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Nike is in the midst of a vast expansion of its Beaverton campus, including three office buildings boasting 1.35 million square feet. Many of Nike's competitors are enjoying similarly good times and are looking to add hundreds of jobs.
(Nike)
From Adidas North America's headquarters in North Portland to Under Armour's new digs at the old YMCA on Southwest Barbur Boulevard to Nike's mushrooming Beaverton campus, Oregon's athletic footwear and apparel companies are in frantic expansion mode.
While Intel's planned downsizing has raised questions about the longevity of Oregon's economic boom, the sports and outdoors companies are scrambling to hire new employees by the hundreds.
Predictably, Nike, the great white whale of the industry, is spouting the most ambitious plans. It is spending an estimated $350 million on a massive expansion of its headquarters campus that will create 1.3 million square feet of new office space. While Nike isn't talking about its specific hiring plans, that's enough room for 7,000 additional employees.
The industry's expansion cements Portland's reputation as the epicenter of the industry, said Jennifer Nolfi, who has developed a curriculum of athletic footwear and apparel business classes at Portland State University.
"I don't know that we've ever seen a time when so many companies are aggressively growing at the same time," she said. "The industry pays well and and attracts the kind of talented entrepreneur Oregon needs. More than ever, the industry has become an important economic driver for the region."
Ken Snyder, a veteran executive recruiter based in New Hampshire, said he's witnessed the balance of power in the industry shift from New England to Oregon.
"Nike is the tail that wags the dog," he said. "There's been a movement over the last 10 years of companies migrating there. In the beginning it was all about poaching Nike talent and that continues."
The new arrival
But it's not only Nike. It's been a sweet run in recent years for Under Armour, too.
The company's sales grew 28.5 percent in 2015, falling just shy of $4 billion, the fourth consecutive year of double-digit percentage sales growth. With NBA most valuable player Steph Curry among its athlete endorsers, stock analysts predict the Under Armour juggernaut will continue for years. In September, the company outlined its plans to reach $7.5 billion in revenues by 2018, more than double 2014 figures. More than one analyst noted that it took Nike many more years to reach that sales volume.
The Baltimore company couldn't stay away from Oregon as it grew, though. It announced a year ago that it would expand its local presence and move into the old YMCA on Barbur Boulevard.
It was all about landing the right people, said company spokeswoman Allison Glass.
"Portland has emerged as a strategic hub for the brand, where we will continue to attract and hire best-in-class talent," she said. "As a hub for technology and innovation, our teams in Portland encompass core categories including outdoor, running and training footwear and apparel."
Talk in the industry is that Under Armour wants to build its local presence to as many as 500 employees. Glass said only that the company "over the next several years," will expand from 75 to 200.
Nike exacted a bit of revenge against its Maryland rival this spring, hiring away Dave Dombrow, Under Armour's senior vice president of design.
Industrywide, sports apparel and footwear sales have jumped 42 percent to $270 billion over the past seven years, according to Jay Sole, stock analyst at Morgan Stanley. Sole said the industry will continue to benefit from the world's growing love affair with health, fitness and sports. It's not just the prosperous West buying athletic products. Vast new markets of middle-class consumers in China, India and elsewhere in the developing world have been sold on running shoes and yoga pants. Sole predicts sustained 30 percent annual sales growth through 2020.
That has allowed even companies with issues to stay on the growth track.
Adidas stumbled badly in 2014, missing internal sales and profit goals. It was forced to restructure and downsize its TaylorMade golf operations and, in early 2015, sold off the Rockport casual shoe brand.
Company officials say Adidas has righted the ship since then, with a new focus on sports and North America. Worldwide sales for the venerable German brand jumped 16 percent in 2015, to 16.9 billion euros.
Mark King has been installed as new head of Adidas North America, operating out of the company's North Portland headquarters. The company moved Paul Gaudio, its global creative director, from Germany to Portland.
And the company is looking to add more bodies to its local workforce.
In January, it paid $3.35 million for a 25,000-square-foot former Kaiser Permanente call center across the street from its North Portland campus. The new space will allow Adidas to hire an additional 120 employees, a 10 percent jump from the current payroll.
Columbia and Nike
Columbia Sportswear is nearing 6,000 employees, a 43 percent increase from five years ago. Many of those new bodies are working at company retail stores, as is the case with most of the sports companies, said Richelle Luther, Columbia's head of human resources.
About a thousand people work at Columbia's Northwest Portland headquarters. The expanding company recently bought a neighboring building formerly part of the ESI campus.
Nowhere are the expansion plans bigger and bolder than at Nike. Company management stunned onlookers last fall when it pledged to grow annual sales from $30 billion to $50 billion by 2020.
Another artist's rendering of some of the bold designs Nike envisions at its world headquarters.
Executives are standing by the $50 billion projection, boasting that Nike's product pipeline and its burgeoning direct-to-consumer sales have never been stronger.
The company's payroll has already expanded dramatically, reaching 62,600 in 2015, a 60 percent jump from five years ago.
Even as construction cranes dot the Beaverton campus, Nike officials offer precious few details of the headquarters expansion. But according to building permits and other documents it filed with the Washington County Land Use and Transportation Department, construction crews are at work on three parking garages holding about 4,000 stalls and three office buildings totaling 1.35 million square feet.
Total cost of the expansion is at least $352 million, according to the building permits. Steven Roberts, the county's special projects coordinator overseeing the Nike project, cautioned the number is an estimate.
Other industry sources said that estimate is way low. Given Nike's resources and its clear preference for top-drawer facilities, the ultimate price tag of the headquarters expansion could be more than double the county's number.
Nike employs about 10,000 at its campus. It has bought out or leased out entire adjacent business parks to make room for the rapid growth.
The new buildings will hold thousands more employees. Even if you account for common areas, coffee shops and theater spaces typical in Nike's offices, 1.3 million square feet "is a huge footprint," said Michael Stueve, a partner at SRM Architecture and Marketing in Portland."I think given the uncertainties, you have to go with a wide range. But in a space that large, you've got to be talking 5,000 to 10,000 employees."
Whether those will be new employees or current workers moved into the campus from one of the company's outlying offices is unknown.
The other major wildcard is Nike's public proclamation that it could create 10,000 domestic manufacturing and engineering jobs. Appearing with President Obama last May in a pitch for the Trans-Pacific Partnership international trade deal, chief executive Mark Parker said if the pact becomes law, Nike could establish a huge new domestic manufacturing operation with as many as 10,000 jobs.
The trade pact's chances of passage has dimmed since then as most of the Presidential contenders have come out against it. But it's clear Nike is moving ahead with its manufacturing revolution, dubbed "Manrev," internally, regardless of TPP's fate.
Last October, the company opened an advanced product manufacturing center at its Beaverton campus. At about the same time, Nike announced a new partnership with Flex, a Milpitas, Calif., company that offers design, automation and supply chain expertise. Flex will also be undertaking a product customization program near NIKE's distribution center in Memphis, Tenn., the company said.
-- Jeff Manning
503-294-7606, jmanning@oregonian.com