, we'd started branching away from the core sports, right? So we were starting to do a bowling line of shoes, shoes made for nurses and for people on their feet a lot, which again, not a bad thing, but it was really pulling our resources away from the core. So the mid 80s was definitely a time of turmoil. And within the company, it was also turmoil in that Rob Strasser and Peter Moore, some of the more creative and high level people in the company were splitting from Phil.

16:39And they ultimately did leave the company in late 86, early 87. So there's definitely a lot of tumult, if you will, going on at that point. And it wasn't until the later part of the 80s when we decided it was time to refresh the air franchise. And to do that, we wanted to create a visible airbag to be able to see the airbag. The consumers could see it, even touch it through the side of the shoe. And that seems small. It seems kind of silly in a way that that's the difference, but it really made a difference for people to actually feel and see the airbag. And so that was 1987 was the air pack that we released of several different shoes with visible air.

17:18And then we supported it with a campaign called Revolution, which featured the first at that time and only use of an original Beatles song recorded or performed by the Beatles, Revolution. And it went crazy. I mean, the ad went crazy. People went either happy for it or went absolutely bananas that we'd ruined a rock anthem, but it generated all this publicity. So we're getting some mojo back, if you will. and then the air trainer was part of that pack the air trainer was our cross training shoe and that was essentially was our solution our answer to missing the aerobic fad was okay we can't really we can't catch up to Reebok there so let's go in a different direction and that's what led to the cross training with Bo Knows the Bo Jackson cross trainer ad that came out in 1989 So we've got Jordan now functioning, coming out strong with its Jordan 3 by the late 80s.

18:15We've got the air trainer and the cross-training boom. We've got the revolution and the invisible air. And all of a sudden, it's like the ship is starting to ride itself. And by 1990, we'd recaptured or tied up with Reebok again. And then went past them in the 90s and never looked back. So the 80s were a very, very important and complicated decade for Nike. But it was really the time for us to shake off the issues from being a small company trying to be successful into a larger company setting itself up for future success. In the 1990s, how much was that success from those foundations that had been laid in the late 80s?

18:56And how much was it about some of the key endorsement deals you did during that period? Michael Johnson, Brazil football team, Tiger Woods. Well, those are all critical things in the 90s, expanding into the U.S. men's and women's football or soccer teams and track and field as well. So we're getting more involved with federations for the first time. We're getting involved with leagues. So at that point, we had a spot deal with several NFL teams, not the entire league, but with several teams like the Cowboys. And so we were expanding into a larger literal arena and also international as well. We're getting much more involved, as you mentioned, with Brazil.

19:37We'd signed a number of European football clubs as well. So the company is starting to really move away or move beyond, I should say, just providing product. And now they're becoming partners with, at this point, Olympic or anything like that. But they were definitely becoming more and more part of the infrastructure, the fabric of sports, not just of sports product. And you've got the proliferation throughout the 80s as well and the 90s of MTV, ESPN. So all of that together swirled to make athletes even larger than they would have been in the sports world. They were now becoming a key part of pop culture.

20:17And they were crossing over. And Nike was on their feet or on their jackets. you know and we were becoming more involved with uh with movies you know so we're you're seeing more swooshes on tv shows and and forrest gump you know so it's like it's and it's literally becoming to the point where well of course forrest gump if he's going to run he's going to wear nike shoes you know it's like it just sort of just fit naturally as opposed to like looking like some sort of bought endorsement one of the key figures at nike in the early days was rob strasser he is played in the film Air by Jason Bateman.

20:51Strasser is the person behind the Nike principles, a list of 10 points designed to outline the unique culture of the business. Strasser would leave Nike for Adidas in 1987 after clashing with Phil Knight. He sadly died in 1993. He's one of those guys that from the early days, he was a lawyer, right? But he then became a really brilliant marketing director or marketing VP for the company. So yet another example of a person crossing over into something else because they just have a passion for it and Phil allowing that. Tinker Hatfield was an architect, not a shoe architect, a building architect.

