Win the quarter, lose a generation.

You can now buy Air Jordans at Ross. The brand that once had kids camping outside Foot Locker overnight for new releases is now fighting for an end cap next to the Laura Ashley throw pillows and quart-size jugs of knockoff Polo cologne.

Good lord, what a shame. Nike got rich when kids saw a commercial or a poster and decided they wanted to be that guy. So who in the building actually knows what that kid wants? Not the vets. It's the 21-year-old sneakerhead with a StockX account who knew the Pandas were cooked in 2023, and not the SVP who, when asked to re-order more stock, said Just Do It.

Apparently Nike looks at junior staff as inexperienced and a cost center. The intern class is a great example. It peaked in 2019 and this summer it was about a fifth of that.

So how does the coolest brand on earth end up here?

Surprise, they did it to themselves. When hiring a new CEO in 2020, the coolest athletic brand on the planet found the perfect candidate to hire: an ex-Bain, eBay, ServiceNow, card-carrying spreadsheet-warrior margin-per-pair guy. And the Board said Just Do It.

The stock peaked late 2021 and that was John Donahoe's big win. Now it's around $35, back to 2014 levels, and their 18-year run in the S&P 100 is over. That's not all that's down. Yesterday's earnings had revenue down, China down 20-plus, Converse down 28, Jordan down, full-year guidance down, and restructuring number three of the year for good measure.

The headcount explains a lot of the story. Stop hiring new blood and everybody inside just ages ungracefully together. Recent grads are half the share of headcount they were in 2023, and average tenure went from five years to almost nine, so the whole place aged out of cool while On and HOKA stayed young.

Meanwhile adidas just sat there and waited, doing the typical reasonable Euro-style patience thing. And then got manna from heaven.

Which is not what Manchester usually gets called.

Liam and Noel make up. Oasis reunites. And 2.2M+ people around the world show up at concert revivals in adidas track tops, Gazelles, bucket hats and Man City kits. adidas tweaked 30-year-old designs for the official collection and got out of the way.

The timeless élan of Manchester circa '95, and thirty years later the dads and lads are still mad for it.

Back in Beaverton, Nike was busy cutting interns, cutting US hiring, and staffing up on engineers in India. Guess who won the race for cool?

Overall hiring peaked in 2022 at the height of the direct-to-consumer religion and it's down two-thirds since. Headcount is down a fifth and still dropping. Managers got crushed and the C-suite barely got a haircut.

Donahoe's gone and lifer Elliott Hill is back. But the intern class is still shrinking on Hill's watch too, and his big idea from yesterday was $2.5 billion in savings and… a new campus in India. That might help them win a quarter but it does sod all to help them win a generation.

So here's a thought for Nike, and it probably applies to a lot of brands and companies that feel stuck: start hiring more young people! Put a few hundred 22-year-olds back in the building and let them tell the old heads their favorite shoe is ugly. Nike is not going to out-spreadsheet its way back to its former glory. It will win when it once again convinces kids in Brooklyn, LA, Paris, Beijing, London, and yes, even Des Moines and Poughkeepsie to want their shoes.

And right now adidas is praying nobody in Oregon realizes that.