Nike’s Vice President and General Manager of North America, Ann Hebert has left the company after 25 years following a Bloomberg Businessweek report on sneaker reseller “West Coast Joe.” The report claims that Joe Hebert, 19-year old son of the Nike exec, had used a credit card in her name to purchase sneakers and to resell them for a significant profit.
On Monday, just four days after the report, Hebert sent out an internal letter with the decision to step down from the company. It is said that Nike was aware of her sons business in 2018 but concluded she hadn’t violated any company policy; Nike forbids its employees from partaking in reselling.
Discussing how Hebert disclosed information about her sons business, WCS LLC to Nike in 2018, a Nike spokesperson said “There was no violation of company policy, privileged information, or conflicts of interest, nor is there any commercial affiliation between WCS LLC and Nike, including the direct buying or selling of Nike product.”
The Bloomberg report describes Heberts son as a college dropout who exploited a “buy-low opportunity” to generate around $600,000 on the resale market. With Joe Hebert’s connection to Nike’s upper management, the integrity of his operation was beginning to be questioned.
This has become the number 1 topic of discussion in the sneaker world as collectors debate on what is fair and what is not, all while trying to figure out the legitimacy of raffles and other online releases.