Nike CEO Mark Parker (left) is handing over the reins to John Donahoe who will chart the company’s moves as consumer preferences tilt toward athleisure.Courtesy of Nike
Within a few days last week, Adidas, Nike and Under Armour — three of the biggest names in athletic footwear and apparel — announced the departures of top executives. At Nike, which controls most of the athletic footwear market, Mark Parker, CEO since 2006, said he will leave in 2020. His replacement is John Donahoe, who is on Nike’s board of directors, a former eBay CEO and the president of cloud computing/tech service company ServiceNow.
At Adidas, global brands director Eric Liedtke — the highest ranking American executive at the German company — said he is leaving by year’s end. Liedtke has been one of the key figures in the brand’s renaissance, which in the U.S. has included a huge retro push and the signing of big-name entertainers as endorsers/collaborators including Beyonce and Kanye West. Liedtke has been at Adidas for around 25 years and will be succeeded by Brian Grevy, another longtime Adidas exec who left in 2016 to join apparel brand Gant as CMO, later becoming that company’s CEO.
Under Armour’s Kevin Plank also announced that he is stepping down as CEO of the company he founded in 1996. COO Patrik Frisk will take over those duties in January, with Plank remaining as executive chairman.
Industry analysts said it was difficult to find any connection prompting the executive shuffle. However, they noted that the consolidation among brick-and-mortar sporting-goods retailers, as well as shifting consumer tastes away from performance and toward fashion brands’ adaption of workout apparel, was challenging every brand rooted in athletics authenticity and performance.
“The athleisure trend has created both challenges and opportunities for traditional athletic brands,” said Chris Grancio, former GM of global basketball at Adidas and now an independent consultant at Six Eight Sports Group in Hermosa Beach, Calif. “These things are always cyclical, but athleisure has proved to be relatively enduring.”
With no retro models to fall back on, Under Armour has been in the most vulnerable position, according to Matt Powell, NPD Group vice president and senior industry adviser. He cited results from an ongoing consumer poll indicating that just 15% of those buying athletic footwear planned to use them for sports, which he said was the lowest ever. “Consumers want performance characteristics in their footwear, but that’s not why they are buying,” he said.
Nike stock hit an all-time high share price recently of $96.87 and the company announced strong 2020 Q1 earnings results last month, before Parker’s announcement.
Powell said that Nike is the best prepared company to deal with the athlesisure realities. “The hiring of Donahoe tells you they are investing even more into direct-to-consumer, but Nike has had problems before bringing outsiders into their culture,” he said. “So that’s something to watch.”
