We all know how much Nike is protective of its brand, but after seeing that Amazon has officially surpassed Walmart as the biggest apparel retailer in the country, I wonder if Nike made a mistake when it pulled out of Amazon a few years ago? Opinions are certainly divided.
I would like to hear arguments about how Nike benefited (if at all) from their decision not to sell at Amazon?
6 replies (most recent on top)
Amazon is the most powerful force in the new world of DTC.
Jeff dislikes PHK, and Nike, as he has no respect for what they are, he does not get it, because he feels he knows the company, called them just B..S..t.
Nike reacted correctly, every Nike purchase, through Amazon, was targeted by Amazon to sell something else, and eventually an Amazon shoe. The core of Jeff's world view is that people do not know what they want, and often by Brands, because they do not know of an alternative, better in value and price, Jeff thinks he can Source anything.
This is Hubris, he is not perfect, I mean he thought he needed to send a picture of his Johnson to secure an affair with a human s-x doll, Richard Branson did it right BTW.
Amazon will collect as much info as they can, but Amazon's greatest strength is the Technology division, which has reshaped delivery, engagement and presentation. Amazon's next victory will be in Advertising.
There are maybe 7 Super Brands that can not be "Knocked Off".....yet....thanks to all the competition fading Nike is surging.
If Nike could only stop with this deleterious SJW c-ap, they could really run away with it, John looked like a fool in that Black T Shirt, Diversity, Sustainability, mirage goals by folks to scared to build product that delivers on the Nike core. Fashion drops....really , Phil was told me they would never be a fashion company, function, same time he said Apparel made him uneasy, he was learning to sew at the time.
Amazon could win, by buying a known Brand, and using it as a knock off platform, Reebok maybe, or even New Balance.
While selling physical product is profitable, doing so without learning everything about your consumer is wasted opportunity.
Nike wants to know it’s consumers as members. In order to better serve them, they must know everything about them. The future value is in building a relationship with them and advertising to their needs and desires. 1:1 member relationship at scale through digital attributes. Any 3PW or Amazon knows that too.
The future is in building those relationships, not selling to 3PW.
May as well expect Nike to start partnering with eBay and Ali Express lol...Bezos doesn't give a c-ap about Nike being successful on his platform. Amazon probably makes more money from knock offs anyhow.
Learn and go. It's better for the brand to break away. Amazon is great for books, sundries, gadgets, basics. It's just not a great space for story telling and brand building, IMHO.
To many counterfeits on amazon. Amazon has no way of stopping someone from selling fakes
Amazon is tricky. Here are some of the of the biggest issues is with the platform: MAP violations, unauthorized sellers and counterfeit products. I have direct experience selling on Amazon as an individual AND managing the Amazon business for one of Nike's direct competitors.
Despite being in a partnership agreement with Amazon, the brand I worked for still struggled with third party sellers violating our MAP policy. Obviously, a random reseller (shout out to West Coast Joe,) won't know anything about MAP policy, but the issue we ran into is a third party reseller would buy a bunch of inventory somewhere and sell on Amazon under the MAP price, which would frustrate our other wholesale partners. "How are we supposed to sell our shoes at full price if they are available on Amazon UNDER the MAP price." We got those types of emails all the time.
Amazon can and does restrict who can sell on what product pages, and brands can be heavily restricted, but there are ways around it, so it's hard for a brand like Nike to prevent unauthorized resellers who may be selling counterfeits.
Product pages can be edited by Amazon sellers, so it's hard to control the brand message on a platform like Amazon and we know Nike cares deeply about that.
So... in my opinion, these are some of the reasons why Nike may have decided they didn't like the official partnership with Amazon. At the end of the day, with Nike's aggressive .com goals, it was probably done to force consumers to go to Nike.com instead of Amazon.
In my opinion, Nike should still have an official relationship with Amazon.
One thing I did learn from Amazon directly is almost 80% of consumers go to Amazon to read product reviews before making a purchase, even if the purchase is outside of Amazon, so not having an official relationship with Amazon can hurt this. If you aren't launching new SKUs on Amazon, you aren't getting reviews for new products.