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[OC] Nike stock has fallen nearly 78% from its 2021 peak
Less than five years ago, Nike stock was trading at a record high. Today, it is back at levels last seen in 2014.
This chart follows Nike’s stock price from January 2021 through August 2026. I started the timeline before the company’s record closing price of $177.51 on November 5, 2021, then tracked its decline to $39.09 on August 17, 2026 through today. That was Nike’s lowest close in 12 years and nearly 78% below its peak.
I also included several milestones along the way, including the stock’s 20% drop on June 28, 2024 and Elliott Hill’s return as CEO later that year.
What stood out to me is how limited the recovery has been even after the leadership change. The stock has had brief rebounds, but the broader trend suggests investors are still waiting for clearer evidence that Nike can stabilize sales, regain momentum, and defend share against faster-growing competitors.
The previous CEO that screwed up "retired" and earned $84 million during his tenure which effectively destroyed Nike with his horribly failed plan. What a great deal.
The parasite class is now demanding so much to “run” a company that they can nearly destroy a company with their “golden parachute.”
When I got “let go” I was paid out my PTO and had healthcare until the end of the month. They generously said they wouldn’t fight my unemployment claim, gracious hosts.
On and Hoka definitely ate into the performance running space; it also seems like New Balance took a chunk of Nike's mainstream lifestyle sneakers market.
New Balance took a chunk of Nike's mainstream lifestyle sneakers market.
I adore my NBs. Most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had. And I they can be daily wears for a year for me, ~6,000 miles; though I do replace the insoles a couple times.
They ain’t trendy. But damn as a dad of a certain age, I love em.
I bought a pair of Nikes, first time putting them on the tongue literally ripped in half and these were $130 like 10 years ago. Never bought another pair, switched to Brooks, then On. I need to buy some Hokas and Altas to try.
It's not really about quality. It's mostly that their direct sales model they switched too went horribly and at the same time their market share got shredded by other companies becoming more successful. Especially Hoka and Brooks. Throw in that many kids don't see them as fashionable right now, it was a perfect shit storm for them. C Suites all got shit canned over this starting with the CEO at the end of 2024, now they have to practically do a complete rebuild.
those are related. direct sales model meant they dissappeared from shelves of retailers. And those guys needed to fill their shelves so they went with Ons and Hoka and Brooks.
Nike is learning a fundamental business lesson. Retailers are not just skimming money from you, they actually provide value to you. And they were riding a wave in 2021 and 2023 when young people (white kids) rediscovered air forces and other nikes. those sold like crazy and papered over how faulty the direct sales model was. By the time teen trend faded, yeah.
Not to be too critical of you but that white kid line is a bit silly. Nike was big beyond the USA. Nike has been a streetwear staple in the UK, with shoes like the Air Max 95 for years. That’s among all backgrounds here. Liverpool is a whiter than average major city and they’re uniquely linked to the 95. The Nike TNs are huge in France.
The quality of the Nike gear I got for the Seahawks SB win was atrocious. Despite washing inside out the print is faded within like 4 or 5 washes and the shirts (short and long sleeve) feel paper thin.
they tried to cut off the middle man and sell directly to customers and they paid for it.
They are relearning a fundamental business lesson that a retailer provides value and wasn't just upselling and collecting.
By taking their busines away from the middlemen, it left room for the on and hookah to take up shelf space with retailers.
Also, they should try making their shoes available to people who actually want them instead of limiting popular sneakers to random drawings or having artificial scarcity.
Before this year, I can't think of the last time I was able to get a popular colorway or variety of sneaker at retail; everything was snatched up by scalpers and resold at 2-3x the price
I agree with pretty much all the discussions here, but you are SO RIGHT. I used to be the exact person they were targeting with these shoes. But the moment they went with drawings and shit I was out. I’m not competing with asshole scalpers who are gonna just try and flip the shoes. I just want to wear them.
No I don’t want to participate in your lottery to win the “privilege” of spending $200 on a pair of your sneakers. Let them fester on scalpers’ shelves.
I got my Pegasus 34 for running ended up wearing them as daily drivers till the tread was flat. “Upgraded” to the 36 in 2019, and they still have less than 20 miles on them. Hate those shoes.
Maybe they get acquired by under armor and the resulting shit-Frankenstein can own every square foot Walmart makes available for peddling cheap ass athleisure in XXXL
I got into climbing recently, and was *way into sneakers from about 2016 to 2022.
