(DailyAnswer.org) – Nike has begun culling roughly 1,600 of its staff after announcing a restructuring strategy and $2 billion of cost-cutting in December 2023. In a company-wide email sent on February 15, CEO and President John Donahoe stated that the unfortunate reality was that the company is not at peak performance and that he holds himself and his leadership team responsible. The company began laying off staff the following day as the company aims to cull employees by 2%. Donahue claimed that the layoffs would not affect the employees of the company’s stores and distribution centers.
The news comes as Nike’s decline in performance has been linked to the company’s “woke” marketing nearly a year after it adopted transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as the face of its sports bra. The company previously used Argentinian transgender athlete Mara Gomez in its 2021 “Play New” campaign. In the videos used by Nike, Mulvaney danced and struck yoga poses while wearing skin-tight leggings and a sports bra. The influencer has not undergone gender-reassignment surgery but shared the results of facial “feminization” surgery in early 2023. This is not the face time a major brand’s struggles have been linked to its pro-transgender message, nor is it the first time Mulvaney has been involved either; Nike’s controversial videos came shortly after the TikTok personality was also featured on Bud Light Cans. After seeing a staggering 25% loss in sales as conservatives called for a boycott, Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, was overtaken by Molson Coors, which saw a 50% increase in sales of Coors Light and Miller Lite combined. In November, Anheuser-Busch announced that its chief marketing officer, Benoit Garbe, would resign at the end of the year.
In April 2023, Nike responded to the backlash with calls for kindness and inclusiveness. Olympic swimmer Sharon Davies was one of the leading athletes calling for the boycott of Nike products and has a history of challenging the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports. In December 2023, Nike’s share price was down by 11.8%. With it being unclear just how much the influencer was paid by the company, which may have been over $50,000 per post, Mulvaney has been criticized by several feminists for appropriating womanhood, wearing “womanface,” and using misogynistic language, particularly regarding references to a vagina as a “Barbie pouch” in posts about Tampax feminine hygiene products.
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