Nike’s CEO on the company’s next chapter and its shift back to athlete-focused innovation

Happy Monday y'all. It’s still rainy here in LA, and the big thing I’m watching today is Nike’s attempt to reset its business and brand. Nike was the first brand I ever really cared about, and seeing the missteps over the last few years has been a tough watch.

Driving the news: Nike CEO Elliott Hill laid out a reinvention plan in an in depth interview with Suzanne Kapner for The Wall Street Journal. The company is coming off a period where it leaned too heavily on Air Jordan 1s, Air Force 1s, and Dunks and flooded the market with pairs that eventually required steep discounts. Nike is now working to pull inventory back to manageable levels. AF1 is finally in a healthy position, but the Dunk and AJ1 still need work. The message is simple: Nike overplayed the classics and the bill came due (link).

The stakes: Nike’s old formula relied on heritage franchises, a heavy DTC push, and marketing muscle to drive demand. That formula no longer holds. The running category is now one of the most competitive spaces in athletic footwear and Nike has lost both momentum and perceived edge. They now have a dedicated GM running the entire Nike Running division which signals that the category requires sharper focus, not broad strategy.

The friction: The last few years created internal and external drag.

• Internally, employees went through a tough stretch marked by layoffs, morale issues, and a feeling that the company had drifted from its core identity.

• Externally, the overproduction cycle forced Nike into price slashing just to clean up inventories which cheapens the brand and trains customers to wait for discounts.

• Strategically, Nike’s DTC first obsession alienated retail partners and narrowed the brand’s distribution impact. Hill is now reversing course and asking those partners to help rebuild demand.

Nike’s consumer base has moved on faster than Nike’s operating model has.

What this unlocks: Nike’s next chapter depends on tightening the portfolio and rebuilding product heat from the ground up.

• Investing in sport specific innovation such as the 4 in 1 Olympic jacket and Project Amplify.

• Rebuilding momentum in Women’s with the Caitlin Clark signature shoe. The early reaction to the logo showed how much cultural upside this category has.

• Segmenting the business more cleanly across its three brands Nike, Jordan, and Converse and then by sport within each instead of relying on a handful of silhouettes to carry the whole company.

• Resetting relationships with wholesale partners to reignite basic demand and reduce the pressure on DTC to do all the lifting.

Bottom line: Nike is admitting it got bloated, distracted, and overly reliant on a narrow set of franchises. The reinvention plan is a return to fundamentals: cleaner inventory, sharper category leadership, healthier wholesale, and product innovation tied to real sport. If they execute, they can rebuild cultural power. If not, the competitors crowding running and Women’s will keep carving away at what used to be Nike’s automatic wins.

For everything else, see below 👇:

Tech

1. Jeff Bezos is launching a major AI push with a new startup backed by billions, taking on a co-CEO role (Andrew Ross Sorkin for The New York Times) — Link.

2. Spotify launched a “Fewer Repeats” shuffle mode aimed at reducing track repetition by prioritizing recent listening history (Luis Rijo for PPC Land) — Link.

3. Levi Strauss & Co. partnered with Microsoft to build a next-gen AI “super agent” platform for integrated retail experiences (BusinessWire) — Link.

4. Fidji Simo, co-CEO at OpenAI, vows to make ChatGPT profitable while steering the company’s product strategy (Russell Brandom for Wired) — Link.

Entertainment

5. ‘Now You See Me 3’ Tops Global Box Office With $75.5 Million, ‘Demon Slayer’ Hits $730 Million, ‘One Battle After Another’ Crosses $200 Million (Brent Lang for Variety) — Link.

6. Glen Powell’s Running Man reboot collapsed at the box office with a weak $6.3 million opening (Anthony D’Alessandro for Deadline) — Link.

7. Webtoon is expanding into the U.S. digital-comics market through major partnerships with Disney’s Marvel and Star Wars (Sohee Kim for Bloomberg) — Link.

Brand & Marketing

8. IKEA and Absolut were named top global winners at the 2025–2026 World Branding Awards in Osaka, standing out among more than 1,000 nominated brands (BusinessWire) — Link.

9. Starbucks’ “Bearista” cup launch triggered massive demand and a resale frenzy, creating an unexpected brand win (Ben Paynter for Fast Company) — Link.

10. Tribeca wellness-focused market by Sammy Nussdorf generated hours-long queues driven by TikTok hype (Alison Lundergan Grimes for Business Insider) — Link.

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