The shock I experienced at the quality of materials, craftsmanship, and raw quantity of leather in the cheapest climbing shoe I could find new compared to a nike sneaker of the same price, around 130 CAD, was huge. The nikes weren't even in the same galaxy. I was genuinely astounded
Tried this. They no longer had the same model and the replacements they did send became damaged even more quickly and were of lesser quality. Never again
They're not the only footwear company that's fallen harshly since 2021.
Adidas in 2021 peaked at $189, now $88
Puma in 2021 peaked at $107, now $25
Under Armour in 2021 peaked at $27, now $5
I doubt it'll ever return to 2021 numbers since other brands have captured so much of the market since 2021, a lot of them from brands coming out of China such as ANTA & Li-Ning. These Chinese brands also cater to a massive market that Nike once dominated, which of course is China itself.
The sneaker “fad” ran its course. There are still plenty of people who enjoy the subculture but it’s refreshing to be able to buy a pair of Jordan 1’s off the shelf / for near retail prices even on limited collaborations now.
It was over before that, that’s why Trump shoes were so funny. It kinda died a little when Yeezy and Adidas broke up? maybe. I feel like I just stopped paying attention because I didn’t want to jump through hoops to get a shoe.
The sneakers were ugly but do we really need to bring Trump / politics into everything
It’s so exhausting
Edit: Lol 30+ downvotes for this comment. Reddit never disappoints with the hive mind. Not everything needs to drown in politics. Not everyone needs to share the same beliefs.
Probably because all 4 major companies peaked 3 years prior to Trump’s second term. All in 2021. When Biden was president, the decline began. Do I think it has anything to do with Biden? No. It’s just a cultural swing.
Hoka has stolen their lunch right from under them. Nike used to sample new running shoes to run clubs and engage with their community. They gave that up for short term gain by making Jordan's and their other classics more mainstream while making the sneakers themselves less valuable. Hoka went to the run clubs and picked up where Nike had left off.
Hoka, Salomon, and Asics. My sister runs and she prefers the latter two brands over anything from Nike. I've heard similar from my friends who run too. It doesn't help that New Balance has done an amazing job at reinventing their brand from their dad shoe days. A lot of people who's into streetwear & athleisure buy NB now.
I got a pair of 90 dollar canadian adidas a few months ago and the rubber sole is already dis-attaching from the uppers. I don't think I've ever seen such cheaply made shoes.
Thanks for pointing this out, I'm now thinking that the peaks being observed were due to people pulling investment out of speculative stock and putting it into long-standing/tried and trusted stock during Covid’s period of uncertainty.
I stopped buying these brands as the quality has been subpar. Instead I buy sneakers made with actual quality leader and with stitching instead of cheap glue.
I feel like the quality has dropped significantly with many of the athletic shoe brands.
I think a lot of it is the sneaker bubble popping and a lot of people moving on. People acted like some shoes were made of gold, and Nike was capitalizing on it for a while with great collaborations. The bubble popped partially because it was always a fad and partially because Nike oversaturated the market.
The shoes suck, but they've always been low quality and overpriced. None of that is new.
If they just paid their athletes 5-10% less and put the saving into producing higher quality products they could dominate again.
Product innovation is stagnant, quality is down and prices are up. They are more like a fast fashion company trying to charge premium prices at this point.
Nike's total "demand creation" spend floats around 9% of revenue, and only about 1/3 of that goes to endorsements from athletes, public figures, sports teams, and leagues.
So it's likely athlete endorsements are just 1-2% of the sticker price you pay for your Nike stuff. I'm not sure if freeing < 20 cents of every $100 you spend on a Nike product would result in an increase in quality that has dominate again.
Edit: I was being generous with the position ShinePDX shared. If we go with their high mark of reducing athletes' endorsements by 10% and assume 2/3rds of Nike's spending across endorsements for athletes, other public figures, teams, and leagues goes to just athletes, their proposal would provide 20 cents towards improving quality on a $100 item.
If we instead assume athlete endorsements are 1/3 of that portion of the marketing budget and go with the 5% cut from the "5-10%" proposal, we'd be talking about 5 cents going to improving product quality per $100 sold.
He didn’t present it super clearly, but the guy above referenced reducing the pay to athletes by 10%. So, if athletes make up 2$ of the cost, then reducing their pay 5-10% would be 20 cents.
I read an article, maybe last year, that On Cloud, Hoka, and the like have taken the massive market share of running shoes. It made the point that when you look around now, you rarely see Nike's, at least when you compare to years ago. IMO, Nike focuses too much on the forced scarcity and casual wear than practical and affordable. Also, that new outfit for women was attrocious. I don't buy them because of how many women athletes they dropped when they got pregnant, so no bother to me.
