While SGB Media readers once again remained glued to the quarterly reporting of financials in 2024 to stay connected to how a brand or retailer was performing throughout the year, the top news trends for 2024, measured by SGB Media Editors assessing our most read articles, was centered around turnaround efforts at some of the largest public companies in the active lifestyle space.
News from Columbia Sportswear, Nike, Sportsman’s Warehouse, Under Armour, and VF Corporation included a mix of layoffs and major changes at the top of each company’s org chart.
SGB Media Editors also reported on what seemed to be non-stop commentary and statements in a new trend where the company Board of Directors fight publicly with its investors and management, as exemplified by Vista Outdoor’s year-long effort to sell itself off in two pieces and Gildan Activewear’s push to install a new CEO.
Vista’s Board prevailed. Gildan’s did not.
The year also saw hot discussions surrounding Lululemon and Nike losing momentum with consumers as each fought the fight over product issues, which hurt both brands on Wall Street.
Stifel’s annual 2024 Back-to-School Survey and Report provided a snapshot of sneaker brands at the retail level, including which brands trended up and which brands went down. The firm’s 2024 report was quite a departure from its reports in the recent past, with its Teen Survey results calling out a faltering Nike brand and an expanding appetite for other performance brands.
For Nike, the market repeatedly called out a lack of innovation as younger brands seized on the opening the giant once held and started to take share, particularly in the performance running market, which had been the genesis of the Nike brand.
A softening of the Jordan brand at retail brought alarm.
Nike’s issues steamrolled downward in the spring of 2024 after the then CEO, John Donahoe, announced that the answers to slowing the company’s growth would react with a return to visible Air.
By October, Donahoe was out, and Nike began to bring back retired or cut former company executives to put Humpty Dumpty back together.
Enter stage right Elliott Hill, returning to Nike after a few years away, bringing his 33 years of brand and retailer relationship experience back to the mothership as the company’s new CEO. Others came with him to right the company, which had to move quickly to unwind failed policies that de-prioritized innovation and retail relationships in favor of a DTC-first approach.
The year ended with Hill laying out a plan in late December to return to growth and innovation while remaining cautious that it would be a long road for Nike with some early bumps.
At Lululemon, the company lost momentum in 2024 as its new Breezethrough collection, aimed at hot, low-impact workouts, faced criticism over the design, with a 3.1-star rating from 112 reviews on Lululemon’s website, with comments highlighting issues like unflattering seams and discomfort. Analyst downgrades followed, forcing LULU to cut guidance for the year. The company came out on top by year-end, exceeding guidance and winning praise from Wall Street in the third quarter business.
There were voices during the year that sounded concerned over the decline of the overall athleisure market and the potential for the leggings business to soften. It did not happen as Lululemon continued growth, and the market saw Athleta return as a growth story, along with Alo Yoga, Fabletics, and Vuori, among others.
Adidas also saw its Kanye West/Ye/Yeezy issues continue throughout the year as the company worked to minimize the impact of its 2022 fallout with West over his anti-Semitic remarks. After selling down Yeezy product in 2023, the company announced in January 2024 that it would not write-off most Yeezy inventory as expected and instead devised a sales plan and release schedule throughout the year to boost sales and mitigate the bottom line impact. Each quarter of the year had an asterisk as the company saw an upside through a couple of quarters, but a lack of inventory to anniversary prior-year Yeezy sales cuts into the third quarter. Adidas finally settled with West in October, perhaps putting the whole issue behind them for the future.
Other key trends seen in 2024 were the rapid expansion of new facilities and clubs in the fitness industry, fueled in large part by the trend to pickleball and fitness-as-a-lifestyle workout and living developments, as well as the overall growth of pickleball in general as companies added gear to meet the needs of the market.
The sector also saw mergers and acquisitions to fuel growth for the top fitness consolidators and franchisors, including Crunch Fitness, Life Time, Ohm Fitness, Orangetheaory Fitness, Planet Fitness, Pvolve, PickleRage. Pickleball Kingdom, PureGym, and Xponential Fitness, among others.
The market was also entrenched over the changing regulatory landscape for PFAs as brands rushed to ensure 2025 products would meet or exceed guidelines set by key states, including California, that moved ahead of national efforts to ban or regulate “forever chemicals.”
Yeti made some noise by acquiring outdoor industry sweetheart Mystery Ranch, founded by backpack designer Dana Gleason. The end of the year found cries from the core of the outdoor space as speculation rose that Yeti was planning to shut Mystery Ranch down and merge its tech into the Yeti brand after the market saw different visions coming from different executives regarding the future of the MR brand.
Foot Locker was a top retailer story over the summer as it announced a planned move from New York City to Florida, a more profitable path ahead and hope in the market that the retailer may be turning it around.
On the other hand, the news surrounding the bankruptcy process of the parent company of Bob’s Stores and Eastern Mountain Sports garnered considerable attention as those legacy retail brands ceased to exist.
Another key storyline of 2024 involved VF Corporation, the parent of The North Face, Vans, Timberland, Jansport, and Dickies, as that leader in the active outdoor lifestyle and street lifestyle markets pushed its turnaround efforts forward with key divestitures, none more significant than the sale of the Supreme brand to Oakley’s parent and several key hires to lead the Vans and TNF businesses.
The year ended with some additional controversy in the core outdoor market as The North Face launched a collaboration with Kim Kardashian and her Skims apparel line.
The decision by the Board of Directors at Camber Outdoors to cease operations was also a big headline in 2024. The non-profit, created to support the advancement of women in the outdoor industry but, more recently, had become the voice for DEI initiatives in the outdoor industry, saw its relevance wane as more companies took up the banner and carried it forward or dropped their DEI initiatives completely.
Outside the Top 25 Most Read list from SGB Media, but undoubtedly worth an honorable mention, were the published articles about BSN Sports see KKR as new majority investor, Topgolf Callaway making moves to divest the Topgolf portion of its business, the sale of the Sanuk brand to Lolë Brands, extensive reports from Birkenstock, Fleet Feet hires and new FF stores, and Dick’s SG closing the remaining Moosejaw stores it acquired in spring 2023.
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See below to read SGB Media’s Top 25 Most Read Articles of 2024:
