Bombas CEO Jason LaRose on Socks, Soul, and Scale — Plus Nike Stalls While Levi's and Aritzia Soar

**Michael LeBlanc** (0:07)
Welcome to the Remarkable Retail Podcast, episode number 307, the only podcast from two of NRF's top retail voices in 2025 and 2026 I'm Michael LeBlanc.

**Steve Dennis** (0:17)
And I'm Steve Dennis.

**Michael LeBlanc** (0:18)
On this episode, our guest is Jason LaRose, CEO Bombas, recorded live in our pop-up recording studio at the Commerce Next to Growth Show in New York City. Launched in 2013, the meteoric rise of a remarkable, simple and focused retail concept, Bombas makes the world's best versions of your everyday go-to socks, underwear, tees, shoes, and slippers.
And with every purchase, powering a donation to someone who needs it, you'll hear to date an incredible 200 million donations. In the news, lots to cover in the news, in our Summer Buy Weekly format, results from Nike, Aritzia, Costco, thoughts on Kroger, and their ways of trying to acquire to compete strategy, and then what is on our respective radar screens. Speaking of our summer schedule, don't sleep on our periodic latest store tour videos, the ones in the can today that you can see on our YouTube channel, Expresso and Nordstrom World Cup Activation, with more to follow all summer recorded while we're in the Big Apple for Commerce. Next, Steve, it's the dog days or house in days of summer, first both depending on where you are and what you're up to. You though are getting up to some fun stuff with some great people we know, so tell us about it.

**Steve Dennis** (1:25)
Well, at this point, I just say save the date suggestion. I'm going to be doing a webinar with our friends at placer.ai.
That is going to be September 29th at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. So be looking for the specific topic and registration information a little bit further down the road. But yeah, save that date. I think it's going to be a pretty interesting session.

**Michael LeBlanc** (1:51)
All right, September 29th. Now let's get into the news and results, plenty of them in our bi-weekly format. Now interestingly, our guests, who you'll hear from a little bit later in the show, Jason LaRose is president of Under Armour, won in a long line of challengers to the Nike Empire.
What did you think of the Nike results?

**Steve Dennis** (2:09)
Well, they were pretty unimpressive, I guess is probably the easiest way to say it. Nike is still not doing it, but they are early in their latest transformation. The revenues were down, depending on currency basis, 1 to 4%.
They are projecting full year being pretty flat. Some people were a little bit confused because some of the headlines showed that they had quite a significant increase in operating profit. However, that was nearly a billion dollars, a billion dollars with a B, one-time tariff refund. So that really gives you a flavor for how much the tariffs have hit some companies, but we're obviously having a lot of imports. So that was worth 900 basis points, so 9% of gross margin.
Just a little bit more detail on breaking out what's going on. Nike Direct was down 7%, but Wholesale is now up. So folks that have been following this story would know that Nike really went very far on the direct to business, pulled distribution out from Wholesale. That allowed a number of players to kind of get in and take some of those positions. They're really trying to recalibrate there. They also continue to struggle in China. China business was down 12%.
So they're both trying to dial up their product innovation. That's going to take some time. They're kind of refocusing some of their category strategies. So Jordan and Sportswear are still pretty weak and they've been discounting there. They are apparently getting some benefit, which is not too surprising from World Cup effects of that business. So it's definitely a very mixed but mostly meh kind of picture.
So I think it is going to take them some time. One of the things I just observed, which I think we've seen with any number of retailers that have struggled over the years is once you start to lose relevance and lose your customer base, it's hard to get it back. And that's usually because customers have found, you know, the market share has gone somewhere. So customers have found other brands they like better. And then the question is, well, what can you do if they're satisfied with On Running, or they're satisfied with Hoka, or they're satisfied with Under Armour? What can you do beyond discounting to get that business back? So early days here, to be fair, but clearly things are at best stuck in neutral.

**Michael LeBlanc** (4:38)
You know, what was interesting to me when I looked at that wholesale number being up, that to me read sell in for World Cup teams, right? Because they provide the kit for, I think, France and England, and you wouldn't see that in DTC till later, right? So I thought that that 4% up in wholesale would be that load in.