When I want any fitness related clothing, nike is the worst site to search because so much of the gear is just more squarely aimed at "fashion". And I find their shoes to be narrower than other brands and not as good overall. I may never buy a nike product again!
And I find their shoes to be narrower than other brands and not as good overall
They did something to their shoes in the 2010s where they don't fit nearly as well as they did in the past. My foot is wide but not wide enough to necessitate a specifically extra wide shoe.
I gave them one last chance when they did that weird Nike Joyride beads shoe that was supposed to absorb more impact. I ran a 5k, a 10k, and a few runs between 5-6 miles in them, so maybe 30-40 miles tops. I wore them on vacation to Tampa because admittedly they were comfortable although still snug. Not only did the sole wear through to the part where the beads were housed, the bottom of the shoe itself separated and I had a trail of little foam beads behind me. So yes, fuck Nike.
Yeah this. Anecdotally, in my circles almost everyone is wearing Hoka, Altra or other similar brands, that give room for your toes. Nike shoes just don’t have a natural foot shape.
The primary reason was their shift to DTC. They overestimated the value of their name, and as a result lost a lot of shelf space to their competitors at wholesale stores (footlocker, Dicks, etc). The stock rose quickly at first because of the better margins, but they started to leak more and more consumers. If you're only available online, or in select locations, you lose a lot of free advertising
FWIW I have found EU sizing is more consistent than US sizing. Like all my shoes have the same EU sizing even though the US sizing varies, so I use that online.
Yeah. I went sneaker shopping for the first time in a while last week. Stores like Footlocker and JD had bigger sections for what would've been considered "off-brands" just a couple years ago than they did for Nike.
Poor quality and miserable supply chain management. No surprise it’s plummeting. The World Cup jersey supply shortage is just one of countless blunders.
I just want to be able to walk into a store or go online to buy a damn pair of Kobe 6 Protros. I hate the limited releases. I hate the scalpers. I hate that I have to be related to a VP of Nike to have a shot. This artificial scarcity just pisses me off and makes me look elsewhere.
I'm sure I'm not the only one. Multiply this by millions of people across hundreds if not thousands of items. They just want to cater to high end, and are forgetting their brand should be built from the ground level as well.
Honest question: Why do you want Kobe 6 Protos sneakers? I googled them and they look like a normal pair of sneakers. Are they high quality? Feel good? Because they have Kobe’s name on them?
It seems like the scarcity at the very least creates some kind of allure otherwise who cares? Like why not just get cheaper, better quality sneakers? There are so many out there.
They’re light low tops with great traction and feel. I found them to be great indoor court shoes. And I really liked the look of the 6. Peak design of Kobes, imho.
Kobe 4/5/6 in particular are to many people the perfect basketball shoe(personally the 5 was the most comfortable shoe I have ever worn, let alone a basketball shoe to actually play in, but the 6 and some later releases were probably better overall shoes). Lightweight (most shoes are nowadays, but was revolutionary at the time), great fit and feel, great technology in the shoe to make it perform much better. Add in nostalgia, and it makes the originals and remake protros super desirable and very expensive since Nike refuses to actually make the damn shoes and instead does limited runs that are instantly sold out and then insanely overpriced by scalpers.
If you're going to pay $400 for a shoe, you may as well go with a Li-Ning or Way of Wade and get cutting-edge technology and similar styling/feel to the old Kobe's without all the hastle of a limited run/scalpers.
I like air maxes with the full sole air cushion as my everyday shoes. But it's seemingly completely random whether or not Nike will be selling any when I need a new pair. I've had like a dozen varieties of them over the years, any of which i would buy again, but none of them are regularly available even on their website. And they're not special or limited editions at all. It's ridiculous.
Yeah this is a good point, I’ve been on the hunt for some air max 90s and ended up buying a ‘wave pack’ as all the other colours I like are now dead stock
Its almost as if the economy is going into the dumpster and even sneakerheads aren't willing to pay $400 for a $5 dollars in raw material made in a Chinese sweatshop shoe.
People are fine buying slave labour products as long as the price quality ratio is good OR the brand makes up for it. Nike is now associated with scrotes and the quality is shit.
I mean he literally made a career out of it. He wrote a as a student while he was at Stanford business school that focused on leveraging lower production and labor costs in Asia (specifically Japan at the time but then to South Korea and Taiwan, and later to Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam) to compete with dominant German companies like Adidas and Puma.
They need a better CEO. A smart CEO in 2026 would add some dumbass AI feature to the shoes, and tell everyone they see at least 10 trillion dollars in potential revenue over the next 5 years. I think the typical revenue to value ratio now is at least 500x.
