ELLIOTT HILL - JUST DOING IT

Staffers and brand loyalists cheered when Nike's new CEO came out of retirement to lead the company he has had an “irrational love” for since he began there as an intern. Turning it around will take more than good vibes.

- DEVIN GORDON

CLUTCH PLAYER

After a 32-year career at Nike, Elliott Hill retired. Four years later he was back, this time as CEO.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1990, Nike threw itself a rager of a party to celebrate the opening of its now-iconic campus in Beaverton, Ore. On the banks of a glittering pond at the heart of the campus, co-founder Phil Knight, the Shoe Dog himself, hosted the sneaker and apparel company’s biggest partners in retail, wholesale, and manufacturing, its superstar athlete endorsers, and the company’s top executives. The distinguished guest list very much did not include a 26-year-old third-year sales associate named Elliott Hill.

In his short time at the company, though, Hill had already turned a few heads. After a Nike exec came to speak to his sports marketing program at Ohio University, Hill had cajoled his way into what he thought was a job at the company’s Memphis facility. It turned out to be a six-month internship. (He didn't tell his mom.) He busted his butt, moved boxes, filled out forms, did whatever needed doing. When his six months were up, he was offered a sales job and inherited 168 apparel accounts across north Texas and Oklahoma.

Over the next two years Hill put 120,000 miles on a Chrysler minivan, carting clothing racks in and out of the back entrance of every dry goods store in the Panhandle. Selling Lycra in Texas in the late 1980s was a much tougher pitch than selling the latest Nike Air Force 1s, and far less lucrative. Still, one particular Michael Jordan tracksuit line paid off most of Hill’s college loans.