Nike Having Trouble Selling Its Shoes?
Due to supply chain difficulties and a move to a more direct-to-consumer sales model, Nike is having trouble offloading its inventory of shoes.
Like many other companies, Nike is facing serious supply chain issues and this is contributing to a decline in sales. Nike is also facing stiff competition from competitive brands such as Adidas, Brooks, and Under Armour. Additionally, Nike has also been at the center of scandal on more than one occasion.
Supply chain issues have been plaguing the world since the beginning of the pandemic, which started in 2020. Some things are hard to recover from, and this is one of them. If a product cannot make it to the customers or is slow, customers often have no choice but to look elsewhere for the product.
Nike is also becoming harder and harder to find in stores because Nike themselves are making the decision to pull their products and cut ties with certain retailers. While Nike remains in partnership with a limited number of select stores, they primarily want customers to buy directly from their website, app, and store. By doing this, Nike is basically cutting themselves out as an option as customers shop in-store.
Other brands have also been stepping up their game and are making for solid competition. Other brands are listening to the needs of consumers and producing quality products that are catching the eye of runners, athletes, and all people looking for safe and comfortable shoes and merchandise. Some Nike shoes have been deemed not suitable for what they are made for, Nike has often failed to adjust the design of its product, while others have stepped up to the plate.
Nike also lacks diversity and this is thought to be a contributing factor to its loss of sales. With a target audience consisting of primarily athletes, Nike has become overly dependent on the genre. This has left the company with all eggs in one basket, hurting its overall marketing strategy.
Nike is also finding itself at a loss in sales in one of its biggest markets, China. A report produced by Statista, said that Nike sales had fallen in several categories. This could be from pushback the company received from Chinese factory workers.
Nike has found itself at the center of some eye-raising scandals on a number of occasions. The scandals the company has found itself wrapped up in range from sexual assault to reselling shoes. Some of these scandals have left the consumer in a position where trust is broken thus leaving Nike with fewer and fewer customers and ultimately at a loss.
Nike has also been linked to unsafe factory conditions. Additionally, the company has been connected with using child labor on several occasions. To make matters worse, they are also connected with forced labor on the Uyghur people in China.
With so much negativity and questionable practice surrounding the brand, it leaves one to wonder how they are still in business. Essentially, there are a number of factors that are contributing to the decline of the long-time brand. With Nike reporting a loss for the fiscal year, it’s hard to tell what the future may hold for the brand.
