39 ms·

Nike won’t sell directly to Amazon anymore

203 points by omarhaneef 7y ago

devicetray0 7y ago
> The news also follows the recently announced hiring of John Donahoe, former eBay CEO, as the sportswear retailer’s next CEO. Hmm, I see..
- jinushaun 7y ago
  The cynic in me sees this less as a change motivated by improving the customer experience, and more about Nike promoting their own walled garden. To be fair, Amazon is the LAST place I would buy Nikes. Counterfeit risk is too high. Comingling inventory is the worst.
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    See, for example: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-us-after-counterfeit-surge.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-...
  - benologist 7y ago
    The article says Nike agreed to sell on Amazon so Amazon would crack down on counterfeit Nike merchandise. The question is will Amazon stop checking now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime) ... promises to protect the target business or person from dangerous individuals in the neighborhood and then either collects the money or causes damage to the business until the owner pays
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Over the years I've found some really good deals on Nike's site. I'll admit I'm usually lazy and will buy from Amazon to avoid the hassle of creating an account and giving all my info to yet another company but when Nike wants to clear out their inventory of something, they're pretty generous with the discounts.
  - awinder 7y ago
    What in the world is a fashion-wear walled garden? I'm pretty sure you can wear nike shirts with Adidas tops, socks are like the USB-C of feet, etc.
    - Liquix 7y ago
      Let's say a customer wants Nike shoes, has Amazon Prime, and does most of their shopping through Amazon. Before: 1.) Search Amazon for Nike shoes 2.) Buy shoes 3.) Close Amazon 4.) Receive (possibly counterfeit) shoes. If low quality or fake, perhaps think less of Nike. After: 1.) Search Amazon for Nike shoes 2.) Observe no Nike shoes in results 3.) Google 'buy nike shoes' 4.) Visit nike.com 5.) Nike promotes sweatpants/sweatshirts/is running a sale/etc on landing page 6.) Possible conversion (customer is drawn in by promotions; ends up buying more than just the shoes) 7.) Receive authentic Nike merchandise, think highly of brand It's a couple extra steps and this is oversimplified for a generic case. There's also places it could go wrong, such as if Nike chooses to collect and sell customer/transaction data. But if executed correctly, the switch benefits both Nike and the consumer while only hurting Amazon. Seems like a win-win-win.
      - w457uiw4gftyi 7y ago
        Except step 4 in your second scenario could also be "Visit dickssportinggoods.com" or "Visit finishline.com" or any number of reputable retailers that will sell genuine Nike products. Nike isn't saying they will be the exclusive seller of their products. Nike is just no longer doing business with one (large) retailer who is apparently 'unable' to separate counterfeit products from genuine ones.
      - bduerst 7y ago
        > such as if Nike chooses to collect and sell customer/transaction data. Assuming that Amazon doesn't? They have reciprocity agreements with credit card companies.
davidhyde 7y ago
People don't mind buying from a vendor's site directly but the vendor should do their best to reduce the admin / pain of doing so. Some tips I wish vendors would follow: 1. Don't capture more information than is absolutely necessary for the transaction. 2. Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something. 3. Don't automatically add the user to your newsletter and send their details to your ad network. Be very explicit that you won't do this. 4. Tell the user up front how much postage will most likely cost and expected delivery time before you capture all their details. You can guess their general location from their IP address of have them select a city. 5. Have multiple payment options (like paypal for example), not just credit card. 6. Up front, tell them what you need from them before they can complete the transaction. Nobody likes working through an endless data collection wizard only to stop half way though because you don't want to give up that data or get bored filling things in. It's really not that complicated.
- mikece 7y ago
  That would be ideal but every piece of data they capture is a component for a future sales funnel. The smart way to do this would be to have some boilerplate language about respecting user's privacy and having a minimum number of required fields and then baiting you to provide more info for discounts, insider info, and whatever else they are willing to give as digital tchotchkes in exchange for more and more marketing data.
  - throwaway35784 7y ago
    Your suggestions are what give that icky feeling. It's creepy. People don't like creepy. You are losing costumers.
