Earlier this week, a former Nike branding executive named Massimo Giunco published a viral article that tells the story of the Swoosh’s recent Wall Street woes. Ugly stuff, for shareholders. But what’s interesting is how much of Giunco’s detailed analysis seems to sync up with a different conversation many people are having lately: Is Nike still cool?
In 2020, Nike’s new CEO, John Donahue, made a few decisions about the business that seem to have had significant implications for not just the company’s bottom line, but for the culture. First, he eliminated categories. This meant that products were no longer organized by sport, but by gender (“like Zara, GAP, H&M or any other generic fashion brand,” Giunco notes). If you’ve wondered why Nike seems to be lagging when it comes to design heat lately—what Giunco calls a “lack of innovation and energy in product creation”—it’s likely due in part to this reorg.
I remember when Nike debuted its Flyknit technology in 2012. It was a brilliant, multi-pronged, global rollout. Nike knew what it had—a game-changing innovation—and knew what to do with it. Then Nike CEO Mark Parker was a master of this stuff. Flyknit—an ingenious new fabric that could be used to craft lightweight sneakers—first made a splash at the Summer Olympics in London on the feet of a Kenyan marathoner named Abel Kirui, who won a silver medal in a slick pair of Flyknit Racer running shoes. That was bolstered by the debut of an HTM Flyknit shoe, part of the long-running collaboration series between Parker, Japanese streetwear legend Hiroshi Fujiwara, and legendary Nike designer Tinker Hatfield. HTM was the pinnacle of hype sneakerdom. Any shoe that wore that badge was destined for greatness. Not long after that, Flyknit made its way across Nike’s performance shoes, starting with running, then basketball with a Kobe shoe, and beyond.
This was the Nike playbook. Debut some new innovation with an elite athlete at a global event, then immediately hand it over to the arbiters of taste and style. Once the tech has been certified and the design has been cosigned, it can then roll out to the masses.
Here we are in another Olympic year, and Nike’s biggest moment of 2024 was a pair of vintage Court shorts worn by dirtbag tennis pro Patrick Zweig in Challengers.
So has Nike failed to produce compelling innovations? You let me know if you can think of one, but I don’t think it’s that simple. Innovation, generally speaking, has become a whole lot less compelling in the last few years. It is, frankly, dorky. Sneakers, like restaurants, got out of hand for a minute there. People are craving the classics. That’s why New York’s Balthazaar and Fanelli Café are packed with people wearing Sambas and New Balance 550s.
It’s telling that Nike’s most recent needle-moving shoes were both distinctly low-tech—Tom Sachs’ NikeCraft sneaker and Bode’s Astro Grabber. As far as what’s cool is concerned, technological innovation just isn’t the moment. The cool people I know are wearing stuff like Dries Van Noten’s low-profile sneakers and Stoffa’s rubber-soled flats. Beyond that, just follow the feet: People on the streets are wearing a lot of Adidas, Asics, and New Balance. Hoka and On Running are relying on novelty to leverage innovation. Nike is a lot of things, but novel isn’t one.
