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With more than 27 years at Nike, Charlie Denson has a deep understanding of the Nike brand and its global reach. A native of Oregon, where Nike was founded, Charlie began his career in 1979 as an assistant store manager at Nike’s first retail store in Portland. Learning the business from the ground up, Charlie ultimately ran the company’s U.S. and European operations before leading the Nike brand worldwide. Charlie has been a constant innovator in leveraging Nike’s robust product pipeline, developing sales and distribution strategies and driving global growth as the company steadily expanded to more than 160 countries to become the world’s leading sports brand.
As co-President of the Nike brand worldwide for five years beginning in 2001, and as President since January 2006, Charlie has led Nike through a period of extraordinary global growth and profitability, with fiscal 2006 total company revenues hitting $15 billion and net income increasing 15 percent to almost $1.4 billion. The Nike brand accounted for almost 87 percent of fiscal 2006 company revenues. Charlie’s insights and intuitive understanding of the Nike brand and consumers has led to rapid expansion into emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil. As President of the Nike brand, Charlie’s focus is to continue to drive global growth and deepen consumer relationships.
One of the defining moments in sports for Charlie was attending his first World Cup game in 1998. While attending that first World Cup, I experienced the nationalistic surge of patriotism and sports merging in the streets of Marseilles after the Brazil-Holland game, he said. It was just unbelievable, especially for an American. | 