    - izzydata 7y ago
      Is your spelling of "customers" as "costumers" intentional? It feels like some inside joke I am missing.
      - 7y ago
dazc 7y ago
Manufacturers are moving towards selling direct to the consumer and, although this is an obvious progression, most seem to be quite inept at it? (@davidhyde has listed a lot of valid points). That said, amazon's fashion/footwear is a bit of a hit and miss experience here in the UK. Multiple listings for the same product, poor quality own brand merchandise, branded products with very limited colour/size combinations, and so on. I expected amazon would have smashed this by now but it seems to get worse and worse?
- bduerst 7y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. If anything, Shopify's more recent success is due to an expansion of consumers buying online from sites that are not walled gardens like Amazon.
  - dazc 7y ago
    I agree, Shopify has had a positive impact with small-medium sized merchants. Big brands with custom solutions however are not very impressive.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
whamlastxmas 7y ago
Glad to see the counterfeit situation finally having repercussions.
cobbzilla 7y ago
Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? They own Zappos, whose focus is specifically footwear, and have a pretty good shopping experience. Never had a problem with counterfeits on Zappos.
- lm28469 7y ago
  People buy all kind of weird things on amazon, toilet paper, shoes, fresh vegetables &c. Convenience is king
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? They own Zappos, whose focus is specifically footwear, and have a pretty good shopping experience. Never had a problem with counterfeits on Zappos. I think a lot of people kinda lazily settled into using Amazon.com for all/most of their online shopping years ago when it was clearly better its problems weren't as pronounced. Those people aren't even bothering to find or look at other sites, and just buy whatever's on Amazon.com. It takes some extremely bad experience or serendipitous exposure to change that habit. I was in that boat until I had serious problems with the quality of Amazon Logistics delivery and went to a Best Buy and discovered that (for many products I was buying) Amazon doesn't have any price advantage over physical retail anymore (and often its prices are far, far worse).
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    Me too. I actually have been ordering online from Best Buy and either getting it same-day or getting it in 1-2 days when it ships from a warehouse. There's no reason to buy from Amazon anymore.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? Why wouldn't I? I already have the account, app, and shipping set up. Why are shoes different to anything else?
  - selectodude 7y ago
rubbingalcohol 7y ago
Amazon sells so many counterfeit Nike products that I've been using Nike and Adidas' online stores for quite awhile. Amazon is so bad when it comes to counterfeits that there are only two conditions that will lead me to purchase an item there anymore: - Either the item is listed as being sold by its original manufacturer and fulfilled by Amazon - Or I just need something and don't care if it's cheap Chinese crap I'm sure with Nike officially leaving Amazon this will only get worse. But practically any other big brand you're still looking at paying full price for knock-off merchandise. I can't believe Amazon gets away with having their "head in the sand" to this degree.
- beerandt 7y ago
  FBA is a red flag for co-mingled with counterfeits. At least with 3rd party shippers, (prime or not) you know exactly where it's coming from.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Unless it's sold by Amazon itself. Amazon is quite good at making sure their own inventory is never commingled with FBA inventory due to the risk of counterfeits infiltrating their inventory.
    - wil421 7y ago
      I remember reading an article recently that said Amazon will use FBA products and replace them to make shipping faster. Especially if Amazon itself is out of the product. Does anyone have a link or remember what I’m talking about? Just checked and the only counterfeit product I’ve received was RAM and it was sold by Amazon.com. The box was not similar to the original and contained a foil space blanket.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        Fulfilled by Amazon, but was it sold by Amazon.com? I've ordered a ton of stuff from Amazon.com, from electronics to foodstuffs, and never received a counterfeit. However, almost every FBA product I've purchased was sketchy.
calewis 7y ago
I listened to a great pod cast about Amazon recently. On it they talk to the CEO of Birkenstock and he discusses about how they no longer sell on amazon and why. Its a great listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/land-of-the-giants/id1465767420 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/land-of-the-giants/id1...
dasKrokodil 7y ago
First Birkenstock, then Nike. I guess shoemakers don't like Amazon...