21:32Then he becomes one of the most celebrated footwear designers in our industry. So Strasser, well, he was bigger than life in almost every facet. I mean, he was a very large man. When you consider Nike is a sports and fitness company. He was kind of like, and we've got Rob Strasser, you know, he's like 300 and some pounds and just intimidating. I've never met him. Unfortunately, he died really rather young, a year after I started with the company. He'd already left by then. But from what I've seen in the stories that people have told me about him, he was, it was no surprise that his nickname was Rolling Thunder because he was, as a lot of people have described him, a walking HR violation of a person who just spoke his mind, you know, In the 2000s and the 20s, right now, it would be a challenge for him to work within the modern business world because he spoke his mind.

22:22He was very brash. He was very demonstrative. I mean, he would literally just pick up a chair and throw it when he was not at somebody, but throw it and get people's attention. And it worked. And that was kind of what Nike in the early days, I think, needed. They needed somebody who was willing just to mix it up and just say, let's just do it. I mean, he didn't say just do it. so right right but yeah so he and you know then you got you you counter him with peter moore much more cerebral quieter uh but just a brilliant designer creative design person and so they're just whether it's by happenstance or phil seeing something he the right people came into the right places at the right times and they just did amazing things is it true he wrote the principles just on on a whim after getting frustrated with with new members of staff and not understanding the business my i was told by a couple different people that what the the tipping point for him was there was somebody who um was balking at being sent to korea or to taiwan to work or to help open up a factory there and that you know that's a big that's a big commitment but others had just done it you know and not complain i guess this one person or a couple people complain and that was i guess the final straw for rob and he just went to his his computer and he just or his pot right his computer his typewriter in 1977 and just pounded out on you know just literally no no stream of conscious i mean it was all stream of conscious no no like let's see now i want to talk about this you know it was more like and made some photocopies and taped them to doors and left them on table or chairs on people's offices and next morning everybody walked in and there they were and I mean, didn't run him by Phil, didn't run him by anybody.

24:05I think his assistant basically said that she had seen it, and that was it, the only person who had actually seen it before it went out. And those became, they weren't, they were sort of overplayed in the movie Air. They were made out to be as if they were these almost like Ten Commandments that people had up on walls and things, and that's not the way it's been portrayed to me. But a number of people have told me who were there at that time that they still have their original copy. So it meant something to them, even though it wasn't necessarily maybe up on a bulletin board or on a wall somewhere but it did it did reach them and and i think was a pretty accurate snapshot of maybe what the blue ribbon sports slash nike life was in the late 70s was it inevitable that one day he and phil would clash you know i i get asked that a lot and i wish i'd known rob more because i have i've only heard i mean the people mostly who talked to me over the years have been the ones that stayed with the company and so they have more of a phil knight leaning but uh yeah it seems in a way with both of them i mean phil doesn't have like an ego in terms of like my way or the highway but rob from what has been described to me became increasingly difficult because he felt that the company was moving away from its core and he blamed phil i think for that and i don't know This is getting psychological, deep dives, and that's not my bent.

25:31But I think, in a way, it probably was going to happen, whether it happened in 86, 87, or happened later. It probably was.

25:42We have touched on the film Air already a few times in this podcast episode, so I wanted to check with Scott Reams. Exactly how accurate is this film about the story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan? well the hardest part for me is the storyline itself is roughly pretty accurate i mean the two problems are one most of what happened that did happen was not done by the character played by matt damon most of most of the signing of michael jordan and the creating of the of the air jordan was done by rob strasser and peter moore and a handful of other folks less lesser known sonny vaquero who is played by matt damon was absolutely integral and absolutely a cheerleader and saying what nike should sign um sign this kid from north carolina so he was definitely she he deserves all the credit for that but beyond that a lot of then what's accredited to him in the movie was done by strasser and by moore and there were unfortunately several scenes that were just completely fabricated almost every scene was dolores jordan didn't happen right so sonny Vaquero slash Matt Damon never went to North Carolina, never met with the parents in North Carolina.