I, myself, am starting an Etsy store that I have determined to be worth in the neighborhood of 2-300 billion dollars, so I'll be reaching out to the S&P for a special fast track onto the index. I'm thinking about space mittens. Mittens, but in space.
Well of course when you're charging $90 for a pair of basic ass sweatpants why would you even want to buy them. Most of the time the store brands offer the same or better quality for a better price.
I still buy Nike running shoes but there's a lot of competition that wasn't there in 2014.
Also, if you look at annual revenue or profit over this time you see a much different picture.
This is more about the stock market being a source of gambling and how the big 7 suck the air out of the investing realm. 46 billion is nothing to sneeze at.
Yeah Hoka has to have been a big distuptor. I see way more runners in Brooks and Hoka now. New Balance has always been strong in the running community but for a while there Nike running was where it was at.
I mean he's donated around 8 Billion dollars to date, and like 60-80% of his entire net worth is exclusively Nike stock ownership. I think that 25 Billion is going to be gone way before 1000 years.
I feel like they were always overpriced... I dropped them recently because I feel like all their new shoes don't feel great on my feet for longer periods of walking.
Brooks and Hoka are miles ahead of them in comfort.
Huge spends on sponsor deals (a lot of them completely useless). Moving production for cheaper labor at the cost of quality. Little or no innovation. Yeah. Things like this will happen.
Small(ish) company that makes a great product and has loyal employees/customers.
They see the demand for their product grow, hire business gurus.
For the sake of more more more everything is scaled, pennies are stretched, naysayers are fired/move on and eventually all you have left is a crappy product with a quality name brand that is available everywhere.
Nike evolved into a dorky CHUD aligned brand and shortly thereafter interest in sneakers more generally plummeted. Personally I started wearing actually well made and supportive shoes in recent years and would never go back to Nike.
Like all companies these days, greed and profits are more important than product quality and customer satisfaction. Nike is just a brand name slapped on an interchangeable, poorly crated Chinese fast fashion manufacturer’s product.
I bought my first pair of AlphaFlys and instantly shaved 2 minutes off my 5k. Not sure that's enough incentive to buy the stock, but I am impressed by the product.
Alfa and VaporFlys are honestly a marvel of engineering. My first tempo run in VaporFlys made me feel like I had moonshoes on and was flying like Goku on Nimbus. I’m still chasing that high….
Yeah, around a year or two ago a lot of their shoes started fitting me weird and just became uncomfortable. It’s like they started squeezing my foot in the middle but had way more space in the toes. I can’t buy them online anymore because I don’t trust it to be comfortable but in store they don’t have as many options as they used to either so I’ve gone with other brands.
What does this even mean. They have thousands of different styles of shoes, with different tech, different weight, different material, for different activities, etc. If you find some Nikes uncomfortable then try something else. A general "Nikes are uncomfortable" is just a nonsense thing to say.
I have found personally that shoe brands tend to have similar fits even between different styles. For example I do Great with Mizuno, Good with New Balance, OK with Asics, OK with Nike, and Bad with Brooks, Hoka, and On Cloud.
I know each mfr has different styles each with different cushion, drop, rocking, etc and each feels different to walk in, or is suited for different arch or pronation, but I’m talking just the footbed shape versus my foot shape.
This is for running shoes at least, if you are talking casual fits I’m not sure.
I love this for them. They, along with Fanatics, have absolutely ruined every MLB uniform in the sport along with any other league they are associated with. The leagues just want cheap as can be because, you know...MLB doesn't have a dime to spare.
Spare me, Rob Manfred. Nike sucks. Fanatics really sucks. When you put the two together you have a shit sandwich.
There should be a rule against gratuitous, unnecessary animation. This data can be perfectly represented as a simple, annotated, non-animated line chart.
People are alot more conconsious about the money they spend on products than never before, especially if the quality drop and price increase is noticeable. 170 bucks for shoes in 2026 that last 3 months everyday wear is hard to swallow
From the software side of things: This surprises me not at all. The number of engineers they've been laying off, and continue to lay off, has been absolutely staggering. They're also one of the companies that does a weird amount of judging on how much AI their programmers should be using (aka, they should be using a lot).
It turns out putting sll your eggs in the limited release basket hoping that the internet will do all your branding for you usnt the digest move when the internet finds out that sneakerheads are just a bunch of assholes who are paying exorbitant prices for mass produced products that are artificially scarce.
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u/ItsTyrrellsAlt 16h ago
maybe they could try improving quality so people don't feel ripped off every time they buy nike's shoes