- If I'm buying shoes that were made in the third world for minimal cost then branding is not a guarantee of quality that it once was.
This has been the case for at least the past ten years but it goes to show that if you have a well-known brand you can keep milking it for a long time before the market turns against you.
by _trampeltier
3 subcomments
- That might be all true, but is also true, 10 years ago people wore sport shirts everywhere. Today not anymore. More the opposite, if there is a big logo, people don't want it. Luxury brands have a kind the same problem at moment. Also all, special young people, can spend money just once. An expensive phone, best mobile abo, Netflix, ..., for girls daily MakeUp .., also people tend do sport just for themself. All kind Superstars are gone, in film, in sport, in music. Everyone knew people like Federer, Nadal, Bolt, Lance Armstrong. Today even the top athletes are just a kind of faceless winners.
- Roger Federer didn’t leave Nike because On was making better running shoes (Federer is a tennis player after all). Nike was trying to lowball him and he walked away.
by HighChaparral
2 subcomments
- Not a single mention of the word fashion. Here in the UK, Adidas Sambas (and similar models like Gazelles and Spezials) have been everywhere for the last couple of years, particularly amongst women and girls, who often have two or more pairs, making the most of the huge number of colours - sorry, “colourways” - available. This is purely for daily wear, btw, rather than athletic/gym use.
- > The real problem isn’t that athlete deals are more expensive today. It’s that Nike lost athletes because it was no longer the clear leader in product development. Federer left because On was developing better running shoes.
This feels like a really bald assertion.
by weinzierl
1 subcomments
- I think, nowadays, when you order something you get the most cheaply sourced near equivalent the seller thinks they can get away with.
I wore a certain model of Adidas for decades. When I order it online, what I get is hit or miss. Sometimes they are too big, sometimes they are too small. Comparing the old and new ones, they are always similar but also noticeably different.
Where does the diversion happen? Amazon? Adidas? Manufacturer? Probably all of them? Who knows?
On the flip side, Chinese manufacturers seem not care about branding at all. It looks as if they apathetically slap on some carelessly designed logo and brand name just because the west apparently expects it. Otherwise you can get the "same" item under ten different ephemeral brands and every brand ships the aforementioned "near equivalent" as they see fit.
Brands have no meaning in this world anymore.
by cyberrock
1 subcomments
- I think this may be missing the health and comfort angle. Nike, Adidas, etc. haven't adapted to an aging population with more and more podiatry issues, and in fact seems to have made certain models narrower. Hoka and On have just swooped in and taken over the wide feet market.
That said, as someone with wide feet, I've tried them recently and I've been thoroughly disappointed in them. My On shoes (Cloud?) in particular shredded in months. On the other hand, now that Asics has toned down colorways, I've quite enjoyed them again.
- seems Steve Jobs is vindicated again - when the Consulting types take over the result is predictable.
cz these guys were never there when the sauce was made, they think the ingredients matter - not how the ingredients compose together.
nike was an early innovator in athleisure - now leggings / tracksuits etc other brands took over - kids hardly care about sneakers - the shoes quality is down - personally I prefer new balance
by sometimes_all
3 subcomments
- > Donahoe accelerated the direct-to-consumer transition, terminating hundreds of wholesale accounts
I'd love to know the reasoning behind this transition. When I want to buy some shoes, I'd like to go to a physical store, and I _usually_ am not going to look for a specific brand, unless I'm a big fan of a sportsperson who endorses Nike and maybe they've started a product line with them. I'm going to see, compare with other shoes and make a decision. D2C is not going to work in such a flow?
If my shoes are not there with other shoes, then I might as well not exist, because I'm not even considered during the comparison phase of shopping.
But this is just me, I don't know how most people shop for shoes and would like to understand more.
- This ”de-specialization” move is something I’ve seen several times from consultants like McKinsey. The guy who did it at Nike was from Bain.
They reorganized my company accordingly, to disastrous effect. Customers used come in and talk to product managers with very deep experience in their market, and it would blow their socks off. After the reorg customers would come in and talk to a random generalist who could talk for 7 minutes about 10 different markets each. Imagine how that felt to customers, that feeling of “I know more about this than my vendor does”.
by insane_dreamer
0 subcomment
- The lesson is: if you focus on profits instead of building great products, you will fail (unless you have vendor lock-in like defense industry and the DOD, or Microsoft and enterprise). Nike brought in a bean-counter to run the company and he severely damaged it.
