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Asics Gel Quantum 360 Dames
« on: Oct 8th, 2017, 11:39pm » |
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While Nike still holds about half the market, big retailers such as Foot Locker Inc. and Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. are devoting more rack space to Adidas, and investors have started to sour on Nike. After rising more than fivefold in the prior decade, the company’s share price fell 19 percent last year, making it the worst performer of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average.
In the fall of 2015, Nike told the world it would get to $50 billion in annual sales by 2020, which would mean growing about 10 percent per year. At the time, it Nike Air Max Thea Womens looked like the company might just pull off the rare feat of being both huge and fast-growing. A year and a half later, Nike’s strengths—its relentless focus on athletic performance and Nike Roshe Run Womens its size, with more than 70,000 employees worldwide—have begun to look like potential liabilities in a fast-moving, fashion-driven market. In December, Nike reported a 4 percent decline in North American orders, its first dip since the 2009 recession. The next quarter, orders dropped an additional 9 percent. “Adidas did a great job,” says Sam Poser, a footwear analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP.
If Nike is feeling the pressure, it’s hard to tell in Beaverton. Holts, like everyone else the company makes available during a daylong press tour in advance of the March VaporMax release, speaks with breezy confidence. “If a serious runner wants to buy this and use it as their primary running shoe, that is what this thing is designed, developed, and engineered to do,” he says. “But if it’s somebody who wants to wear it as more of Nike Cortez Donna an expression, that’s fine, too.” Holts is echoing the words of Chief Executive Officer Mark Parker, who spoke about the shoe a few months earlier on an earnings call. “It’s a great example of an innovation that stands at the intersection of high-tech, pure function, and aesthetic beauty,” Parker said. “We expect big things from [it] in running, and we have an ambitious road map to bring it to life through other sports.”
If all goes according to plan, the VaporMax will recall past glories like the Air Max, seizing back momentum from Adidas and reaffirming the swoosh as the premier logo on the rack. This is Nike’s chosen way forward: Do more of what it’s always done.
“Unlock” is a favorite word at Nike. It falls from employees’ lips almost as freely as “performance” and “innovation,” often in noun form—as in, “That was a big unlock Nike Air Max 2017 Dames for us.” The argot reflects the slightly cultish atmosphere in Beaverton, where every building is named for a different Nike athlete. But it also speaks to how the brand develops products. Adidas ZX Flux Damen Shoes begin as riddles. With VaporMax, the riddle was how to make Nike’s signature cushioning technology, the air bag, the only layer between foot and ground.
Air bags are Nike’s only made-in-the-USA sneaker components. They’re manufactured at two facilities, one in St. Charles, Mo., the other just outside the main campus in Beaverton. At the Oregon facility, we surrender our phones and put on safety glasses for a tour guided by Lalit Monteiro, head of Nike’s air manufacturing innovation team. “We are the only company in the world that can make a bag that can stand the repeated stress of the foot and retain air,” he says, holding a sheet of clear Asics Gel Quantum 360 Dames TPU the size of a place mat. TPU is one of the wonders of modern manufacturing—a moldable plastic with the elasticity of rubber, used in everything from toothbrushes to drive belts. Nike’s Nike Air Huarache Mujer version consists of 70 layers, alternately rigid and flexible, each roughly as thick as two human hairs.
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