Nike: Just Do...Something

In the spring of 2000, Nike's president of outdoor products, Gordon O. McFadden, was on a mission. He was out to persuade Nike's top brass that they should buy North Face Inc., a maker of popular outdoor gear and clothing. Nike had been slow to get in the race for the fast-growing hiking market, though it did eventually manage to build a decent business in "all-conditions" shoes and boots. Buying North Face, with its $240 million in sales, would have catapulted Nike (NKE ) into the top ranks of outdoor-gear makers. "It would have doubled the business overnight and made Nike the dominant player," says McFadden.

So McFadden spent months courting North Face and fiercely lobbying for the purchase. But in the end he got shot down. As they had many times before, CEO Philip H. Knight and his top lieutenants concluded that the company would be better off with a homegrown business than taking on the hassles of integrating another acquisition. Says McFadden, who has since left the company and now works at an apparel company, the Gerry Group: "The decision not to act stemmed from an insecurity of moving outside the Nike domain."