- zwaps 7y ago
  Any brand who cares should dislike Amazon. As a consumer, at least half of anything I order on Amazon is fake, and Amazon gives no indication of caring at all. Hence, if I order a pair of Nike shoes on Amazon, there is a good chance I receive an absolutely inferior product and blame it on the brand. Once that damage is done, I - and a perhaps a portion of my friends - will never buy the brand again. Ever.
  - consumer451 7y ago
    It’s seems to me that this could be much worse than shoes. For example, how am I supposed to know if the Sandisk flash drive I bought was directly from the manufacturer, and not a 3rd party who is part of an industrial espionage effort? How about a Yubikey? This is likely not just a problem with Amazon, but it sure would be nice if they gave me an option to buy things directly from the oem, guaranteed.
    - chihuahua 7y ago
      For Samsung MicroSD cards, Samsung has a tool you can download that authenticates the card. I don't know the specifics of what the tool does, but presumably with proper use of cryptography techniques, it could be made nearly impossible to circumvent. A caveat - I used the tool and it said the card was genuine. Afterwards I put it back in my dashcam, and the dashcam said the card was bad. I just had to reformat it in the dashcam and then it was fine.
philip1209 7y ago
Will they still sell to Zappos?
kerng 7y ago
A couple of years ago Birkenstock did the same - for them it was about quality control and ripoffs. It's interesting because any Birkenstock Amazon sells is basically an assumed fake one.
wufufufu 7y ago
So in this world where every retailer does this I get to install N apps, re-enter my payment/shipping information N times, deal with N different return processes, update my credit card info N times when it changes, and have N questionably written systems know all my PII? I honestly much prefer shopping on the Nike app over Amazon, but I'm going to go to Amazon to buy whatever I found on that app.
- mostlyjason 7y ago
  If PayPal wasn’t such a crap company they’d be the perfect solution for this problem. Just enter your payment and shipping info once and get one click checkout on any site.
  - buffin 7y ago
    I'm curious. What do you not like about PayPal? It seems to be working well for me.
- dublinben 7y ago
  Why do you need an app to purchase a pair of shoes? Nike has a perfectly functional web store.
- draw_down 7y ago
  This is why Apple Pay is really nice.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  You can still buy Nike from Amazon just like you could have done before Nike started selling to Amazon. There's lots of sellers who buy from Nike outlet stores and resell it on Amazon.
  - wmf 7y ago
    It's impossible to know whether you're getting counterfeit stuff from a reseller.
alanh 7y ago
Whether or not this is smart, I’m just here to highlight the obvious BS of this statement: Nike claims to be removing its product from amazon so as to "elevate consumer experiences." ugh. Fluffy Subjective Possibly wrong I don’t need a massive hero image of a sports star to order gym shorts or a gym bag. I’m just searching amazon for what I need. My "experience" is worse if I never even see Nike's products, not better.
- danhood 7y ago
  “Elevate consumer experiences”, huh? I also call total BS. I’m not a sneaker guy, but recently tried to buy a launch pair of sneakers as a gift - only available by Nike’s store. It was a terrible experience with their storefront - crashing, erroring out, empty HTTP responses, app errors, redirect loops, self-emptying cart, etc. Finally got to chat with someone at Nike support after trying for an hour - sold out. They seemed completely indifferent to their storefront being a technical dumpster fire. Essentially, “better luck next time”. No thanks, I’m done - there will not be a next time.
  - hellomyguys 7y ago
    Sneaker drops are notoriously bad experiences due to how many people and bots are hitting the website/app. I’m not sure your single experience of the worst case shopping scenario for Nike is representative of the average costumer experience. Besides that, as someone who has bought Nike/Adidas gear on Amazon, it can be a very bad experience. Description information is often lacking, especially if you are trying to see if this is the most recent model or care about sizing information, let alone if it’s going to be a legitimate product. And if it isn’t, good luck being able to immediately tell it’s fake. I can definitely see why Nike thinks this is a costumer experience improvement (as well as all the business benefits too, of course).
