Email Article | MONTANAN SPRING 2010 

Alumni Profile: Just Doing It

Nike’s Vice President of Merchandise and Product Eric Sprunk ’86 proves dreams can happen, especially if you have a Montana work ethic. And by the way, he’s not the only one who’s made it big with the company . . .

By Kevin Van Valkenburg | Photos by David Savinski

Sitting still is hard for Eric Sprunk. This is not an observation as much as it is a fact.

His insatiable curiosity is to blame. Sprunk is more comfortable on the move, telling stories, shaking hands, bear-hugging friends, asking questions, and, in general, pinballing his way through the cosmos.

He does not wear a suit to work. In fact, no one at Nike wears a suit. The standing joke among employees on Nike’s Beaverton, Oreg., campus is if you’re spotted wearing a tie, you’re either interviewing for a job, or you’re an analyst from Wall Street.

Sprunk is neither. He’s Nike’s vice president for merchandise and product, which means a lot of things, but mainly that he’s in charge of overseeing everything Nike makes—from LeBron’s sneakers to Tiger’s red shirt—from design to development to manufacturing, and that billions of dollars are at stake when he makes a decision.

He makes a lot of decisions.

His typical wardrobe is a T-shirt and jeans. Comfortable sneakers are a must.

The ringtone on his BlackBerry is usually something by KISS. He’s friendly with some of the band members, a detail he doesn’t want to brag about, but is thrilled to acknowledge. The last time they were in town, Sprunk gave them each a pair of monogrammed shoes. He had to pinch himself.

He slips the word “awesome” into conversation a lot. He talks fast and doesn’t always stay on topic, but somehow, he never comes across as unfocused. His focus, like a laser, simply changes targets. Quickly.

He has the relaxed gait and confident air of a former athlete—which he is—but the good sense to know when to make fun of himself.

In ten minutes of conversation, he can make you feel like a friend.

He also might be the most unlikely corporate executive in America, considering he started his career as an accountant, and now helps decide what shoes Kobe Bryant will market, and thus wear, each NBA season.

Nike certainly isn’t run like a typical American corporation, but even within its ranks, Sprunk’s ascension has been atypical.

“I get asked that question all the time: ‘Seriously, how did you end up doing what you’re doing? How is that even possible?’” Sprunk says. “For people outside the company, it’s not possible. It would never happen at their companies. Here, it’s a little more plausible. I just don’t think that many companies would let somebody from finance end up running global product for what one would argue is one of the best consumer products companies in the world.”

And to hear Eric Sprunk tell it, he owes a huge chunk of his success to his Montana roots and his degree from UM.

“I think of the people who know me, if you asked 100 of them where my values come from, 99 of them would immediately say Montana,” says Sprunk, who graduated in 1986 with an accounting degree. “I don’t make it public. It’s not like I advertise it. But I’m very proud of it. I’m proud of being a Griz.”

Discovering The Path

Sprunk’s journey from Missoula’s Rattlesnake neighborhood of Lincolnwood to the boardrooms of Nike is all the more interesting when you consider he had very different aspirations for himself growing up. But each mile marker along the way feels, at least to Sprunk, like it had a purpose.

Even though he was a standout basketball player at Hellgate High School, he didn’t exactly fit the mold of the typical jock in the early 1980s. He took weekly piano lessons and played the tenor saxophone in the school marching and jazz bands. His mother, the business manager for the Missoula Children’s Theatre, would not let him lead a one-track life.

“I should have given her more credit than I did at the time,” Sprunk says. “I thought ‘I have to take piano lessons as a sophomore in high school?’ But that skill set is alive and well in me today. I think I have equal friendships with all different types of people from different backgrounds and different upbringings.”

After graduating from Hellgate, he played basketball for a year at Linfield College in Oregon, but missed home, as well as his high school girlfriend, Kim, who would eventually become his wife. He returned to Missoula and enrolled in the business school.

“I wanted to be a corporate tax attorney,” Sprunk says. “I figured after I graduated in accounting, I’d apply to law school and that’s exactly what I’d become.”

But then Sprunk took a class from Patricia Douglas, one of the school’s infamously tough professors. One day she didn’t appreciate that he was chewing gum in class, so she made him attach it to the tip of his nose and wear it for the rest of the hour.

“I thought it was some kind of joke,” Sprunk says. “She was the hardest teacher in the business school, but she gave me discipline in my academic life I didn’t have prior to that. I think I signed up for nine of her classes. I use the things she taught me in her business writing class every single day.”

When Douglas was named UM’s Professor of the Year in 1994, Sprunk wrote one of the letters recommending her for the award.

As graduation loomed, Sprunk began to understand that his outgoing personality, combined with his budding accounting skills, might actually make him an attractive job candidate when firms came to UM’s campus to recruit. He weighed three more years of school against the financial security of working, and abandoned the idea of law school.

