nike*
the swoosh

the company

Nike, Inc. is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, and is the largest sportswear company on earth. In fiscal year 2024, Nike reported revenue of US$51.4 billion and employed approximately 79,400 people directly. Nike doesn't make its own products. It contracts over 500 factories across 35+ countries, mostly in Vietnam, Indonesia, and China. The swoosh is a design, a stock ticker, and one of the most recognised symbols on the planet. What it isn't is a factory.

the good stuff

Nike's Move to Zero initiative is the company's headline environmental play. Parts of it are real. Nike's owned-and-operated facilities now run on 96% renewable energy as of FY2023. Its Tier 1 factories have been publicly disclosed since 2005, ahead of most of the industry. Nike Grind has diverted over 1 billion pounds of waste from landfill.

Flyknit technology reduces waste by around 60% compared to traditional cut-and-sew. The Nike Forward material generates roughly 75% fewer carbon emissions than traditional knit fleece.

the supply chain

In the 1990s, Nike became the textbook case for sweatshop labour. Phil Knight in 1998 acknowledged that "the Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse."

Since then, Nike has built one of the more comprehensive supply chain monitoring systems in sportswear. But average wages in key manufacturing countries remain low. A garment worker in Vietnam making Nike shoes earns roughly US$250-350 per month, which often falls below what researchers define as a living wage.

Nike's own FY23 impact report acknowledged that roughly 15% of audited factories were flagged for non-compliance on at least one labour standard.

the environmental cost of a sneaker

A single pair of running shoes generates approximately 14 kg of CO2 equivalent, according to an MIT study. Most of that comes from manufacturing, not materials.

Nike produces over 900 million pairs of footwear annually. A polyester-and-rubber sneaker takes an estimated 30 to 40 years to decompose.

the marketing machine

In FY2024, Nike spent US$4.3 billion on "demand creation". By comparison, Nike's community investments sit around US$100 million per year.

LeBron James's lifetime deal is reportedly worth over US$1 billion. A factory worker in Vietnam making those shoes earns somewhere around US$3,000-4,000 per year. One athlete's endorsement deal could pay the annual wages of roughly 250,000 factory workers.

the greenwashing question

Nike's total Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions were approximately 10.5 million metric tonnes of CO2e in FY2023. While Nike's owned facilities are nearly all renewable, Scope 3 emissions (the supply chain, logistics, end-of-life) account for over 95% of the total. The part Nike controls directly is the part that's already clean. The part it doesn't control is nearly all of the problem.

The 96% renewable energy figure is real. But it covers about 5% of total emissions. That's the asterisk.

what this means for your money

Nike is a component of the S&P 500 and virtually every major global index fund. If you have superannuation in Australia, there is a high probability your default fund holds Nike.

That's the gap inaam exists in. Not to tell you Nike is good or bad, but to make sure you know what you own and why. The swoosh on your feet and the swoosh in your retirement account are the same company, making the same choices, with the same asterisks.