Saturday, January 12, 2008

Nike Sucks

And soon Adidas and other brands will suck too just like how Nike does. As you may know, I am the president of Soccer Shop LLC, which is the parent company of Soccer Nation. The other day a coach came in and asked for a dozen Nike T90 Soccer Balls. These balls are retailed at $40 and sell them on our website and in our store for $34.95. Since he was a regular customer and he wanted more of these balls, I gave him additional extended discount and offered to sell those to him for $25 each. That is a huge discount however he expected them for $20 each. That is below my cost and I told him that but then he told me that is how much Nike is offering those balls to his high school.

I was shocked as I was unaware that Nike sells to schools directly. Up until now, I was under assumption that they direct their customers to their dealers like us. I know on their website they sell stuff but that is usually clearance stuff or for new stuff it is full retail with no discounts.

Anyway I lost that sale and I was not too happy about it, so I called my Nike guy and he told me that Nike has this program where Nike does business with high schools directly bypassing their own dealers. In other words Nike competes with their own dealers when it comes to high school business.

Pretty messed up isn't it? I mean team business is the bread and butter of soccer stores and smaller sports stores. So if you own a soccer or small sport store, you can kiss your major team business goodbye. Because it is just matter of time that Adidas, Puma, Reebok, Diadora, Umbro, and Lotto, Joma, and other Nike competitors will start implementing similar type of programs.

Thanks to Nike, for pushing and driving the market that way.

3 comments:

joshnolan said...

All of the major manufactures do this on the High School level, they have been doing this for years. When I played basketball it was Converse selling directly to the team giving up a 50% discount on the shoes. It is not a new business practice.

sefati said...

Yes but still sucks. They are competing their own dealers.

Unknown said...

That is what you call a corpotate america for you and nike is like best friends with starbucks!