Reply To: BAEC changes – “2 yrs in the making” and based on “extensive modelling”?

[Rob]

Was reading an interesting Nike article last night. They hired a consultant from Boston Consulting Group as CEO who knew nothing about fashion or sport but a lot about costs.

He pulled Nike out of a lot of retailers because they were taking margin which Nike could have for itself if it moved more heavily online. On paper, OK.

He also fired most of the design people and decided to base new products on customer surveys of what they wanted. Because doesn’t all fashion work that way?

Anyway, you can guess the rest:

*retailers, faced with empty shelves after Nike withdrew product, started to fill them with interesting start up brands like On

*customers who turned up and may have bought Nike shoes didn’t decide to go off and find some online instead – they decided that some of the other brands in the shop, especially some of these new brands that had come in, were actually quite good

*shops which were still getting supplied were getting ‘designed by committee’ gear which weirdly no-one seemed to want despite customers telling Nike via surveys it is what they wanted

CEO was fired last September and replaced by an insider with 32 years at Nike.