26:54He never negotiated the contract with Michael Jordan's mom. That's not what moms do. That's not what Sonny Vaquero did. Rob Strasser was the director. He negotiated the contract with David Falk, who was the agent. That's what people do. And I've had multiple people tell me that that's actually what went down. So those things, I was like, you know, people said, well, it's creative license, it's storytelling, and whatever. I mean, it wasn't like it, misled people into telling a completely different story but it's just not true right and so i had a i had a problem with that because as a historian if somebody wants to keep the story accurate it was like why are you making this stuff up you don't need it the story is good enough without that and then there are a bunch of other littler things that you know again as my wife would say you're the only one that would be bothered by this but it still bothered me how key um was the signing of jordan i mean you we've touched on the the 80s and 90s history and and what you've said it wasn't until the late 80s really that everything really started motoring but how key was that was that moment that signing well you know it's easy to look back just same with tiger in a way and some of the other athletes who signed it's easy to look back and say that was a brilliant move but you know in 96 when we signed tiger our golf business was not great and so we didn't have the greatest product when we signed brazil we didn't have the greatest football product so it's like we gotta we gotta raise our game to make the level of the athlete we've signed and i think Jordan was the same way.

28:17I mean, we look back now and go, my God, he was the most amazing. He was third drafted, drafted third in that year. And he came out as a junior, right? So he'd only had three seasons at North Carolina. So you felt like there was raw material, there were raw potential and actually some success as opposed to like a LeBron who literally shows up right out of high school but jordan came out at a time when you've got mtv espn you've got the the nba is finally starting to get some steam i guess you know thanks to magic and bird you know mike magic johnson and larry bird i mean people don't realize this and don't remember or didn't know that the nba finals were aired taped late after the evening news in the 70s they weren't they weren't this phenomenon on they are now it wasn't until the late 70s and early 80s with magic johnson larry bird and some of those teams that the nba started moving into the the more in the public consciousness so the there couldn't have been a better incubator for nike and for jordan to come into this in the 80s with with a phenomenal athlete you got a company like nike coming out with an amazing shoe you got an ad campaign with widening kennedy but first another agency in the widening candy um solidifying him you know in pop culture and then oh by the way they do go out and they win six championships you know it's like it was like a perfect storm if you will and so there was a lot of there was a lot of concern when he retired well every time he retired but the first time because actually really i guess more the second time because that a lot of people thought maybe that was really more of the permanent one that is that it is that the is that the end of the run for the jordan brand he's not playing anymore do we create the air jordan i can't remember what the number was but do we create that shoe and the decision was yes and that that's that sold well and then they did another one then of course he comes back with the washington um and so when he retired retired retired um the decision again was well do we keep the brand going and the right correct call obviously was yes continue and that's what so jordan has been literally key for for nike and then for his own brand since 19 1984 when he first had the banned shoes you know that created all this uh desire for the shoes and and now the shoes it's like he's a it's a it's a pop cultural juggernaut in recent years nike has faced some challenges in fact in 2025 its share price is trading at roughly half the level that it was in late 2021 when it peaked.

30:53After Phil Knight stood down as chief executive in the 2000s, Nike veteran Mark Parker took over as boss and had 14 successful years in charge. However, Parker's successor, John Donahoe, struggled. In 2024, he was replaced after disappointing sales. I didn't really know John Donahoe very well. I met him a couple times before I retired. I saw him a couple of times after I retired, but I, I, I feel like there were almost too many things going on simultaneously for there to be success. Right. So you've got, he comes in, in early part of 2020 and wants to reorganize the brand from its traditional sport category base, football, soccer.

31:38You're basically part of your own smaller globe within your sport and divided into men's women's and kids and there's some pluses to that but there's also some minuses so doing that in a vacuum just doing that by itself would have been challenging then you throw in covid right so march of 2020 happens and the monkey wrench and the whole world goes you know lurches so you've got a brand new ceo you've got a you're now dividing yourself into slicing yourself in a whole different way you've got covid so people aren't even seeing each other So people are being put on the new teams and not even meeting each other except on TV, on their computer screens.

