Nike is trotting out a pricey sneaker with self-tying laces, a high stakes test of the company’s technology investments and efforts to sell more products directly to consumers. (photo Eduardo Munoz)
Source: With $720 Self-Tying Sneaker, Nike Loosens Ties to Retailers – WSJ
While most people are analyzing the Nike HyperAdapt shoe as technology, or a taste of Back to the Future for today, I’m looking at each article posted on the sites of various news outlets and my immediate thought is will this begin to open the eyes of Wall Street and show the market that Nike has always been working on the delivery of products directly to the consumer to increase profit and revenues?
The HyperAdapt is only dropping via Nike distribution points. Nevermind that there won’t be enough of the shoes to satisfy the market. Nevermind that the shoes won’t perform very well and more than likely will be uncomfortable as a brick, this shoe is being created for one reason and WSJ hits on it: This shoe will deliver feedback on the viability of Nike “only” releases. This won’t be the first shoe to be strictly a Nike drop, but it is the priciest model and it is a tech driven model distinguishing Nike from other brands who only have fitness tracking capabilities via miCoach or even Nike’s own + systems.
Right now the stock price has continued to drop for Nike, which still doesn’t make sense to me. Some analysts are even reporting that the stock could drop as low as 40/share! It really doesn’t make any sense, but I guess when you are only looking at the traditional sales model of wholesale to retail and inventory is sitting in stores, things look bleak… but there has to be a deeper analysis.
