Today, Explained - Nike lost its cool

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

And once a brand has lost its cool, it's almost impossible to get it back. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces wearing her Nike A'One player exclusive signature shoes. Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is Nike uncool? You know, I mean, certainly what's cool is a little bit in the eye of the beholder. And not being a particularly cool person myself, I don't want to assert what is and isn't cool for all people. That said, Nike sales have been weak for the last few years and the company's stock is dipping. Their stock price is under $50, which is as low as it's been since 2015. What happened? Apple is not cool. Amazon is not cool. Nike is not cool. Starbucks is not cool. Big brands are not very cool right now.

Nike still sells a lot of shoes. Starbucks sells a lot of coffee. Amazon sells a lot of everything. The issue is not, I think I hear you saying, that these companies don't sell. Right. It's that they just aren't cool. Coming up on today, explain from Vox, when your company loses its Riz. Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise.

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How can working at your local Tims take you further? Sure, you can level up your teamwork skills. You also get a chance to receive a Tim Horan's scholarship award. Ready for what's next? Apply today at careers.timhorans.ca. You're listening to Today Explained. Who says Nike isn't cool? That would be Amanda Chicago Lewis, a journalist who recently wrote a big piece for the

economist titled, Nike just can't do it anymore. What's she using as proof? Nike still sells more shoes and more athletic shoes than any other company. However, the numbers are going down. And what investors usually like to look at is growth, which companies are getting bigger, which companies have the momentum. And so if you see a company becoming, you know, uncool and the sales are going down, that's not like a very good sign for the sustainability in the future. Okay, so Nike is not growing. Once upon a time, Nike was the biggest thing in the universe, or so it seemed. Tell me the story of how Nike went from the highest of highs to where it is now.

What happened exactly? What happened with Nike is when a brand goes from niche cool to mass cool, and Nike really did that with Michael Jordan in the 1980s. It's not to fight gravity. Do you know? Do you know, do you know? Do you know? The short socks? No, Mars. Money's got to be the shoes. Shoes, shoes. You sure is not the shoes? It went from being a brand that was seen as, you know, associated with joggers, with people who were sort of running for self-actualization reasons, to something that everyone was buying all across the United States and associated, you know, with one of the most popular athletes of all time.

In order to make that pivot and stay relevant, the brand needed to attach it to self to American iconography, which generally has to do with independence, with rebellion, with freedom. For Nike, remember in the late 80s, there was a commercial that was set to the Beatles song Revolution. And then there was just a revolution. was, just do it, right? The idea of personal willpower being something that can allow you to overcome anything. You know, the first commercial that involved Just Do It involved a guy who was 80 years old going on a run. So it's like, just because you're old, you can still do it, you know? I run 17 miles every morning.

That as sort of a political stance, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. you know, individual responsibility was something that was sort of cross-partisan maybe in the 1990s and the early 2000s. But in the last 10 years or so, has become pretty much passe, as I think people have talked more about the systemic forces that influence our lives. As Nike, you know, attempted to have what I described in the piece as social justice-flavored marketing for such a long time that was sort of referencing seemingly progressive politics without necessarily, you know, being a company that followed through on those politics depending on the situation. The things got more complicated, right? And I think the major turning point came in 2018 when Nike did a campaign with the football player Colin Kaepernick, who had essentially been ostracized by the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racial injustice.

Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. And just like Kaepernick, the ad in his involvement is simultaneously drawing praise and sparking backlash. Not only my burning my favorite pair of Nike's, you are burning your sales. Have a good day. It caused a lot of controversy, but it didn't really substantially affect sales of the company. It didn't really affect the stock price. But it was something that conservatives remembered, and it was certainly something that Trump remembered. Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone way down, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger. and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way. As far as the NFL is concerned,

