Nike’s Amazon U-Turn – Why the Swoosh Is Back and What It Means

Nike's Original Exit from Amazon 

In 2019, Nike made waves by cutting ties with Amazon – a move aimed at tightening control over its brand and pushing more sales through its own direct-to-consumer channels. At the time, Nike hoped to combat issues like counterfeit goods by focusing on its own website and stores. Its limited pilot partnership with Amazon hadn’t delivered on expectations around brand control or sales performance. 

The company believed it could cultivate better customer relationships and premium experiences on its own turf. 

What’s Changed Since 2019 

Fast forward to 2025 and Nike is coming back to Amazon’s U.S. site, effectively reversing that 2019 decision. The shift comes under new leadership and reflects a dramatically changed market context. 

Nike is facing mounting pressures. Sales have cooled – with a reported 9% drop in quarterly revenue earlier this year – and the brand is grappling with tariff-induced cost hikes that are squeezing margins on its China- and Vietnam-made products. These supply chain challenges have led to price increases of $5–$10 on some sneaker models. 

At the same time, competition is heating up. Nike’s global market share slipped to 14.1% in 2024 (down from 15.2%), as brands like New Balance, On Running, and Hoka gain momentum. In other words, Nike’s brand supremacy is under threat, and the company is feeling the pinch of a tougher economy and savvier competitors. 

Nike’s new CEO and executive team are taking a pragmatic approach: if customers are shopping in certain places, Nike plans to be there.

This signals a strategic pivot. Reach and convenience – hallmarks of Amazon’s model – are now prioritized over total channel control. The timing mirrors a broader shift in retail: brands are rebalancing wholesale and DTC strategies to reignite growth. 

Rebuilding Visibility and Reach 

Consumer behavior has evolved – today, more product searches start on Amazon. Nike’s absence from the platform risked ceding visibility to competitors or gray-market sellers. With its return, Nike immediately gains front-row visibility where millions begin their shopping journeys. 

Jefferies analyst Randal Konik called the decision “a smart move,” noting that Nike’s presence on Amazon “further cements [the] brand’s ubiquity.” For a brand built on being everywhere, the lack of an Amazon presence was a glaring omission. 

Nike is also rebuilding its wholesale network. After slimming down its retail partners to push DTC, it’s now adding back strategic relationships – not just with Amazon, but also with upscale retailers like Printemps in France. The objective: meet shoppers wherever they are, from premium store shelves to Prime search results. 

Direct Isn’t Always Enough 

This omnichannel shift acknowledges that pure DTC has limitations. Even Allbirds – once a poster child for the DTC movement – has joined Amazon to expand reach after a period of flatlining sales. CEO Joey Zwillinger admitted the brand never believed “direct would work” alone to drive growth. For Allbirds, Amazon could eventually contribute 10% of sales – even if it means sacrificing some data in exchange for new audience reach. 

Nike’s return is also about reclaiming brand control. In its absence, unauthorized third-party merchants filled the gap – often selling gray-market or counterfeit products. This fragmented presence diluted Nike’s standards and siphoned off sales. 

Now, Nike is cutting out those sellers. Amazon has notified merchants they’ll be barred from selling certain Nike products by July, as it pivots to sourcing directly. This shift gives Nike more oversight – from content and pricing to the overall customer experience. 

Déjà Vu, But with Data 

While this is a notable reversal, Nike’s 2025 approach to Amazon differs sharply from its 2019 exit. Back then, its pilot partnership was limited and yielded little incremental benefit. Now, Nike is returning on its own terms. 

Amazon has matured since then – with tools like brand registry, brand storefronts, and tighter controls over third-party sellers. Nike has secured stronger guardrails, enabling it to better manage its brand across Amazon’s ecosystem. 

Crucially, Nike appears committed to rigorous performance evaluation. The company will monitor Amazon’s role in reaching new customers, driving incremental sales, and complementing DTC – not cannibalizing it. 

The Top-of-Funnel Blind Spot 

Marketplace growth requires omnichannel insight. 

Too many brands know the what – a spike in Amazon sales – but not the why. Attribution gaps across platforms make it hard to understand what drove the uptick. 

