The Unfortunate Missteps of 2 Generations
This week, when Bloomberg Magazine arrived at my doorstep, the photo of the gold-chain-laced red and white Nike’s immediately caught my attention as the cover stated, “This is Not a Shoe, It’s an Asset Class.” I flipped through it while sipping my coffee, and glanced at the photos of a facially-blurred out teenager casually sitting amongst thousands of sneaker boxes in multiple settings, including what looked like the outdoor deck of his home, and also a warehouse overflowing with boxes of shoes. All of this he’d apparently shared on the Instagram feed of his self-made company, West Coast Streetwear. I shook my head at the braggadocios look-what-i-have style of Gen Z’s influencer class, but also shrugged with a bit of respect that a 19 year-old had the hustle and strategic foresight to use “specialized computer programs such as Cybersole, Kodai, and GaneshBof” to build an empire of sneakers for lucrative, and legal reselling.
Hours later, a friend of mine who is a true sneakerhead, sent me a link to Bloomberg online, I thought, to read the same article I’d flipped through earlier. Instead I was directed to an update with a new headline: “Nike Executive Leaves Following Report about Son’s Business.”
It turned out, Joshua Hunt’s interview with the proud (cocky?) 19 year-old, wanting to prove his success to a journalist who needs documentation for journalistic integrity, unveiled a severe conflict of interest, and essentially, insider trading between mom and son. Credit card receipts and phone numbers for West Coast Streetwear were registered not to the Founder and CEO, Joe Hebert, but to his mom, Ann, a Nike employee of 25+ years. When questioned, this discovery pulled the string of confidence right out of the 19 year-old who immediately stopped responding to the reporter, and unraveled the career of a woman who spent her life climbing the corporate ladder at one of the most well-known brands in the world.
As this story continues to permeate newsfeeds, I couldn’t help but think about how the lives of these two people, more importantly, that of Ann Hebert, had been essentially exposed (and Ann’s, destroyed), through the hubris of a 19 year-old. While her son had decided that thanks to his inside connection, he was raking in way more money as a sneaker reseller than a would-be college student, Ann had finished college in the 1990′s and within 2 years, started in ‘various sales rep roles’ at Nike, eventually climbing up the corporate, and once very male ladder at Nike, to Vice President, General Manager of Nike in North America. That is a significant mountain to climb. And while, according to Nike, she reported her son’s ‘side hustle’ back in 2018, it’s likely that the extent to which his business had grown, and that she was so deeply involved, definitely precluded her from any protection Nike would or could provide to a 25+ year loyalist employee.
Imagine. Giving 25 years and 10 months to a company. Working for them for so long you knew all of the inner workings of it and the industry itself, and your son, who shared your mind for business, came up with his own company, that would allow him to live the same, or a more comfortable life that you yourself, worked so hard to provide. I can see the naiveté. Or maybe the ease of culpability. Ann Hebert is clearly implicated and involved, but that doesn’t make her downfall any less palatable to me. Maybe she would’ve been exposed, or maybe her son Joe could have continued to make his millions without implicating mom. Reselling of shoes is a gray area that I don’t claim to fully comprehend, and with software that allows you to automate bidding on rare shoes, its an industry and “asset class” that is clearly a corporate model that is already in existence.
But, like many Gen Z’ers before him, it was Joe Hebert, and his naive desire to overshare, that caused his side hustle to crush his mom’s corporate climb of a career. There’s no outrunning this one, no matter how fly the shoes are.
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