I know from close friends at Nike that they are relieved Donahoe is gone and they can get back to being a "high performance sports footwear company", but they have a big hole to dig out of. On and Hoka have been eating their lunch. Nike has always had smaller specialized brands to contend with: Brooks, Asics, Saucony, Salomon (trail running, which Nike dropped but is now getting back into), etc., but none of them exploded the way that On and Hoka did when Nike pulled back from retail.
by Aboutplants
0 subcomment
- I would say that Hoka and On have probably done a better job at capitalizing on the opportunity than Nike has done at creating it. While the opportunity did present itself, I have been really impressed with their ability to really attack and market their products in a way that reached their core demographic at a pace I didn’t think was really feasible. Respect
- I stopped buying Nike shoes a long time ago because they fell apart. They seemed to replace quality with an extra 24" of shoelace.
by reducesuffering
1 subcomments
- One caveat not yet discussed is that both Nike and Adidas left open the "maximalist cushioning" market that Hoka pounced on for everyone enjoying plush running shoes for walking. And Nike has responded to that faster than Adidas, the Vomero 18 has been out for 7 months.
All in all, the Hoka / ON competition is a matter of marketing, trendiness, and poor options for wide feet. Nike has superior materials science tech and product across the running line (Hoka durability is bad and neither are competitive in the top running performance that's Nike/Adidas/Asics)
I'd bet on long term technical fundamentals than a market trend they temporarily missed.
by lotsofpulp
1 subcomments
- I have never bought Nike anything because I assume a higher proportion of the price would be for marketing rather than quality.
by ozempicgandalf
1 subcomments
- Honesty, been using products for 3 decades now. I feel like they have become more expensive and less durable over time.
Very smart writeup nevertheless. Subscribed to the Newsletter. Appreciate how you built everything yourself
by oldandboring
0 subcomment
- I don't doubt the trends cited in this article; it seems well-researched. However I will say that anecdotally, as the parent of two boys in the US, Nike's brand is still very strong. I have a 3rd grader who refused to let us buy him any sneaker brand other than Nike. When my older one was the same age it was the same thing -- all the cool kids were wearing fancy Nikes and we had to pony up. That seems to have faded for the older one in middle/high school though.
by sennawcf1
2 subcomments
- The decline of Nike for the stated reasons make 100% sense. When ATMs came out, the bank I worked for in Canada, started losing market share as they replace physical banking locations with self-service ATMs. After 15 years of slow decline, they started to aggressively rebuild physical locations. They now believe you have to have BOTH - a clearly identifiable brick and mortar presence and ATMs.
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- Related:
Project Amplify: Powered footwear for running and walking
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706765
and this article:
Nike's plans to put the swoosh back into its sales
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/oct/23/just-redo-it-i...
by jinushaun
2 subcomments
- Out of sight. Out of mind.
Leaving retail to go direct to consumer was crazy. On and Hoka took over those empty shelves. They lost mind share.
by _trampeltier
0 subcomment
- Take a shoe like the Nike Free. The first shoes looked so slim and like EVERYBODY whore these all the time. Look at todays model. Never in 1000 years would my mom wear these shoes again. It might be, the new model is performing better. But most people don't used the early models for performance.
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/eip/particles/gen/20...
by steveBK123
2 subcomments
- It does seem like they are getting some renewed brand interest from the Maduro rendition photos though.
by homo_economicus
0 subcomment
- Looking at the leaked soccer WC jerseys by Adidas and puma I feel like Nike is not doing the worst job
- Nike should buy Brooks and to jumpstart their product dev and push their cushioning and stability tech into the Nike shoe line, then build a branding campaign around that, and also go after some new athletes.
by Incipient
1 subcomments
- A ~10% drop in revenue but an outsized ~40% drop in profits probably indicates more than a 'brand decay' problem?
by enos_feedler
1 subcomments
- the puzzling thing to me is Tim Cook was in the board meetings. Apple and Nike play similae games to stay ahead and keep margins high. i am sure he is on the board to glean insights from the older brother Nike. And yet…
by 7777777phil
0 subcomment
- [dead]
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