I just find it hard to watch. It always will until they stand for the flag. So in 2020, a new CEO was brought in. His name was John Donahoe. And he didn't really understand fashion. He didn't really understand marketing. He didn't really understand how to keep things cool. And as the pandemic was beginning, he oversaw the company's transition to a direct-to-consumer model. So they started cutting out retail stores. They stopped selling through Amazon. And this, particularly during the pandemic, really juiced profits and the stock price, because obviously when you don't have to, you know, when you're not cutting the retailer in on the price and you're just selling direct-to-consumer, you can make a lot more money off of that

sale. However, as people started getting vaccinated, the pandemic ended, and people went back into stores and Nikes weren't there, nobody was really buying Nikes. And that CEO's management of coolness was not really working and ended up causing them to push him out in the fall of 2024. Right as Nike was entering this moment with a new CEO, they were also afraid of a person. upsetting Trump. Because the other thing to know about Nike is the reason why the company was founded was outsourcing. Nike bringing cheap sneakers in from abroad means that the tariffs have hit the company particularly hard. But because of the Kaepernet campaign and because of the politics of some of the advertising in the past, Nike, unlike Apple, was not able to arrange a

some sort of exception to the tariffs. When Trump announced his tariffs in April of 2025, this immediately caused huge problems for Nike, and over the course of the next year, cost the company something like a billion dollars. You know, we tried to cover some of that with price increases and some other things that we did with our partners on the wholesale side of the business,

and then also from manufacturing. But it's tough to cover that all at one time. And then, you know, as there were attacks being made on DEI, Nike employees and executives, you know, some of them really wanted Nike to say something. You know, this is in January of 2025. And apparently, you know, Nike's new leadership said, like, no, we're not going to say anything. We need to sort of stay apolitical. We need to be neutral. We don't want to upset Donald Trump. And, you know, meanwhile, the EEOC, the equal employment, Opportunity Commission began investigating Nike's DEI program back in 2024 in the summer

before Trump was reelected. After Trump was reelected, this investigation expanded and, you know, they doubled down. The EEOC says it requested information on Nike's layoff criteria, how the company used workers' race and ethnicity data, and details on programs allegedly providing race-restricted development opportunities. It also spans hiring and training programs, promotions, and demotions, internships, mentoring, employee development. This is truly a test case for the Trump administration's focus now on what they're calling reverse discrimination.

With both the tariffs and the EEOC investigation, Nike is trying to not be noticed by those in charge. The Nike is afraid, particularly of Trump and, you know, what Trump's retribution could potentially do to the company. And being afraid is a terrible position to be in for a company that is trying to regain its place in the zeitgeist and be cool again. Okay, so Nike's on its back foot for a number of reasons here. It's afraid. It's under investigation. It's been hit hard by tariffs. And yet, as you said earlier, companies sometimes do manage to find ways to pull themselves out of this and become cool again. I imagine Nike is desperately trying to do that. What is the strategy? Yeah, their strategy is to try to recapture some element of the marketing glory days by, you know,

the formula they've always used, which is find a celebrity on their way up. Some, someone cool, someone charismatic, particularly someone talented at sports, and attach themselves to that person's energy and create a campaign around how that person's hard work in their sport allows them to be capable of overcoming anything. And so if you wear Nike, you too will be capable of overcoming anything. Okay, so they need a young athlete on their way up. Who do they get? Because Nike is in such a defensive posture right now, they're betting a lot on this huge partnership with Kim Kardashian of all people. Get your fucking ass up and work. Kim Kardashian, not an athlete.

It seems like nobody wants to work these days. But her shapewear and intimates company skims competes with Lulu Lemon. And Lulu Lemon has been beating Nike at the Athleisure game for a long time. So at this moment for Nike, the new Michael Jordan is Kim Kardashian. Make of that what you will. Amanda Chicago Lewis is a journalist. She wrote Nike just can't do it anymore for The Economist. Coming up, another kind of company is failing.

