But where the hell have they been, as other athletic companies have taken off with better synthetic fabric, nike hasn't increased in quality. Their marketing is particularly weird, making some interesting choices.
All in all, it seems the company has been badly run the last ten years.
And their manufacturing quality has gone down the drain. Their sneakers fall apart in months while German brand sneakers still manage to retain their quality.
But then the share price drops.
ie: the market capitalisation drops.
They then have to pay more money to borrow.
Fewer investors are interested in giving them money.
The business spirals into irrelevance like Ken Olsen's Digital Equipment Corporation.
Restructuring happens
Employees lose jobs.
Restructuring happens again and again and again.
Employees lose jobs, more jobs and still more jobs.
Unpaid suppliers go bankrupt.
Finally they shut down and become an irrelevance like Nike, 777 Partners, DEC, BioXcel Therapeutics, Lycos, First Brands Group, Yahoo.
Those big ads subtitled "Black culture" with a body-positive woman, on a 30mx30m, hung on the scaffolding of a magnificent Haussmann-period palace, it does have an effect on customer identification to your brand.
It's time you get out there and meet some people from different backgrounds rather than something filtered down to like-minded people, and hopefully realize that your frame of reference is very limited.
About 2-3 years, it felt like, out of nowhere everyone was wearing Hoka and On brand sneakers. In my entire life it felt like the Nike/Adidas duopoly was unbreakable, and then it felt suddenly that Hoka was everywhere.
While Hoka probably executed extremely well, I imagine it was an incredibly lucky position Hoka found themselves in when all those retailers had to replace Nike with something. Maybe even allbirds would be in a better position today had they launched 3-4 years later.
Edit: I just looked it up and it seems both Hoka and On were founded before Allbirds. Seems allbirds imploded (~2021), just as Nike was ceding all their retail space (also around 2021). Had they had another year, maybe they wouldn't have had to pivot into an AI datacenter company.
We all live in our own bubbles.
For me personally, On shoes are probably the most comfortable pairs I've ever owned. Their waterproof sneakers are the only ones I've ever had that's actually fully waterproof. If you're looking for a decent pair of sneakers you should at least take a look at their Cloud line.
Did 180km of training, maybe 5 weeks worth, and the soles utterly shredded. Couldn't put my foot down level, corners of the soles completely gone.
Shoe store said that's what they're designed to do, no refund.
Cost me about $2AUD per km. But it'll cost Nike a bit more than that.
All people I know who use them, just run them once before a race to try them out and after that they are like a very good suit which you only use for special events.
This is really independent of Nike but a thing with those kind of shoes.
Project Oregon left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth. It feels like right when they recovered their image with runners they are losing mass appeal.
Yeezy Yeezy Yeezy I just did the numbers
If Nike ain’t have MJ they’d have nothing
Yeezy Yeezy Yeezy Yeezy just jumped over jumpman
Does anything good ever come out of management consulting? It just seems to be a scam whenever I hear about. It's to provide cover for CEOs where the consultants can get blamed when things inevitably go sour. Then you fire them and hire new consultants. It's only when the disaster is so massive that the CEO gets fired (as was the case here). And likewise, McKinsey (or whoever) just say the company failed to execute properly or they were already doomed so they gave them the best chance to succeed or whatever self-absolution they choose on any given day.
Producing things has been replaced with financial chicanery to boost short term profits in a way that's inevitably fatal to the company. Few developed economies actually produce anything anymore and we have China that produces 30-40% of the world's stuff at this point.
[1]: https://www.toddherman.com/leadership/how-data-drove-nike-in...
I guess it’s easier to believe in a shoe brand turnaround than it is in an AI future.
This was in Novi Sad, Serbia. I don't know what's going on around the world, but if this anecdote is of any indication, Nike is simply too expensive for the (lack of) quality they have.
This is in style now. My tween daughter and her peers all own shoes that look geriatric to my eyes. I see teenagers walking around in New Balance shoes that look like my dad would have owned them 20 years ago.
That's an anecdote, not a bubble in my opinion. I have a counterexample where I have not worn any Hoka's but have seen/known of them. Have multiple pairs of On shoes.
In Switzerland, every decent sports store now has a whole treadmill with some sort of gait analysis thing and a dedicated guy that is going to pick a shoe for you based on that + your running level.
Anecdotal evidence, but 80% of the time I see someone buying running shoes in Ochsner they end up using the treadmill and getting advice from the guy, and a lot of the time it they end up getting Hokas.
In the 90s, running wasn't even really a thing. A few people went "jogging" for exercise. Otherwise it was a proper sport in which very few partook. Trainers were predominantly worn by children. Adults wore "real" shoes.
Something changed in the past ten years or so. I feel like Nike kept the childish association whereas brands like Hoka became acceptable for adults to wear.
But my equally anecdotal counteranecdote is that I've owned multiple pairs of the Saucony equivalent (Pro 2, Pro 3, and then Pro 4) over multiple years and gotten thousands of km out of each pair. They just last and last.
So I'm a brand loyalist for now..
It's life, can't help a few mistakes on your way. I'm happy with where I've landed. (pun intended!)
If you ever want to try team Nike again, the Zoom Fly is the carbon-plated trainer I use, and it lasts a lot longer than the race shoes. I’m definitely not getting thousands of km though!
They look and feel awesome.
But the soles - the shoes' souls - are designed to disintegrate in real time.
epsteingpt•3h ago
Priced out the demand IMO too early.
But also, people only have 2 feet.
andsoitis•3h ago
There's more to athletic wear than shoes. Competition like Lululemon, Vuori, Athleta, etc. suggest to me that Nike didn't expand their business broadly enough.
what•3h ago
MiroslavPokorny•3h ago
morkalork•3h ago
ikr678•1h ago
ronsor•3h ago
Ultimately I think artificial scarcity/limited production for products offered online is a futile and erroneous venture. The bots exist because the product is valuable. The product is valuable because it's artificially limited.
epsteingpt•3h ago
There's a niche market for certain player's sneakers. If Nike services them at a price point (e.g. $200 base) then people can keep buying from Nike and will buy the next version.
If instead some sneakerbot takes ALL the consumer surplus (buys for $200, resells for $1000) yes that is the actual demand curve but it hurts NIKE'S business and the consumer.
bawolff•2h ago
But in this scenario people can't because if they are worth $1000 but selling for $200 then they will instantly sell out.
why does it hurt consumers more to not be able to purchase due to the price point instead of due to being instantly sold out?
tancop•1h ago
nadermx•1h ago
bdangubic•2h ago
- does not know who “jordan” is
- called me a boomer when I suggested to buy her nike shoes I liked for the upcoming season