Nike has WAY too much influence over track and field. No sponsor should ever wield that kind of weight. The NFL doesn't let any one sponsor have that much power, neither does FIFA. The less influence Nike has over the sport the better.
Is anyone else putting money into the sport? How many Hoka track meets did we have last year?
They are also thriving because you are lucky if a pair of Hokas last more than 200 miles.
I regularly put in a thousand miles on a pair of Hoka Bondis(my go to shoe for easy road miles) before I buy a new pair. And for trail running in my opinion nothing beats Hoka selection of trail shoes.
Are you 6 foot 150 pounds and run a sub 2:40 'thon?
I bought a pair of Sketchers Go Run 5's and added a Superfoot insert. They are the most comfortable running shoe I've had since I ran the mile in DII in college about 45 years ago at a body weight of 165!
Nike has WAY too much influence over track and field. No sponsor should ever wield that kind of weight. The NFL doesn't let any one sponsor have that much power, neither does FIFA. The less influence Nike has over the sport the better.
Is anyone else putting money into the sport? How many Hoka track meets did we have last year?
I appreciate your view but see it differently. My local running store hosts 40 races a year. They sponsor a professional team and host a huge HS cross country meet. Nike no longer is willing to send their product to this store. That means Hoka, Brooks, Saucony, On, Mizuno, Adidas, are all sponsoring all of our local events. This goes a long way as you see very few Nike shoes being worn in our area by runners. This is a trend throughout the country.
Hokas is immaterial. Nike's running shoes business isn't that big. Their business simply has peaked. There are only so many people who will buy junks on whims of their marketing prowess. Some quarters they will sell well followed by others that won't.
This isn't correct, running shoes make up almost a quarter of the entire athletic footwear market. Running shoes are the razor blades of the footwear market, who else besides maybe a few sneaker heads are buying 5-10 pairs of shoes a year besides runners? Just look at the shear number of companies competing and seemingly doing well in the space: Adidas, Nike, New Balance, Asics, Hoka, Brooks, Saucony, On, Mizuno, Sketchers, Puma, Altra, Topo Athletic, Under Armour. What other sport could support so many shoe brands? It is likely that some of these upstarts really are hurting some of Nike's long term revenue. Some interesting analysis:
The global athletic footwear market is expected to grow from USD 129.52 Billion in 2022 to USD 228.25 Billion by 2032, at a CAGR of 5.83% during the forecast period 2023-2032.
I will reiterate again the dynamism of Hokas as a dual/triumvirate running/walking/standing shoe... (maybe the wrong point to make on a running obsessive website forum.)
No other brand, from my perspective offers this.... innovation?
I'm not sure it was even an intentional design as much as an ironic accident of fate... i.e. ex-Salomon trail runners trying to make the perfect downhill-bombing mountain/trail running shoe....
My main point is that what Nike/Adidas sell/promote now is overpriced crap. And yes, hokas are becoming just another piece of overprices crap; they recently opened a Hub in Portland, according to rumor on LinkedIn.
What about Saucony... Mizuno? The truth is out there. Somewhere.
The company that introduced super shoes and revolutionized the entire sport stopped innovating?!?! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
Yeah some of these posts are nuts. Nike is still far and away the leader in world wide sales.
Could it be that Nike just got so big they didn't think it was worth their time to cater to mom and pop running stores. They wanted the DTC margins and Hoka and On smartly took advantage of that. I read that Hoka's sale have gone from like 250 million to 1.4 billion in 3 years. But Nike was more than 4 billion in running several years ago.
People on her and in these article are acting like Nike training shoes were always top of the line? I don't think so. Back in like 2000 when we went to Ireland to see the physio Gerard Hartman, he told me the top pros sposnored by Nike often trained in other shoes . He was putting them in Asics at the time if I recall correctly.
It's hard to grow your business when you are huge. Apple does it but they have lock in on imessage and the IOS. It's very inconvenient to change phones (otherwise I would have switched a long time ago). Switching shoes - or beers - is very easy.
Nike has WAY too much influence over track and field. No sponsor should ever wield that kind of weight. The NFL doesn't let any one sponsor have that much power, neither does FIFA. The less influence Nike has over the sport the better.
Is anyone else putting money into the sport? How many Hoka track meets did we have last year?