Millennial brands are not doing too well right now. RIP Everlane, RIP Salad. Hi, I'm Maria Sharpova, host of the Pretty Tough Podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week, Model Sports Illustrated cover girl, and entrepreneur, Ashley Graham, talks about the time she almost quit. I called my mom and I said, Mom, I just, I'm not going to do this anymore. And she told me, no, you are going to stick this out. Your body is going to change someone's life.

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Today explained Lauren Sherman, I am the fashion correspondent at Puck. In the first half of the show, we were talking about Nike and how Nike has become desperately uncool. And you've been writing about this whole genre of brands that has unfortunately been tanking for coolness and other reasons. And those are millennial brands. What makes something a millennial brand?

Millennials are specific because they're very hard workers and they are okay with selling out and they're okay with commercialism. So I think what a lot of big millennial brands represent is like aspiration. And I'd say a lot of the brands that came up in the 2010s that were direct-to-consumer and digital first, we're sort of like, we're going to make it better.

We're going to make it more efficiently. We're going to make it look cooler. We're going to do all these things. because we know better than our elders about how to run a business and how to make something really work. Everlane. Albert. Rent the runway.

Warby Parker. Glossier. Very few lived up to that promise. Yes, because the promise was made, and once the promise is made, you have to try to live up to it. You've been writing about a millennial brand that, wow, recently went through an incredible shift, and that is Everlane. Tell me about Everlane.

What were its beginnings like and what was its pitch to consumers? So when Everlane launched, it was all about, and this was a very trendy idea of about cutting out the middleman. So it was all about transparency. The idea of we are online all the time. We have access to a ton of information. Brands can't lie to you anymore. So they're going to give you all the information up front. Everlane was like, we're going to tell you how much.

it costs to make our product. We're going to tell you how much we're profiting off of that. We're going to tell you where the factories are. We're going to tell you what fabric we use. When it comes to sustainability, we're oversherers. We are on a low-carbon diet. Exceptional quality, ethical factories, radical transparency. But the other thing that they did from the beginning was they tried to make cool clothes. This was an era 2010, 2011, 2012, where the gap was sort of waning. Amazon wasn't a... as, you know, at the front of our lives when it came to apparel in particular. And so there wasn't like a place that everybody was going to for their basics.

And so Everlane's promise was like, we're going to give you the coolest basics on the planet, these great box cut teas and cool high-rise jeans. But we're going to do it in a way that makes you feel better about purchasing it. And it worked for a time because I remember people being very loyal to Everlane. But then what happened? It worked for about 10 years. I'd say like, I don't know if you're familiar with the term norm core, but they were sort of at the center of the norm core trend. And then I'd say around 2018, 2019, they were doing really well.

They were growing pretty fast, but they wanted to grow faster. They started raising more money. And they just made some strategic changes to product that didn't really jive with how the consumer was transforming. me as well. And so they sold a majority stick to a private equity firm. It just kept like diminishing from there and they really lost their place in the culture where as Uniclo and all these other things were rising up. And then also obviously the anti-woke thing, they were associated with sustainability and there's like this whole culture of like, actually we don't care about that. So a lot of consumers kind of pushed back on anyone who was touting being socially conscious in the market.

So recently, the private equity firm that owned Everlane, those investors decide to sell the business to Sheehan. I have a huge Sheehan Hall. A pile is so big you can't even see me, but I have a massive Sheen Hall. There's not many things I would say I'm a professional life, but sheen shopping is one of them. Which is the Chinese fast, fast, fast, fast, fashion conglomerate that, you know, the valuation is $100 billion. When the deal was approved by the board, you know, hours after I broke this news, the influx,

the outrage was insane. From who? From, like, people who love the company? From people online who feel like that it was an injustice. I genuinely cannot think of a better way to destroy your brand image. Sheen is basically the antithesis of everything that Everlane has built its reputation on and stands for. It's given today drained me. I'm just drained.

Like Nini said, I'm sick of everybody. And by today, drained me. I mean late stage capitalism. Because this is bananas. I will stop recommending Everlane, and I will add it to my list of fashion brands to avoid because they cannot possibly maintain their DNA while belonging to a player like Sheen.