This brings us to a major challenge: measuring cross-channel performance. A Nike ad seen on TikTok may result in a hoodie sold on Amazon – but Amazon rarely shares the journey data needed to make that connection. 

Without a unified view, brands risk undervaluing top-of-funnel activity. In fact, recent Fospha research found that 42% of Amazon sales are influenced by non-Amazon media, yet most teams rely on last-click models that misattribute results. The study found that unified ROAS was 45% higher than DTC-only ROAS when Amazon sales were included. 

In other words, many awareness campaigns look underwhelming until their full influence is factored in. 

Connecting the Dots with Tools Like Halo 

Fortunately, the industry is responding with new solutions to tackle this measurement gap. A notable development is the focus on what some call the “halo effect” – the lift in sales on one channel caused by marketing on another. To quantify and act on this effect, marketers are turning to advanced analytics tools that unify data across platforms. 

One example is Fospha’s Halo – a feature within Fospha’s full-funnel measurement suite. Halo is Fospha’s multi sales channel measurement feature, it allows brands to see the impact of all their online advertising across every online sales channel, including Amazon holistically, this will show which brand and other top of funnel ads drive Amazon sales enabling Nike to be smart and create multiple sales channel impact. 

By combining DTC, ad platform, and Amazon data, Halo helps marketers see how, for example, a Snapchat campaign influenced Prime Day orders. According to Fospha’s team, campaigns on TikTok showed up to 80% higher unified ROAS when Amazon purchases were accounted for. Meta campaigns showed similar gains. 

For a brand like Nike, this kind of measurement will be vital. As it rolls out campaigns to support its Amazon return, Nike’s marketing team will want to know: Are Snapchat ads driving apparel sales? Is Instagram performance translating to Amazon conversions? Halo’s approach enables data-driven decisions about where to double down. 

Other brands watching Nike’s move should take note. Marketplace expansion without robust measurement risks blind spots. With better attribution tools, brands can properly credit the campaigns that drive multi-platform sales – and allocate budgets with more precision. 

The New Growth Model 

In the late 2010s, many brands preached the gospel of channel contraction (cutting out middlemen, going direct). That era proved that while DTC can drive higher margins and deep customer connections, it’s not a panacea for growth. 

Now, in 2025, the pendulum is swinging towards channel diversification once again. Brands want to be everywhere the customer is – online, offline, owned channels, third-party marketplaces – to maximize revenue streams and resilience. 

However, the difference today is that brands are far more cognizant of maintaining a single view of the customer and the funnel. They know that without the proper data, being everywhere can lead to seeing nowhere – you can’t tell what’s actually working. 

For senior marketing and retail executives, the lesson is to embrace an omnichannel presence coupled with omnichannel measurement. Nike’s move should prompt conversations in boardrooms: Do we have the right analytics to support a multi-channel strategy? Can we attribute sales on our partners’ platforms back to our campaigns? Are we prepared to manage brand consistency and collect insights from those platforms? 

The savviest leaders are already acting. They are investing in data infrastructure and partnerships (like measurement platforms like Fospha that plug into various ecosystems) to ensure that as they broaden distribution, they don’t lose the thread on performance. In a world where Amazon alone captures about one-third of all U.S. e-commerce, ignoring that channel is not an option – but neither is blindly diving in without the tools to gauge success. 

A Sign of the Times: Dick’s Sporting Goods Acquires Foot Locker 

If Nike’s Amazon return signals a more pragmatic approach to distribution, the $2.4 billion merger between Dick’s Sporting Goods and Foot Locker underscores it. The deal will create a combined retail powerhouse with more than 3,200 stores and $21 billion in annual revenue — making it an even more critical wholesale partner for brands like Nike. 

Elliott Hill, CEO of Nike, expressed optimism: “Each has their own loyal consumer following… I am confident that together they will help elevate sport and continue to accelerate the growth of our industry.” 

It’s a reminder that the right retail partnerships still matter – especially when they’re powered by unified data and aligned goals. 

Nike’s experiment could well become a case study in how to blend old-school wholesale reach with new-school measurement savvy. If it succeeds, expect many others to follow suit, rewriting their playbooks to balance distribution breadth with data depth – a true full-funnel approach for the modern era of retail.