The Morning Madhouse

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Nike’s executive quits over son’s $132K sneaker purchase

Ann Hebert, the vice president and general manager of Nike’s North America division, was implicated after a Bloomberg Businessweek report found her son Joe Hebert, 19, used bots to make an online purchase of 600 pairs of a sought-after sneaker (the Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 Zyon) after they were released.

her son used one of her credit cards to purchase $132,000 worth of limited-edition sneakers for his own resale company.

The article is packed with anecdotes about Joe Hebert’s exploits in the secondary sneaker market. His company, West Coast Streetwear, has figured out how to use technology and chutzpah to buy hot sneakers in bulk before the rest of the market. They routinely then resell the shoes at handsome profit margins.

The secondary sneaker market has become huge. It has the power to turn a disappointing shoe into a big seller. The big companies that actually design the products and get them built, like Nike and Adidas, seem to put up with it.

Joshua Hunt penned the original story for Bloomberg. He is no stranger to Nike. He wrote “The University of Nike,” a hard-hitting look at the close relationship between Nike co-founder Phil Knight and the University of Oregon.

“I didn’t set out to write another Nike story,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive Monday. “I just knew there was something interesting going on in this exploding secondary sneaker market, so I set out in search of a character to tell that story and came across Joe.”

Hunt writes that one day on the phone with Joe Hebert he saw the name Ann Hebert on the caller ID. He did a little research and learned she was a Nike vice president.

He eventually asked Joe Hebert about his mother. The young entrepreneur insisted that his mother was not at all involved and then stopped communicating with Hunt.

her son Joe Hebert, 19, used bots to make an online purchase of 600 pairs of a sought-after sneaker (the Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 Zyon) after they were released. Hebert used the corporate American Express credit card which was in his mother’s name to build up the stock of his resale business West Coast Streetwear and sold the shoes for more than $20,000 profit.


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