32:14And you've also, because you're making these changes, these men's, women's, kids things, you're trying to get rid of a lot of layers. You're also letting a lot of people go who either had become redundant or I don't really know the background. I don't really know why some of the people were let go because sometimes on the sidelines, I'm like, I don't understand that. So a lot of that was all happening, though, in like about a one, one and a half year period. And I think that just became too much. So for a while, it was a good move because everybody was home and they're ordering product online because you couldn't go into a store.

32:46They weren't even open. So Donahoe's focus on retail via DTC, direct to consumer, was a good one. And we had a good bounce there. But then once the world opened up a little bit more, the relationships with our retail accounts that had been either turfed or had been severely damaged really started to come back to hurt. And I think by that, and again, the, the, the pains of the men, women's kids thing, it was just, it was just so much to happen at the same time. Had any one of those things happened by itself, had there just been COVID and we figured out, would we have figured our way out through it?

33:20Maybe, probably. Had there just been a switch to men's, women's, and kids, but no COVID, maybe we figured it out sooner. I just think that you have too many of those factors coming together in a very short period of time. And it just fell apart and, or, you know, it just didn't, it just lost its, its, its traction. And Mr. Donahoe ended up not making his full five years. And they brought in Elliot Hill, who is more of an old school way the categories used to function. And it's no surprise moving Nike more back towards that model. So could it have been a grand experiment that might have been successful?

33:55We'll never know. But it was definitely, I feel, just too much going on in too short a time. And it didn't work. And how would you summarize the shape of the business today? Well, I know Elliot has been working very hard to reestablish and rebuild the relationships with our retail accounts. He's traveled the world doing that. Porgman, I don't think he's had a day off since he started last September. He's brought in new senior leadership. And there were some good people on the old senior leadership team, but in some cases, maybe it was time for some fresh perspective. So there's a lot of optimism that the people he's brought on will bring that new perspective.

34:32Several longtime Nike people who either retired or left on their own or left under other reasons have come back into key roles. So there's a real sense of optimism. I do tours. I take groups of busloads of Nike employees to Eugene once a month or so. I'm basically brought on as a consultant to tell stories about Nike history and talk about Steve Prefontaine and Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight because they all had that nexus connectivity in Eugene at the University of Oregon. And I can tell you from the vibe on the bus and the questions I get asked and the conversations I have with people throughout the day that there is just a 180 degree change in attitude.

35:16There's optimism. There's people that are pretty excited about where we're going. A year ago, it was more of a, it was more like a, I was more like a life preserver. They're asking me like, tell us what it used to be like, you know, how did we, you know, and, and, and. And I felt like, oh my gosh, these people are desperately wanting to connect with the heritage and culture that they don't apparently see on a daily basis. And now I think that's the opposite. Now I'm reinforcing what they're seeing from Elliot and others. And I think that can only be a good sign for Nike because those are the indicative traits.

35:52Those are the positive traits of the company when it was at its zenith was the teamwork, the collaboration, the support, the optimism, the belief that we can do anything. Everybody in the company used to have this belief, no matter who you were or what you did for the company, that if Michael Johnson won the gold medal in Atlanta, you played a tiny role. tiny, tiny role because you were part of the Nike team, even though it was a team of X thousands of people, you were part of that team that helped Michael get that gold medal. And that attitude was prevalent in everything. I always felt, I always took such pride when Andre Agassi would win Wimbledon or when Mia Hamm, you know, when Randy Chastain won in 99, I was like, yeah, yeah, that's us.

36:38That's, we did that, you know? And it's like, I, we, that attitude seems to be coming back.

36:45you've been listening to the business leader podcast with me Graham Ruddick our producer is Anushka Tate if you enjoyed this episode then please follow the business leader podcast on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcast to make sure you get updates when new episodes go live

37:12The Business Leader Summit 2026 is set to be bigger, bolder and more ambitious than ever. Don't just watch Britain's growth story unfold, be part of it. Secure your ticket today by visiting the events section of the Business Leader website and using the code BLPODCAST, all uppercase. It's your chance to join the leaders who are shaping the future of business.