Nike Inc wants to be more nimble on its feet.
The sneaker maker on Thursday said that it plans to focus on its best-selling sneakers, slash the number of styles it offers and sell more shoes directly to customers online as part of a restructuring in which it is also to cut about 1,400 jobs.
The Beaverton, Oregon-based company said the layoffs represent about 2 percent of its 70,000 employees worldwide.
Photo: AFP
It declined to provide additional details about the cuts.
Nike said the moves would help it offer products to customers faster as it is facing increasing competition from smaller brands and premium labels.
Another problem: The running and basketball shoes Nike is famous for might be outdated.
More people are choosing fashion over function, with sales of classic sneakers industry-wide last year climbing 26 percent, an NPD Group Inc report said.
Meanwhile, sales of performance running sneakers were flat and sales of performance basketball sneakers dropped, the report said.
“Nike missed the fashion shift away from performance basketball to retro,” NPD sports industry analyst Matt Powell said. “They still have not caught up.”
Adidas AG, whose casual Stan Smith shoes have become popular again, has made a push to increase sales in the US.
The German company last month said that first-quarter revenue in North America jumped 31 percent from a year earlier.
On the high end, Neiman Marcus last week told investors that sneakers, with an average retail price of US$360 per pair, have become a significant business as shoppers focus on a more casual lifestyle.
Nike, known for its swoosh logo, is also to make its sneaker selling apps available in more countries at a time when online sales mean many big retailers and department stores are closing stores.
“We’re getting even more aggressive in the digital marketplace,” Nike CEO Mark Parker said.
Nike said a main focus would be the 12 key cities in 10 countries that it expects to represent more than 80 percent of its projected growth through 2020.
Those cities are New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing and Milan, Italy.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”