Nike says it’s making progress with its wholesale turnaround as it readies for its return to Amazon

Nike still has a ways to go with wholesale, executives acknowledged. The company reported a 9% drop in wholesale revenue for the fourth quarter and a 7% drop in wholesale revenue for the entire 2025 fiscal year. Yet, Nike is starting to see green shoots of growth in the channel, executives stressed.

“The early feedback to the product pipeline from wholesale partners at engagement meetings has been positive,” Hill mentioned. “For example, our order book is improving sequentially, with our holiday orders up.” Hill also added that Nike is boosting hiring to help the wholesale department, including “retail marketing, visual merchandising and account management teammates.”

It’s a sharp departure from the Nike of several years ago, which — under a strategy announced in 2017 — drastically cut its number of wholesale partners to better focus on its stores and website. The DTC-focused strategy seemed promising at the time but failed to result in steady sales, as customers wanted multiple avenues to procure Nike merchandise — and with them, possible discounts. Nike began reversing this policy in 2023 and has since re-established its relationships with partners including DSW and Macy’s.

Now, Nike seems to be going full-steam ahead on wholesale. Executives spent several minutes on Thursday’s call hyping up Nike’s resumed relationship with Amazon, which Amazon sellers became privy to in May, as Modern Retail reported. Nike products on Amazon are set to launch in Q1, and they’ll include a select assortment of footwear, apparel and accessories. Nike will also have a featured brand store on Amazon “focused on running, training, basketball and sportswear,” Hill said.

Matthew Friend, Nike’s evp and chief financial officer, stated the Amazon partnership won’t be a “material needle-mover” right away. But it does serve as a symbol of “the progress our teams are making to transition our product portfolio,” he said. Hill, for his part, added that partners like Amazon are “play[ing] an important role in serving a wider range of consumers.”

Nike could stand to use the extra consumers — and the financial boost. The company revealed that its full-year revenue for fiscal 2025 was down 10% year over year, while its fourth-quarter revenue was down 12%. (In March, Nike had warned of a fourth-quarter sales decline in “the low end of the mid-teens range.”) Nike’s net income for the fourth quarter came in at $200 million, down 86% year over year. On Thursday’s call, Friend issued guidance for the first quarter of “revenues down mid-single digits.”

Tom Nikic, a senior analyst for Needham & Company, sees Nike’s return to wholesale as “a broader strategy of having a well-rounded assortment of distributed channels.” In regard to Nike’s work with Amazon, Nikic told Modern Retail, “I don’t think they’re going to be selling $200 retro Jordans on Amazon.”

“But, for some of the more basic entry-level product, it’s a decent distribution opportunity,” he continued.

Nikic also believes that selling on Amazon could help Nike mitigate any headwinds it’s seeing from gray-market sellers. “If you’re Nike, it’s hard to tell Amazon, ‘Hey, crack down on the third-party sellers,’ if you’re not simultaneously selling to Amazon,” Nikic noted.

Cristina Fernández, a managing director and senior research analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, acknowledged that Nike is still in the early stages of its turnaround. It’s a point that Hill made in a statement in the earnings report: “While our financial results are in-line with our expectations, they are not where we want them to be,” he said.

But Fernández believes Nike — and its leader, Hill — are in a good place to make even more progress. “Everything we hear about Elliott, whether it’s the mood internally or from vendor partners, is very positive,” she said. “I just think Nike’s in a deeper hole than they’ve ever been in, so it’s just going to take time.”