Inside Nike’s ‘Win Now’ Strategy Aimed to ‘Help Consumers Fall In Love With Something New’
Nike president and chief executive officer Elliott Hill laid out a more in-depth progress report on his plans to turn around the challenged sportswear company.
On the company’s third quarter earnings call on Thursday night, Hill told analysts about its “Win Now” strategy Nike execs developed back in December. According to the CEO, who joined the company in October, these new priorities are centered around five fields of play, three countries and five cities.
Hill noted that the fields of play that Nike is focused on in this strategy include running, basketball, football, training and sportswear. The CEO added that he is “confident” that the company is “making the right moves” as he’s already seeing improvements in both the running and training business segments. Ultimately, though, it’s about running a “balanced and complete” portfolio, Hill said.
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“We’re going to run that through all three brands – Nike, Jordan and Converse – across performance in sportswear, men’s, women’s, kids, footwear, apparel, accessories and up and down price points,” Hill said. “And we’re going to be sharp on specific sports.”
This is where the new product comes into play. As discussed for months now, Nike has been working to clean up its distribution of the oversaturated Air Force 1, Jordan 1 and Dunk models.
Now, the CEO is touting some newness in the sportswear side of the business with Vomero 5, P-6000, Shox, SuperFly, Air Max Muse and Air Max 95. “I feel like the teams are taking all the right actions against those key footwear franchises, rightsizing the inventory and getting back to running a relentless flow of innovative and coveted products,” Hill said.
As for where this is all happening, Nike’s three key countries in play under the “Win Now” strategy include the United States, China and the United Kingdom; and the five key cities are New York, Los Angeles, London, Beijing and Shanghai.
“We’ll invest to make sure each [location] has innovative and coveted product, a loud and proud locally relevant brand voice, a consumer-led and balanced integrated marketplace and passionate Nike teammates on the ground,” Hill noted. “Each country has unique dynamics and is in different states of development. China, specifically, is where we’re being the most proactive and cleaning up the marketplace and we’ll get back to inspiring the Chinese consumer in a more meaningful way.”
Going forward, Hill said that Nike is aiming to prioritize restoring its sales organization and go-to-market processes. “Partnering with Nike must feel like a world-class experience,” the CEO said. “That means building growth plans together, creating distinct consumer positions and consumer right assortments, while also engaging way earlier in the process and asking for product feedback, delivering our assortments at the right time, right place and at the right depth. [We will also be] educating their teams on new innovations, providing marketing support and making certain their Nike presentation is premium, so we capitalize on every sale opportunity.”
In Nike Direct, digital will feel the changes more quickly, Hill said. This is already in the works as Nike is reducing the promotional days and discounting at lower rates. In fact, comparing last year’s January and February to this year’s, Nike Digital in North America went from over 30 promotional days to zero, the exec noted.
Hill added that consumers and partners “felt a different pace” for Nike this quarter. “We’re off to a solid start and where we are making progress in our five priority actions, it’s mostly through serving athletes through the lens of sport and performance,” the CEO said. “That’s exactly where we want to be. The bottom line is we are looking for opportunity on all fronts. Now it’s up to us to be consistent.”
This comes as the company reported net income in Q3 2025 of $794 million, down 32 percent from $1.2 billion in the year-ago period. Diluted earnings per share was 54 cents, a decrease of 30 percent from 77 cents at the same time last year. Net sales in the period were $11.3 billion, down 9 percent from $12.4 billion, on a reported basis, compared to the prior year.
