They did do it, and now they're DEIng

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Many reasons, but driving away 1/2 your customer base can’t help.

S&P 100 Drops Nike: Formerly Disruptive Shoe Company Is Now Out of Fashion

In a sign of the changing times, the S&P 100 is delisting Nike. To reiterate, the S&P 100 – not the S&P 500 – is delisting Nike, which is a reflection of the company’s poor performance on Wall Street and elsewhere. If you want to buy a share of the stock these days, it’s floundering around $38 to $40 per share, which is as low as it’s been in about 12 years. The delisting will take effect Sept. 21.

That’s a 75% drop from its peak in 2021 ,,..

As for Nike, its problems are multifaceted. From a business perspective, the company hired a bean counter and not a sports or marketing visionary to run the company. The bean counter shook up his management team and many of its long-standing partnerships and distribution channels. This provided opportunities for the company’s competitors.

Nike Is a Fashion Brand

Nike is as much a fashion brand as an athletic performance shoe company. Things go in and out of fashion every day as fickle consumers’ tastes change. For the longest time, just having that Nike swoosh logo on a shirt or a hat or your shoes was enough to signal that you’re on trend, that you buy a certain quality, and that you maintain a certain image.

This branding was reinforced by Nike's status as the dominant sponsor of the major pro athletes in sports. From Tiger Woods to Michael Jordan, if you were a pro athlete, you weren’t “somebody” until you got that Nike shoe contract.

{FWIW: years ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article on the collapse of Izod, and quoted an analyst who said she’d liquidated her entire position in the company when she learned that 75% of its sales were to teenage girls: “nothing changes faster than 16-year-old girl’s tastes”.]

Age

Nike founder Phil Knight is still as important to the Nike brand as Richard Branson is to Virgin Atlantic, and as the late Hugh Hefner once was to Playboy. But Knight is 88 years old now. Branson is 76, and Hefner is long gone, along with the relevance of his brand.

People get old, and if they’re personally integrated into a brand built around youth-driven disruption, the brand starts to be seen by younger demographics as an older brand. Michael Jordan is long retired. Tiger Woods will never again be the Woods who sold a lot of red golf shirts.

Marketing Channels Have Changed

Young people aren’t sitting for appointment TV anymore. Even when they watch sports, the advertising isn’t hitting in the same way as it used to. You have to do different things to appeal to the demographics Nike’s targeting, but the kind of things you can do and should do aren’t that expensive when compared to a Super Bowl ad. That levels the playing field for competitors who, in the past, couldn't keep up with Nike's spending in order to compete. We're talking about digital, online, and social media marketing as well as influencer marketing, among other tactics.

And then there’s this:

BREAKING: Nike is set to be removed from the S&P 100 after nearly 18 years.

The stock is now down almost 80% from its 2021 peak, turning one of the market’s most iconic consumer brands into one of its biggest recent disappointments. pic.twitter.com/3uJNIxcg4j

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 5, 2026

In the end, to climb back into the S&P 100, Nike would have to generate significant revenue increases, address its China manufacturing and marketing challenges, and improve profit margins. Again, “Duh?!”

To do that, however, it will have to do something all of the world’s most successful brands have had to do, and that is to reinvent itself without discarding the things that give it a fighting chance. Don’t change the logo. In fact, think about bringing some things back, like the “Just Do It” slogan with a fresh approach. The key is for Nike to get back to its roots — to shake up the marketplace. To be a disruptor once again. But don’t disrupt in such a way that you alienate half your market.

By that measure, the company should heed the advice of the brand’s number one superstar of all time, Michael Jordan, who once said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Words to live by, and to build a brand around, if I may say.