Ya they had a good run ~10-15 year ago at the start of the rise of vintage/chunky/ugly sneaker aesthetics, but failed to innovate and keep up with trends.
yes, but people will only pay up to a certain price for a sneaker if they are not collectors and only consumers. and as we now see, a shoe business is not running that well, if it mainly caters to resellers and collectors.
i can remember a few instances about 5 years ago when I was really interested in a nike shoe "drop", but didnt win in the shoe lottery to purchase the show. the result? i just stopped looking at Nikes completely.
Non-collectors don't need what the bots are buying, they can just go to the store and get normal sneakers. I don't see how limited edition shoe scalping affects the normal market at all.
I don't bother buying Nike's because every time I see a pair I like online, it turns out they're "collectibles" and sold out instantly.
Yeah, I can go and buy a pair of black Nikes in any shop today. But even though they make lots of variety, they never seem to make it in enough volume that I can buy it. I'm not interested in being a collector - I just want shoes that aren't black, white or grey.
So I shoes from companies that don't have as much weird hype around them.
I think they should continue pushing ACG as a standalone apparal brand. they have good designs and could compete with The North Face and Patagonia in the streetwear/outdoor market
I think they should make a range of climbing shoes to reinforce credibility on this market. Adidas has 5.10 and some pretty serious climbers (Janja Garnbret!) on their books. The competition (LaSportiva, Scarpa) is ripe for disruption.
I’m not quite sure but Nike really blew up back in the day with a focus on basketball via the Nike Jordan/Air Force One.
More recently I just don’t understand their product line up. If I click on Men’s in the US there are over 700 shoes. How do I even pick? Hello, earth to Nike. Nike is a Greek god. Maybe lean in to that a bit more?
Oh I get it “Inspired by the geometry of modern cities” they’re confused about good design and taking a hint from other dead brands like Hugo Boss or Burberry Outlet or maybe even Armani Exchange!
That’s why richfluencers are buying ON and Hoka and Vuroi and Lululemon still.
That's why it's fashion... I wouldn't say these are comparatively turds at all. I mean some Hoka are OK (except the terrible blue logo) but I don't think you would find single ON shoe thats nicer than the Nikes you linked to.
Which is probably why sales are declining. I wouldn't be caught dead in a shoe that looks like that. What would I wear it with? Jeans? When Nike makes "fashionable" products there's nothing for Nike to sell to me. I guess they can sell it to an NBA player and their entourage. Most people though aren't buying clothes that look like that, just like they're not buying stuff from the runway models.
So you take your customer base from a lot of folks to a small number of folks. It's totally fine and cool to build more niche products (we need more niche products and cottage industries) but if Nike's goal is to stay in the S&P 100 this strategy won't work. Customer base is way too small (and outside of the influencers) and has too few dollars to spend.
I got into Nike shoes in the 2010s because they were really innovative. A sneaker head friend suggested I try a pair of LunarGlides, and they were the most comfortable shoes I ever wore at the time due to their Lunarlon soles. And their FlyKnit uppers that came at bit later revolutionized sneakers. I also really liked their Free Run line (although not actually for running), which had an innovative flexible sole.
I've never been one for fashion, but I thought their tech was awesome. But I can't really think of anything noteworthy since the mid 2010s or so. Their Vaporfly shoes may be a big deal to competitive distance runners, but not really to your average Joe.
So that's my take - they stopped innovating, and other brands caught up and surpassed them.
totally. some brands really made a huge step-up and became "fresh", which Nike declined and is now considered "stale". From my euro-centric perspective I see Autry, New Balance, Adidas and Asics all over the place. Even Reebok had a revival. Basketball and skateboarding shoes fell out of style and now everyone trends towards running or indoor soccer style shoes.
I like that sentiment and fully agree regarding YouTube. Unlike Facebook, it's still possible to tune your feed to your exact interests. I have never had a better experience with any video medium, neither linear TV, nor streaming, than I have with YouTube right now.
Instagram is now much better for this with its "customise your algorithm" feature. I was able to strip out all the crap it thinks I like and focus on one specific topic.
you really underestimate the will of people to not change anything that annoys them about their OS. they will click 1 million times a popup away before even considering that it could be resolved indefinitely by an option change. i think Apple's system works well to keep the average user safe.
Agreed. It just doesn't occur to most people. To even come up with the idea that maybe there's a setting for something, never mind searching for a tutorial on how to change it, you already have to be a power user for some values of "power".
It's a setting that iPhones had for a long time, where they would prompt you to join the nearby WiFi networks. I don't currently have one, so I don't know what it's currently like, but a large number of people would pull out their phones, start doing something, dismiss the pop-up, and continue, many times in a day. Probably they almost never actually used it to join a WiFi network at all. You could turn it off in settings but they didn't.
"they will click 1 million times a popup away before even considering that it could be resolved indefinitely by an option change. i think Apple's system works well to keep the average user safe."
I find this reasoning backward. I have been saying what you just said for years, in defense of NOT making changes a giant pain in the ass for knowledgeable users. The vast, vast majority of people will not imagine that there's an option; much less go looking for it. Therefore if the user goes digging around in Settings, everything should be there all the time, with no further hassles required.
By the same logic, a lot of Apple's recent decisions are anti-user stupidity. For example, removing the "Get new mail" button from Mail. If my mom tries to log into her bank account and the site says "We just sent a confirmation code to your E-mail," she's going to go there and try to fetch mail. But nope... now she has to sit there and wait for it to poll the server at some unknown interval.
Apologists rush to say, "Oh but you can simply customize the toolbar and put it back." NO. Give me a break. Why on earth would the average user even imagine that you could customize the fundamental UI of the application, let alone figure out where to perform that task? It's so out of touch with real-world users.
> If you ask in French, it searches in French, right?
not necessarily. i often prompt Claude in German and then see the reasoning happening in English. of course it will eventually reply in German, but that does not mean that the tooling in the background was using German.
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