But he still had a decision to make. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Portland-based offices wanted him. But so did a highly respected firm in Missoula.

His family was in Missoula. All his friends were in Missoula. He was comfortable and confident in Missoula. Still he chose to live in Portland.

“My father taught me to always try to make the decision that gives you the most opportunity,” Sprunk says. “He said ‘You can always come back to Missoula. But if you don’t go to Portland now, you may never get that chance again.’ That philosophy influenced a lot of decisions in my life.”

The initial appeal of PricewaterhouseCoopers wasn’t, however, that Nike was a client. It was Montana Power that interested Sprunk. He wanted to work on the Montana Power account, make frequent trips back home, and eventually become a partner.

Nike just wouldn’t leave him alone. He had a great relationship with the company, and was handling the majority of their account. His personality was infectious. He was a hard worker, but he was fun. One of the people he’d always looked up to, former Grizzly basketball player Craig Zanon, had left PricewaterhouseCoopers to work at Nike and kept recruiting Sprunk. In 1995, they offered him the position of finance director in charge of the Americas.

“It was a gut-wrenching decision,” Sprunk says. “In hindsight, it was way more difficult than it should have been. But at the time, I wanted to be a partner. Everybody who works in public accounting wants to be a partner, and I thought I could be one. So it seemed kind of careless to give that up.”

But again, Sprunk stuck to his philosophy: Where am I going to have the most opportunities?

It was, once again, the best professional decision of his life.

One of the most appealing aspects of Nike, especially for Montana graduates over the past twenty years, is that the company has never particularly cared where its employees went to school, or what their background is in. As long as you’re smart and willing to work hard in a collaborative environment, you can work at Nike, and you can do a lot of different jobs.

Employees jokingly call it the Matrix, but one of its selling points is that it’s not hierarchical. If you want to talk to your boss’ boss, you can. It’s a competitive environment, but a fluid one.

That pitch wasn’t limited to Sprunk alone. Around the same time Sprunk was hired, the company also recruited another UM business school graduate, Joe Monahan ’89.

Pounding The Pavement

Monahan, like Sprunk, had never really imagined working outside of finance. Growing up in Butte, Monahan had played baseball, football, and basketball, and sports were an important part of his life. But professionally all he really wanted was to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, a hard-working Butte Irishman who spent a lifetime as a trustworthy CPA. He was doing exactly that at Moss Adams LLP until Nike talked him into coming to campus for an interview.

“I did the walk around campus, and then sat down by the lake for lunch,” Monahan says. “I’ll never forget, I went back to my office, I called my wife, and I said, ‘I’m going to go to work for that company. And I bet I’m not working anywhere else the rest of my life.’”

When Sprunk and Monahan bump into each other on campus these days, they bear hug and tease each other like old friends.

Monahan smiles. He and Sprunk are a lot alike, both in personality and in their journey up the ladder at Nike. They’re both proud Montanans, both graduates of UM’s business school where they were accounting majors, and both former CPAs. Nike is one of the few companies where their rise would even be possible. Monahan is now vice president of sales for North America, meaning he has to be both an outgoing people person and a details man. So how does a former accountant end up running one of the big sales divisions for one of the most recognizable companies in the world?

“I took jobs outside of my comfort zone just to learn,” Monahan says. “I went from finance to manufacturing to sourcing to strategic planning. But I always thought it would be good to work in sales because of the relationship side of it. Growing up in Montana, that’s kind of what you’re about—relationships. I never really left Montana growing up, and now I get to travel the world. When you see what this brand means to people, it’s pretty powerful. That’s really cool.”

The Monahan family is a baseball family, and thus, one of the biggest perks of his job is that he occasionally gets to introduce them to athletes like Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, and Mariano Rivera. One of his great thrills in life was watching his sons take batting practice from Orioles Hall of Fame shortstop Cal Ripken.

But he has been adamant they not forget about their roots. His family still owns a place on Georgetown Lake, and some of his fondest memories of his own childhood involve fishing and boating on the lake with his grandfather.

“My kids were all born out here,” Monahan says, referring to Oregon. “But if you ask them, they’re native Montanans. Last summer, I was really busy. I said ‘All right guys, here is the deal: I’ll take you on a weeklong vacation, anywhere you like.’ We narrowed it down to Maui or Montana. All three of them at the same time said they wanted to go back to Montana.”

Feeling The Movement Like Monahan, Sprunk would never be where he is today if his family hadn’t shown the ability to adapt in support of their father’s career. Nike asked Sprunk if he’d be willing to move and work for the company in Europe. After working for a few years in finance there, they asked him to take over their European footwear division.

It wasn’t the best time for his family to make a big move, and the safe play would have been to stay comfortable in the Pacific Northwest. But again, Sprunk chose opportunity over comfort.