Nike's monopoly over the sport is what is keeping other sponsors out. Look at successful sports and leagues. They have plenty of sponsors but no one has that much power. That is the way to go.
You're obviously not from Portland, where hipsters have been identifying by both beer and running shoe since at least the 80's.
The McMenamin bros. (credited with the legal lobbying that created the craft/brewpub revolution at least in Oregon) went to the same high school as Phil Knight's sons...
One does not simply (to quote Boromir) _switch_ beers in Portland.
Like Phil Knight, the McMenamins brothers (and the Widmer bros.) intentionally and consciously chose grotesque expansion(s), misplaced marketing(s), and transforming the creative quality of their unique origins into a lifestyle brand instead of ever actually taking a step back to gain some perspective... on the type of experience they sell, say, to children or their own workers.
I was at the Beaverton City Council meeting in the 2000's for my Citizenship in the Community Merit Badge when Uncle Phil showed up for the sake of showing up. Some people call it intimidation. I was barely 12; I was intimidated.
In hindsight, I often wonder if Nike upping and leaving in the 2000's the Portland Metro would've been better for all of us -- shoe peddlers and citizens alike. I understand hundreds of families depend on their careers at Nike, at least theoretically, but there's thousands of families that have also been priced out of Washington County in the last two decades, as well, in no small part because of the untaxxed companies that've invested billions of dollars here -- not in a community but an image of themselves.
The Swoosh looms over the city, like the caustic sense of humor of the employees, unable at the end of the day even able to joke about their vulnerabilities and dependencies, taking the sport so seriously that the fun of movement and human creativity seems to become stifled by the demands of the training, ultra-running, the pursuit of sponsorship, OT Qualifiers.
Sometimes the hugeness of particularly sports and running in the city feels like a big joke, so competitive, too competitive, even for 10 year old soccer players; as if the anxiety of putting the feelings of paradox and contradiction of, say, a 12 year old with so many concussions from youth football that he has to give up the sport.... to words is so subtle and taboo that even teachers and coaches in Beaverton and Portland Public Schools admit a fear of saying the _wrong_ thing to the children of the Brands (nike, adidas, intel inc., etc. etc.)....
Some of the comments here are hilariously out of touch. Do you people know anything outside the running world? Hoka is a straight up fashion brand now, which is why they are doing so well. I went into a local store in my area that sells $1200 Italian boots and they had a lot of Hoka and On shoes for sale being tried on by well dressed chicks. There wasn't a single Nike or Adidas in the store. Nike and Adidas are totally lame now except with weird basement dwelling sneaker-freaker types....not the type of customer you want for long term growth.
This is because Nike and Adidas won't generally sell to running speciality stores. Forget Hoka and On, Brooks is the market leader in running shoes for us Hobby Joggers. Nothing outsells the Ghost. Why? Because it's the first shoe to get recommended to people who go into a store wanting to get into running.
Nike and Adidas want to cut the middle men out and direct sell to consumers. COVID made that look like a winning play for a bit but now people want to have more experiences so in person shopping may make a comeback.
Nike has WAY too much influence over track and field. No sponsor should ever wield that kind of weight. The NFL doesn't let any one sponsor have that much power, neither does FIFA. The less influence Nike has over the sport the better.
Is anyone else putting money into the sport? How many Hoka track meets did we have last year?
The money Nike puts into the sport comes at a cost. USATF is basically a division of Nike.
Nike invented the super shoe as a way to generate hype for their brand because the only thing Nike knows how to do these days is to market their aging brand. Hoka, Saucony, Asics and New Balance have all chosen to put their focus on improving shoes instead of trying to keep alive 40+ year old shoe. Not every recent Hoka or Saucony shoe has been great but they keep trying to move forward. Nike is like Detroit trying to sell muscle cars instead of electric vehicles. Sooner or later, the Peg will be dead and Nike will be left selling retro Air Jordans.
Nike puts a lot of money into the running business, sponsorships etc., however, if Nike disappeared, that wouldn't take away from the fact that runners need running shoes, so, they would spend elsewhere and other brands would take up the sponsorships.....
....and the 700 employees could work elsewhere....
But their boilerplate release just renders them the same old same old corporate uncreatives.
"Hey, lets look at the P&L statement, stock value and make cuts." So not creative, unlike their innovative start in the 70s....behemoth syndrome.
