Meeting with EUNAN MCLAUGHLIN of Nike Affiliated Companies Inc
5 December 2025 at Disley Golf Club.
We often get big names at our Business Club, thanks to the myriad pies I’ve had fingers in over the years (and members’ wonderful contacts too) but this one came out of the blue after we switched venues to Disley Golf Club. Brian the Club manager kindly circulates our invitations; a booking arrived from a new customer. I asked for his business name. Back came, “I am a former President at Nike the US Sports Company based in Portland, Oregon. Where I have lived for most of the last 15 years. I was head of Nike Europe Middle East and Africa for 5 years and before that Head of Nike Asia Pacific for 5 years… I am now officially retired. My wife is from Didsbury, Manchester. I am from Dublin.“ And he had joined the Golf Club.
Fast forward a year and we were delighted to welcome Irishman Eunan McLaughlin, President of Nike Affiliated Companies – that’s the umbrella for Nike-owned businesses such as Converse. He arrived with a huge bag of shoes, which we touched with reverence; they included the signed Nikes in which Paula Radcliffe won her gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics, and the massive foot cast of Yao Ming, a very tall (7’6”) Chinese basketball player. Officially Eunan retired three years ago, but it didn’t feel like that as he outlined a lifetime of a fabulous career and the making of an international iconic brand.
A sage once said, “Find out what you like doing best, and get someone to pay you to do it.. that way you’ll never do a day’s work in your life” (it’s credited to Katharine Whitehorn in 1975 but sounds much older than that!). Eunan is the perfect exemplar. With many brilliant videos he outlined the well-known story: how Bill Bowerman, legendary coach at Oregon State University, and runner Phil Knight, got together to make and sell running shoes in the early 1960s. How Bill ruined his wife’s waffle-maker by baking rubber into different sole patterns, better able to grip and more comfortable than spikes. How Phil sold shoes out of a van at running meets, then opened a shop, then as customers began to show a clean pair of heels to the competition, how quickly it expanded. How their most famous signing Michael Jordan wore white shoes (the iconic Air Jordans) against the rules of basketball in the mid 1980s, and Nike paid the fine – over and over again. What genius for publicity and salesmanship Knight and Bowerman demonstrated, along with a commitment to quality, and the remarkable people they trusted with the company’s future, including Eunan himself.
Knight tells his side of the story in his wonderful 2016 autobiography Shoe Dog; Eunan brought along two copies which we raffled, along with some other Nike merch. Knight had started off importing Onitsuga Tiger shoes made in Japan, but the relationship soured when the manufacturers began looking for a bigger distributor. Setting up an Oregon-based business named Nike (the Greek goddess of victory) in 1971, making and selling their own design (the Cortez was the first) – and having no capital whatever to do it with – is a spine-tingling tale The founders also set the pattern for the future: an endless search for technical excellence, turning athletes into marketeers, imaginative advertising, a commitment to innovation and quality. It’s all there. “Knight is also one of the nicest people you could meet – he’s just given $20 billion to the Oregon Health and Science University for cancer research, the largest single sum ever gifted to a US academic institution,” Eunan told us. And that’s in addition to $400 million to Stanford. All in one year.
Eunan himself is a chartered accountant with a Business Degree from Trinity College, Dublin. Perhaps when he graduated there were few opportunities at home, so he headed first for the Netherlands and then Germany (he has good German) working with Mars the international pet food and confectionary firm for over a decade. But by 1998 he was President and General Manager of Nike Asia and Pacific, based both in Oregon and in Hong Kong. And from there to Amsterdam, as President of Nike Europe, Middle East and Africa; he had a proven record of success by then, as the Nike 2008 annual report makes clear: “European revenues grew 19 percent to $5.6 billion. Footwear revenues were up 19 percent to $3.1 billion, apparel revenues increased 19 percent to $2.1 billion and equipment revenues grew 18 percent to $424.3 million. European fiscal year pre-tax income increased 22 percent to $1.3 billion.”
“I’m really a sales guy,” he said. Nike is brand marketing above all else, aimed at the 15 – 16 year old lad; if the boy likes his Nikes, he will stay with them all his life. “We have never marketed to older people… now girls have been added to the mix,” Eunan explained, though Nike was ahead of the field in the aerobics world of Jane Fonda many decades ago. “And very few of the Nike guys are defenders,” he grinned. Ian Rush was the first UK footballer to sign with Nike. The stars who wear the swoosh on their shirts are the biggest names – Tiger Woods, Ronaldo, Eric Cantona.. that’s how these brands are built and maintained.
It has not all been plain sailing. Had I bought Nike shares in December 2022 I’d have paid over $170 for them. Three years on, their price is around $60. What went wrong? Eunan explained that during Covid when retailers were closed, Nike ramped up its online sales and – since they were charging the same prices but without discounts to retailers – profits went through the roof, and so did the shares. After Covid, however, as retailing got moving again, Nike was slow to spot the change and often cold-shouldered by those same snubbed retailers in favour of their competitors. People do like to try on different shoes, that’s part of the fun. So.. the CEO was moved on, a new face has appeared at the top (Elliott Hill, who started out as a Nike intern), the symbiotic relationship with JD Sports and other significant shops has been restored.
In any case, stock market prices are notoriously fickle. Nike’s turnover has increased steadily throughout this time; it’s now a staggering $53 bn (FY 2024) turnover business, well ahead of German company Adidas its nearest rival at $25 bn, with the gap widening. What impact the current US government’s tariffs programme will have, still remains to be seen, but the customers seem very happy. And with the FIFA World Cup in the US this summer, and the next 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, this American business seems likely to continue to thrive.
I often write “We were left full of admiration” but this presentation requires superlatives beyond even my skills. There are not many international corporations with such a strong continued reputation and so many positive stories. It is associates like Eunan who have made it so, and we are really delighted to have heard from him.