“It was good personally and professionally,” Sprunk says. “You have to hunker down and form a pretty tight bond, because literally you don’t know how to buy groceries or furniture. And your perspective on how you see the brand is different. There is a humbleness to be had, and an appreciation for diversity and inclusion.”

Sprunk took a division of the company that wasn’t doing well, and in two and a half years, he turned it into one of Nike’s better performing assets. He also experienced a bit of luck along the way. His two bosses while he was in Europe were Mark Parker and Charlie Denson. When Nike restructured its company, the two were named co-presidents.

“I remember going home one night and saying to my wife, Kim, ‘I think Mark is going to ask me to do the global footwear job,’” Sprunk says. “I was thirty-seven at the time. My wife was like, ‘You’re out of your mind. There is no way they’re going to ask you to do that job.’”

A week later he was offered the job. He ran global footwear for seven years, traveling the world, leading a team of designers, innovators, and marketing experts who were adept at anticipating what consumers wanted instead of reacting to it. He did well enough that in 2008 the company created a new position—vice president for product—that put him in charge of everything Nike makes.

Sometimes that means working directly with athletes, asking for their input and insight—although Sprunk generally leaves that to the creative types—and other times it means meeting with owners or league presidents, or simply supporting Nike-sponsored teams.

Every day, though, is about movement. Speed. Anticipation.

He can be demanding to work for, but he’s developed a reputation for cutting through corporate jargon. Employees don’t have to go through three different levels of management to bend his ear. They can just as easily pitch him something face to face.

“A lot of times we’re in the business of putting things out in front of consumers they never thought were possible,” Sprunk says. “A lot of our growth comes from showing you something where you go, ‘Wow, I never would have thought of that. That’s unbelievable.’ That’s the heat of the brand. We believe we owe that to our consumers. So part of my job is making sure we have an environment that allows our people to be creative and innovative.”

Now more than ever, Nike is a global company. Its business outside the United States is growing faster than inside it. When Sprunk joined the organization in 1995, NIKE, Inc.’s revenue for the fiscal year was $4.8 billion. At the end of fiscal year 2009, Nike reported revenue of $19.2 billion. But Sprunk is still convinced it’s run like a much smaller company.

“Fundamentally, the culture of what we do is still the same,” Sprunk says. “It still rewards good work. It’s still way more about what you’re achieving, do you have integrity, and are you a good teacher, than it is about what school did you go to or whom do you know.”

Finding The Stride

That’s one of the reasons John Connors ’84, a UM business school graduate and former senior vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer at Microsoft, agreed to join Nike’s Board of Directors in 2005.

Connors, an accounting major who grew up in Miles City, is one of UM’s most impressive success stories. He took a job with Microsoft in 1989 when the company had 2,800 employees and was generating around $480 million in annual revenue.

Over the next seventeen years, he steadily rose up the ranks, working in virtually every part of the company—development, sales, information technology, and growth—and he contributed to and oversaw some of Microsoft’s exponential expansion.

In 2000, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tapped him to serve as the company’s chief financial officer, and Connors helped navigate a volatile transitional period when the company faced multiple anti-trust suits, a difficult product transition period, and a stock that was seen as massively overvalued.

“It was around that time I got to know a lot of the Nike leadership team,” Connors says. “I knew there were a bunch of Montana graduates there because Montana natives are pretty good about knowing who has ended up where.”

One of Nike’s founders, former CEO Phil Knight, asked Connors to join the Board of Directors because he wanted to continue to bring in fresh perspectives and new ideas, even after he stepped down from being involved in the day-to-day operations of the company.

“When I was at Microsoft, I was recruited to serve on a lot of boards, and I’d almost universally turned them down,” Connors says. “But Nike was analogous to Microsoft in some ways. They’re both highly recognizable global brands who create products used by millions of people. They’re both meritocracies, where the best people are identified and moved up. I think a similar culture exists in both companies, where the employees really have a passion for their product.”

Connors—who spent his formative teenage years working on a farm, on an oil rig, for the railroad, and on a ranch—knew Sprunk’s roots and journey weren’t much different from his own.

“We have a lot of people from the business school who majored in accounting, who went to work for a big accounting firm, and then did well and ended up getting hired by their clients,” Connors says. “There is just success story after success story.”

Realizing The Success

If you ask Sprunk whether the twenty-two-year-old version of himself saw any of this coming, he does something rare.

He pauses for a moment to consider it all, then chuckles like he doesn’t quite believe it either.

“I think people back then would be floored if you told them,” he says. “Myself included. Because you never know. I wanted to be a corporate tax attorney. But it comes back to what I said about opportunities. The wider you keep your lens, the better off you’ll be. Then you can spend the last twenty or thirty years of your career bringing your lens down, focusing on where you want to live and what you want to do.”

