It’s not a great time to be a major sportswear brand. Amidst mounting controversies and failed new projects, Lululemon has spent the last two years on a steady downward trajectory; their stock price is currently hovering around US$92 – down from its peak price of roughly US$500 in late 2023. But at least it's arguably better off than Nike, the once-great sportswear giant who was recently dropped from the S&P 100. Nike’s stock price has fallen 50% in the last year, now sitting at around a paltry US$34. Adidas, to be fair, has performed somewhat better, with a stock price around €142 – still, the brand’s stock has fallen roughly 24% over the last year. And Under Armour has historically been a smaller player on the sportswear scene, but over the last two years, its price has dipped below US$5 and entering penny stock territory.
You could reasonably conclude that no one’s buying activewear anymore. But more than half of Canadians over the age of 15 participate in a sport, according to a 2023 StatsCan report, and they need to get their leggings from somewhere. Athleisure, too, continues to be stylish, with influential stars like Zendaya and Hailey Bieber regularly channeling sportswear chic. High-fashion brand Miu Miu even spotlighted elevated athleisure at Paris Fashion Week this year.
The problem isn’t that no one wants to buy workout clothes anymore; it's that no one wants to buy them from established industry giants. Now that there are tons of younger, hotter brands on the scene, the old guard just isn’t cool anymore.
Some of athleisure's lost market share has been self-inflicted. In 2020, John Donahoe took over as Nike’s CEO; he shifted from stocking third-party retailers' shelves to selling sneakers directly to consumers. The strategy resulted in a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, when online shopping was everyone’s default, but experts think it caused a longer-term decline in sales. Fewer sneakers on store shelves meant less visibility for Nike, and more visibility for competitors eager to snag the empty space Nike left behind.
Another common criticism: Nike just wasn’t investing enough into innovating high-quality sneakers. Without exciting new products (and ample Foot Locker shelf space), Nike began losing its allure. Departures of high-profile brand reps, including Tiger Woods and Kylian Mbappé, have harmed the company’s image too – especially since Mbappé left Nike for On, a younger, trendier Swiss brand that Zendaya also reps.
Fewer sneakers on store shelves meant less visibility for Nike, and more visibility for competitors eager to snag the empty space Nike left behind.
Management decisions have made Lululemon a lot less cool to consumers, too. A Bloomberg report from August details some of Lululemon’s innovation attempts over the last few years, from beauty products to sneakers, which broadly failed to win over consumers. Most egregious, perhaps, was Lululemon’s 2024 Disney collab, which included a Mickey Mouse-emblazoned hoodie. Children’s cartoons don’t exactly embody the 'effortless sophistication' vibe that Lululemon has tried to cultivate.
The company also has a perpetual PR problem, thanks to its idiosyncratic (and often offensive) founder Chip Wilson. Earlier this year, Wilson and the company reached a truce on a very public feud, but the drama did little to inspire public confidence. At Lululemon, luxury and controversy have gone hand-in-hand for nearly three decades – but, with multiple emergent competitors hitting the scene, consumers are realizing controversy isn't mandatory.
However, even with these significant missteps, Lululemon and Nike aren't entirely responsible for tanking their cool factors and stock prices. Remember, Adidas stock is down, too, despite mostly avoiding these same problems. In September, The Wall Street Journal pointed to general affordability concerns putting pressure on luxury sportswear brands, particularly among Gen Z consumers, who are famously unemployed. (As a Gen Zer, I’m allowed to say that.) The WSJ also suggests that “consumers have been favoring newer brands such as On and Hoka over more established labels.” In other words, there are tons of new and hot competitors nipping at major brands' heels.
While Vogue's 2026 roundup of best activewear brands “included all the classic brands…such as Nike, Lululemon, and Adidas,” the editors clarified that they'd also “fallen in love with” a whole slate of “contemporary brands.” As much as these younger brands are celebrated for their versatility and high-quality fabric choices, they also get a lot of clout from celebrity partnerships – like Vuori, which was given the “supermodel stamp of approval” by Kaia Gerber, and Alo, which is a favourite of the Hadids and the Jenners.
In 2026, is anyone buying Lulu leggings because Vogue told them to?
Many younger sportswear brands have mastered high-profile celebrity partnerships and effortlessly cool aesthetics (i.e., no Mickey Mouse collabs). The old-school giants still arguably have an edge when it comes to credibility and consumer trust, but narratives from publications like Vogue seem to be changing that already. Take a brand like Literary Sport – barely two years old, boasting a fashionably minimalist website that looks more suited to an art gallery or a small-batch ceramics business. It got a big credibility boost when the magazine declared it “already an activewear favorite.”
Sure, Nike and Lulu typically make it into the listicles too, but most run club-joining, yoga pants-wearing consumers aren't discovering Nike sports bras or Lululemon leggings from reading listicles anymore. It's a huge accomplishment for a product to evolve past 'exciting and new' to become a tried-and-true classic – the problem, of course, is that everyone already knows the classics. In 2026, is anyone buying Lulu leggings because Vogue told them to?
With so many brands out there to discover, the classics have to prove that they’re worthy of rediscovery.
Innovative and trendy products can always overtake older, dependable versions, no matter the sector. But the impact is especially notable in sportswear, where aesthetics and campaigns specifically highlight the importance of taking risks and ‘just doing it.’ Nike and Lululemon came up as innovators, but they're just not seen that way anymore, no matter how much they’d like to be. On the other hand, Vuori – founded in 2015 – insists on its website that it’s “evolving the definition of traditional activewear”. Between courting Gen Z celebrities like Gerber and Chase Infiniti and appearing in cool-girl publications like New York Magazine, the brand feels authentically new and buzzworthy.
So how can established sportswear brands come back from this slump? Maybe they should carve out a new aesthetic, one that glamourizes long-established trust and reliability, rather than boldness and newness. Or maybe the sportswear giants should refocus their energy on innovating products that are new, interesting, and worthwhile.
With so many brands out there to discover, the classics have to prove that they’re worthy of rediscovery. And as current stock prices suggest, they have their work cut out for them.