They were upset because it was supposed to uphold all these values and you're selling to what, in their minds, is the antithesis. of what Everland is supposed to stand for. Sheen has an incredibly opaque supply chain and doesn't share a lot of information. They're not transparent, and also they sell stuff for really, really cheap,

so you just assume that the way that they're creating it is probably not the best possible way. It just sort of represented the death of those millennial brands, and then also this place we are in the culture where nothing matters anymore. Like all these things that, like, people stood for don't matter. And I think it just really upset people. So there's the death of the millennial brand.

And there's something we've talked about on the show before, which is the death of the millennial lifestyle subsidy. So a lot of these brands were started back when everything was a startup. There was a lot of venture capital money flowing in. And you didn't really have to turn a profit. You just had to be, like, doing something cool. Do you think that Everlane and some of these others are like the, equivalent of what happened with DoorDash and Uber. Like, you have to start making money now. You can't just tell us that you have values and you're doing something cool. Yes and no. I think the

difference is an Uber, a service business eventually will be able to be profitable. Apparel business, it takes a lot and it takes a lot longer. Whereas like an Uber or a we work, I'm working from a We work right now. Someone said, we work so exist. I said, sure, there's a demand for it. There's not really a demand for more apparel. If you can't make it work, you just close. And so I think in the end, the investors in Everlane didn't really have a choice.

It was either like, let's sell it to someone else. And the thing for a Sheehan is like they don't need Everline to be profitable. They can kind of use it as an experimental little side piece or what have you. What other millennial brands are struggling? Glossie is a great example of a brand that was really important to the consumer that has lost its footing. They have a new CEO and they're trying to get back on track. But again, it was a matter of suddenly the message and the product were not as on point as they had been. And they invested too much in the wrong things and didn't focus on profitability.

And again, beauty can scale faster than fashion, but it's a similar thing. All words, an example of they really were focused on this one-style shoe made with this environmentally friendly wool. And it was sort of a novelty. Now they're like in, I don't know, they're in AI or something. They totally pivoted out of the shoe business. It's very weird. The company plans to buy and rent out computing power for tech companies. And they do anticipate changing their name now to Newbird AI.

Huh? Yes. New Bird AI. New Bird AI. The one that has done really well is Warby Parker, and that's because there is a monopoly in the eyewear business. There are not alternatives of nice stuff, good quality stuff that isn't crazy expensive. And they really found, when you talk about white space, which a lot of these brands did, they really did find a white space and were able to make a product that people really needed,

and they did it responsibly. So, yeah, this is just the age-old story of competition. Competition just knocks some businesses out. Nothing you can do about it, or is there. Can you imagine any of these brands, the Allbirds, the Everlane, the ones that are really struggling, can you imagine any of them making a comeback? Yeah, I think Allbirds know Everlane probably. Probably not. I'd say 2% chance ever...

Albert's 0%. I think Glossier is still... There's still a need for what they do and how they originally presented it. I think they could potentially get that one back on track. But the reality is like... I think in this market, we're just going to see brands turn over more quickly. There's also a lot of legacy brands that are still around. So it's not like none of these things became the Levi's of their category. And that's what you kind of have to do to have longevity.

If you want to be around for 100 years, you have to be Louis Vuitton or Levi's or Nike or what have you to be able to really stick it out. And it's okay. Even sweet green, you look at that, the salads, like, I think it's done. It's just, it was interesting because it was everything for so long, but it feels like they weren't. able to figure out how to make it a staple in people's lives. And that's, that takes a long time, especially for a consumer product. It just takes longer than a new service or, or a tech platform or what have you. She's Lauren Sherman. She's Puck's fashion correspondent. Ariana Spoodoo produced today's show and Jolie Myers edited. Patrick Boyd is our only engineer and

Gabriel Duntov checks the facts. I'm Noelle King. It's today explained. I'm