Life can feel like a tornado some days, but that’s a rush as much as it is a concern. Sprunk’s line between work and play is quite blurry.

“I really do think I’m blessed with this job,” Sprunk says. “I love sports. I show up this morning and the new helmet design for The University of Montana football team and new uniforms are on my desk. That feels like I’m playing. I love that.”

In addition to being a good friend and international business leader, Sprunk is an inspiration for many—including UM Director of Athletics Jim O’Day. “I can’t say enough about Eric and what he does for our athletic department. He is a real visionary. Along with being a very well-respected member of our National Advisory Board for Grizzly Athletics, he is a strong believer in investing in our product.”

Perhaps most impressive, O’Day says, is that fact that while Sprunk has obvious interest in the sports of football and men’s and women’s basketball, the majority of his private giving goes to assist the Olympic sports such as soccer, golf, tennis, volleyball, and track and field. “That in itself says a lot about him,” O’Day says. “He knows the student-athletes in these sports struggle to get new equipment and uniforms, and he wants them to look as good as possible in their Nike gear. He believes that if they look good, they will perform even better. Looking back, he’s been absolutely correct.”

But there are a few weeks every year when the tornado slows down. When the stress of where LeBron James will play next season, what Under Armour and adidas are doing, or how many Manchester United jerseys Nike is going to sell this year is put on hold.

Sprunk’s three children can always sense it coming. It begins with a drive east out of Portland, but it doesn’t truly take shape until somewhere in Idaho, when the Sprunk family car makes the slow and steady climb through the Coeur d’Alène Mountains and toward the welcoming embrace of Lookout Pass.

It’s a journey every Montanan knows well enough. Lookout Pass isn’t as scenic as some of the state’s iconic throughways, at least not in pictures. But the peaks always seem taller, and the piercing blue sky always feels bigger than you picture in your mind.

The Sprunk kids smile when the Montana state sign appears on the horizon. They can sense the tension draining from their father’s body as the mountains open up, the highway crests at 4,700 feet, and their descent begins.

It may seem foolish to attach great significance to a moment defined by the imaginary lines that exist only on maps. But the transformation is real for the Sprunks. They know Dad is about to feel different the moment Idaho is in the rearview mirror.

The stress of his job will fade. It will be easier to make him laugh. Time will slow down. In a few hours, he’ll be sitting on his dock, looking at the ripples of Flathead Lake with a beer in his hand. Everyone who works at Nike for ten years gets a five-week sabbatical, and when Sprunk took his, he spent the entire time in Montana. He barely moved off his dock.

Kevin Van Valkenburg '00 is a feature writer for The Baltimore Sun newspaper and a former Grizzly football player. His work is anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing series.

A Team Approach

Stefanie Henderson ’04
Footwear Brand Merchandiser, Emerging Markets—Latin America
“As an athlete and a motivated student in the business school at UM, I always was challenged with maintaining balance across athletics, studies, and my social life. My experience at UM helped shape how I adjust to competing priorities on a daily basis here at Nike. It was an invaluable skill set to gain before heading into a dynamic, ever-evolving company like Nike.”

Adam Steffen ’04
Category Planner, North America Basketball
“My time at UM—and my Montana roots for that matter—really shaped how I approach my career, as well as my outlook on life. Growing up on a ranch, I did whatever it took to get the job done regardless of the time of day or the deadline. When I had a job to do . . . I did it. My dad tried to convince me in high school to take a year off and work before coming to college so I would know what it was like to earn a living. I believe my response was, ‘No, I’m good.’ When I came to UM, I dove right in, even though others thought I would never finish because I was, shall we say, sociable. When I finally broke into Nike after I took the same approach as I did on the ranch and at UM—I relied on the relationships I’ve built. I think Montanans are especially good at this because they know how to work and have as much fun along the way as possible.”

Brooklynn Lorenzen ’04
Footwear Developer, Jordan
“So much of my experience at UM shaped the way I approach my job. Obviously, the MBA program and my undergraduate degree in communications helped prepare me in terms of understanding the business world and being able to effectively communicate with my teammates. But, in many ways, being a student-athlete at UM has more strongly affected how I approach my job, simply because the experience has influenced the way I approach everything in life. By playing for such a historically successful program and coaching staff, there is a high level of expectation in terms of the amount of time and effort dedicated to playing ball, as well as overall performance, of course. The same can be said for working at Nike. It is a highly competitive work environment, and you are rated based upon your performance, which is dependent on the amount of work you put in and your ability to work well with others.”

Trevor Rembe ’93
Director of Allocation, North America Factory Stores
“There is great Montana pride that echoes from all of the Nike teammates. Nike is such a relationship-based company, and it is great to have the common thread of Montana running through. It doesn’t matter if you’re a VP or analyst, being a part of Griz Nation pulls the group together.”

Email Article | MONTANAN SPRING 2010 

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