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.
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…
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
If you're talking about streetware then sure, quality doesn't matter. The shoes only have to last until the fashion trends change in a few months. And fashion conscious consumers will tolerate uncomfortable shoes in order to look good.
But the performance athletic shoe market is completely different. Real athletes still buy a lot of expensive shoes and they'll absolutely switch brands the moment they notice a drop in quality. I've seen this happen among my friends. No shoe company can ride on brand equity for long in that market.
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
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.
Same for me and a particular North Face light jacket. I’ve purchased the same model about 5 times, with noticeably lower quality materials in the more recent years. Faster wear, quicker fading colors, thinner.
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
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.
You're right, fashion cycles deserve more attention. I deliberately focused on Nike's structural problems, but you can't ignore that Adidas caught a wave with the Samba revival. The difference is Nike used to be good at riding those cycles too. Air Force 1s, Dunks, Jordans. What's changed is their ability to manufacture and sustain cultural relevance alongside performance credibility. Adidas found a moment; Nike lost the machinery that used to generate those moments reliably.
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”.
De-specialization is the wet dream of any accounting-focused leader. When everyone is just some dude, they all become fungible. And you see, it's just math. Just keep stacking dudes and it works the same, it scales.
But, no it doesn't. 10 juniors does not make a senior. 100 juniors doesn't. Not even a thousand. Because they actually do different things. You can replace a specialist with 10 generalists and expect that to work, but it keeps happening.
The dream is having labor so stupid, so worthless, that it's practically free. But that's very risky. That, like, IS your company. The people are it. If all the people suck and are fungible and you move them around and rotate them non-stop, then what does that mean for your company? I don't know, but you save a little bit of money for a short while.
This is exactly the pattern. The de-specialization playbook works on spreadsheets but rarely survives contact with customers who expect expertise. In Nike's case, it also broke the feedback loop between product development and the athletes and coaches who actually test the gear.
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.
New Balance and Brooks make shoes in "wide". I like them very much. Also their normal shoes are wider than Nike or Adidas. In the past, like 10 years ago, I used to wear adidas shoes and they fit. Now, the new ones are way too tight. I think they made them narrower, probably for fashion reasons...
A 40% profit drop on 10% revenue decline reflects the nasty operating leverage built into Nike's model: high fixed costs in marketing, athlete deals, and retail commitments that don't scale down when sales slow. That's part of why brand decay is so expensive for these businesses. My angle was more like once the music stops, you're still paying for the orchestra.
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.
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.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 65.0 ms ] threadLeaving retail to go direct to consumer was crazy. On and Hoka took over those empty shelves. They lost mind share.
This feels like a really bald assertion.
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.
But the performance athletic shoe market is completely different. Real athletes still buy a lot of expensive shoes and they'll absolutely switch brands the moment they notice a drop in quality. I've seen this happen among my friends. No shoe company can ride on brand equity for long in that market.
Are the other brands that took some Nike's market share not "made in the third world with minimal cost"?
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
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.
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”.
But, no it doesn't. 10 juniors does not make a senior. 100 juniors doesn't. Not even a thousand. Because they actually do different things. You can replace a specialist with 10 generalists and expect that to work, but it keeps happening.
The dream is having labor so stupid, so worthless, that it's practically free. But that's very risky. That, like, IS your company. The people are it. If all the people suck and are fungible and you move them around and rotate them non-stop, then what does that mean for your company? I don't know, but you save a little bit of money for a short while.
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.
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...
Very smart writeup nevertheless. Subscribed to the Newsletter. Appreciate how you built everything yourself