Nike Executive Resigns After Ties to Son's Resell Business Revealed

Nike announced this week that Ann Hebert, Vice President & General Manager of their North American territory, has left the company after 25 years. Hebert's resignation comes in the wake of a published interview with her son Joe in which he describes making hundreds of thousands in profit from reselling sneakers, indirectly implicating her in the process.

In the original interview - published in financial news publication Bloomberg last week - Joe describes his reselling business and how he uses bots to buy sneakers and other items to resell for profit. The purchases are in such vast quantities that he leases a storage unit to house them, often seen in photographs on his Instagram. He describes in one anecdote how his business turned over $600,000 in sales in the month of May 2020 after US citizens received their stimulus checks.

Joe and his reselling business made news last year when he purchased four pairs of rare Nike Air mags allegedly found by an unnamed man in an abandoned storage unit in his home state of Oregon. He explains in the Bloomberg article how he went on to sell the shoes for $42,000.

As proof of revenue for the reselling business, Joe provided an American Express credit card statement in his mother Ann Hebert's name. Among other things, the statement showed 6-figure purchases of hundreds of pairs of sneakers on the card. Joe requested that their connection not be highlighted in the interview.

When questioned on sources of information which informed his reselling practice, Joe cited his upbringing in Oregon, home of the Nike brand, stating that: "The right people “can give you access to stuff that, like, a normal person would not have access to.”

A Nike spokesperson says that Ann Hebert had previously disclosed information on her son's reselling business to them in 2018 and that "no violation of company policy, privileged information or conflicts of interest" were identified at the time. Hebert had only served in her previous post since June of last year.