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.

- Nike used to be very "male coded" e.g. "Be like Mike"

- So much so that they were one of the only companies where men bought more clothes than women

- The powers that be wanted to go after the "Adjacent Whale" (explained in the article) that was the female consumer

- They ended up alienating their core customer base while competing poorly with other brands

0 - https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/nikes-end-of-men?r=11111

Looking back, Nike was never very good about offering different width options on most of their shoes. And I still don’t think they offer wide toe box shoes.

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.

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...

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.

Running shoe tech is not some kind of secret thing. Any shoe manufacturer can buy a pair of any other shoes and cut it open and copy it. The only shoes that have anything special in them are the ones with the carbon fiber spring plate, and those are highly specialized and only last for a few races anyway, not for me as a casual runner in his 40s.

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.

revenue down 2%

That means almost nothing, right? Some fluctuation must be expected. The Stock also looks like it really benefited from a Corona boost that is now cooling off.

Can someone with more insight explain why everyone is screaming?

Priced out the demand IMO too early.

But also, people only have 2 feet.

https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/nikes-end-of-men

The business is obviously struggling and while some of the decline is related directly to that, the stock collapse mostly attributable to investors rerating NKE from a safe stock with steadily growing profits, to something more uncertain that requires a lower multiple.

Another thing I'll note is that historically Nike was always primarily a sports company focused on shoe technology. And arguably they are the best in that category. But in the last decade they also seemed to become a ubiquitous fashion brand. So much so that a few years ago almost everyone I knew were wearing Nike's casually, for sport and even in the office. Whenever something becomes so popular that even grown men are wearing them to the office, you know it won't remain in fashion for long.

But to me when looking at that graph the question is: what in the world happened in 2020-2021 to make it go up that much? The graph looks like some kind of crypto scam or AI hype, but neither makes any sense for a shoe company. Can anyone explain the rise?

In a lot of ways they remind me of Intel, and I'm not sure there will be a shoe center buildout bubble around to save them.

I can’t believe Nike is ok with that being how loads of people experience the brand. Why not spend an extra $2 upgrading the cushioning to React or Zoom so that they feel good on foot?

Nike does of course also make great modern shoes, but you have to know what’s what.

“We made meaningful structural improvements to lay the groundwork for our Sport Offense across our team culture, innovative product, brand strength, and how we serve consumers in our countries and cities,” Hill said in the report. “While we continue to face top-line headwinds, we’re encouraged by progress in performance product and are focused on consistent execution, improved profitability and scaling our wins to realize our full potential.”

Yikes this sounds like corporate bingo card nonsense.

I don't want ANY corporation telling me how to think or feel. Just put the stuff in the bag and don't lecture me.

I guess it’s easier to believe in a shoe brand turnaround than it is in an AI future.

But now I wear Hokas. Nike’s loss.

I can't find any press release about it. And the Constituents section lists only 10 of them, so I can't check who is there. I even checked the PDFs with methodology but couldn't find the list there.

I even tried to limit the search on Google to spglobal.com domain and I can see this in the result preview: "Constituents. Top 10 Constituents by Index Weight. Full Constituents List. Constituent. Symbol. Sector*. Sector Breakdown." But when I click it, Full Constituents List is nowhere on the page.

What's going on? Am I missing something obvious?

Still the last new balance I got are wearing out fast and I am on the look for a newer brand.

I am actually surprised they are still in business and making sales.

The focus on running by Hoka and ON, on the street, and IMO the "low quality" of the collectible Jordans, apparently were the deathknell.

But this is armchair speculation.

https://youtu.be/SrsUlTtLLIM?is=2S9uP-LvXOrWKfH6

They have been reduced to pleather collectibles.

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.

"Just weird..... Even if it means destroying everything."

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.

PS. To those objecting in the silent cowardice of a downvote: The exiting of something as basic as shoes (modulo lifestyle/"luxury") further represents "software" eating the world" look at the newcomers to the S&P 100:

  DELL — Dell Technologies
  PANW — Palo Alto Networks
  ANET — Arista Networks
  SNDK — SanDisk

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.

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