The story started on January 13th, 2020, when John Donahue became CEO of Nike, replacing Mark Parker. Together with Heidi O’Neill, who became President of Consumer, Product and Brand, he began immediately to plan the transformation of the company.

A few months later, after his first tour around the Nike world, the CEO announced – via email – his decisions (using the formula “dear Nike colleagues, this is what you asked for…”):

1) Nike will eliminate categories from the organization (brand, product development and sales)

2) Nike will become a DTC led company, ending the wholesale leadership.

3) Nike will change its marketing model, centralizing it and making it data driven and digitally led.

To implement all of that, the CEO also announced a major reorganization of the company which took place in two waves from August 2020 until March 2021 (US first, the rest of the world after).