Nike executive steps down after son used her credit card to purchase $200,000 worth of sneakers for resale business

Top Nike executive, Ann Herbert, resigned from her position as vice president and general manager for Nike North America after her son was apprehended for using her credit card to purchase $200,000 worth of sneakers for resale.

According to a Bloomberg News report on February 25, Herbert’s 19-year-old son using his mother’s leverage to purchase Yeezys and other recently released top sneaker brands, beyond the purchase limit to sell them through his resale business, West Coast Streetwear. The report said that Joe Herbert made the purchase using an American Express card under the name West Coast Streetwear, not in his mother’s name. He argued that he had never used his mother’s position at Nike to gather inside information.

A company representative, Sandra Carreon-John told The Washington Post that Herbert told Nike about her son's resale business in 2018 and that the company said that the business didn’t violate its policy.

“There is no commercial affiliation between WCS LLC and Nike, including the direct buying or selling of Nike products,” Carreon-John said.

Over the years, Nike has had issues with small retailers that try to resell its sneakers for prices higher than the fixed retail price. As of Tuesday, there were no sneakers on display on West Coast Streetwear’s website.

Joe Herbert told Bloomberg Businessweek about his business of purchasing bulks of sneakers and selling them at a higher price for more profit. One time, he said he got more than 15 people to swarm a website selling Yeezy Boost 350 Zyon sneakers and then bypassed the system designed to limit customer purchases with bots. He said he made a purchase of $132,000 worth of Yeezys and resold them at a $20,000 profit.

The 19-year-old sent a copy of his financial statement to a Bloomberg representative for an American Express card, which showed his mother’s name on it.

According to Bloomberg reports, Hebert’s son made a lot of profit from his resale business and has an online chat group for paid subscribers where he shared information about upcoming online releases. He claimed his information was not based on an insider, but his keen nature to gather necessary information living in Portland where Nike has its operations. His company’s Instagram account features an image with hundreds of boxes of high-demand sneakers.

“If you know the right people here, this is the city to sell shoes,” Herbert told Bloomberg, he added that the right people “can give you access to stiff that, like, a normal person would not have access to.”

Hebert who has worked at Nike for the past 25 years, got promoted to the position of the company’s vice president, last year. Her promotion was part of the company’s strategy to accelerate Customer Direct Offense, in a move to decrease the company’s reliance on brick-and-mortar stores and promote online sales through its app.

A spokesperson told news outlets on Tuesday that it was Herbert's decision to resign from Nike. The spokesperson said that although Herbert told the company about her son’s resale business in 2018 and Nike found no conflicting interests, she didn’t disclose relevant information about West Coast Streetwear. Herbert’s son also said that she was so “high up at Nike as to be removed from what he does” and that she never gave him any inside information.