    - grogenaut 7y ago
      I have very little sympathy for nike on their forced scarcity bent lately, they're only doing it to themslves on this bad user experience.
pdq 7y ago
Pick your favorite designer perfume/cologne and look at the reviews on Amazon. (For example, Creed Aventus [1]). A large percentage will say "fake". I can't believe any trademarked brand would sell on Amazon, given they do not care to control their supply chain. It's a lose-lose: unhappy customers getting ripped off, and name brands getting disappointed customers of their faked products. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Creed-Aventus-Parfum-Spray-Ounce/dp/B06ZZGNMYD https://www.amazon.com/Creed-Aventus-Parfum-Spray-Ounce/dp/B...
- vkou 7y ago
  The problem is that even if you don't sell on Amazon, Amazon is more then happy to let counter-fitters crap on your brand.
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    I believe you're right. But that makes me really wonder why any pimply faced teenager in Kentucky, who downloads a dozen songs illegally gets the full hammer of the law crushed on him, but Amazon can get away as a mass distributor of fake goods. I wonder if they're more careful in Italy or France, since those countries take a very dim view on fakes, entities that sell them and even buyers. Buying knock-offs in Italy can cost you a fine of EUR 7'000[1] [1] https://www.godsavethepoints.com/italy-knock-off-goods-fine-beaches/ https://www.godsavethepoints.com/italy-knock-off-goods-fine-...
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  You don't even need designers or perfumes. Reviewers apparently even complained about fakes of this product[1]. I guess the margin must be immense, when you can have a knock-off manufactured for a couple bucks and then sell it for "half price" compared to the original. Your "savings" won't lead to a happy kitchen experience, though. [1] https://ch.kuhnrikon.com/en/kitchen-essentials/kitchen-essentials/garlic-presses-peelers/epicurean-garlic-press-stainless-steel-box.html https://ch.kuhnrikon.com/en/kitchen-essentials/kitchen-essen...

203 points by omarhaneef 7y ago

> The news also follows the recently announced hiring of John Donahoe, former eBay CEO, as the sportswear retailer’s next CEO. Hmm, I see..

jinushaun 7y ago
The cynic in me sees this less as a change motivated by improving the customer experience, and more about Nike promoting their own walled garden. To be fair, Amazon is the LAST place I would buy Nikes. Counterfeit risk is too high. Comingling inventory is the worst.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  See, for example: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-us-after-counterfeit-surge.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-...
- benologist 7y ago
  The article says Nike agreed to sell on Amazon so Amazon would crack down on counterfeit Nike merchandise. The question is will Amazon stop checking now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime) ... promises to protect the target business or person from dangerous individuals in the neighborhood and then either collects the money or causes damage to the business until the owner pays
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Over the years I've found some really good deals on Nike's site. I'll admit I'm usually lazy and will buy from Amazon to avoid the hassle of creating an account and giving all my info to yet another company but when Nike wants to clear out their inventory of something, they're pretty generous with the discounts.
- awinder 7y ago
  What in the world is a fashion-wear walled garden? I'm pretty sure you can wear nike shirts with Adidas tops, socks are like the USB-C of feet, etc.
  - Liquix 7y ago
    Let's say a customer wants Nike shoes, has Amazon Prime, and does most of their shopping through Amazon. Before: 1.) Search Amazon for Nike shoes 2.) Buy shoes 3.) Close Amazon 4.) Receive (possibly counterfeit) shoes. If low quality or fake, perhaps think less of Nike. After: 1.) Search Amazon for Nike shoes 2.) Observe no Nike shoes in results 3.) Google 'buy nike shoes' 4.) Visit nike.com 5.) Nike promotes sweatpants/sweatshirts/is running a sale/etc on landing page 6.) Possible conversion (customer is drawn in by promotions; ends up buying more than just the shoes) 7.) Receive authentic Nike merchandise, think highly of brand It's a couple extra steps and this is oversimplified for a generic case. There's also places it could go wrong, such as if Nike chooses to collect and sell customer/transaction data. But if executed correctly, the switch benefits both Nike and the consumer while only hurting Amazon. Seems like a win-win-win.
    - w457uiw4gftyi 7y ago
      Except step 4 in your second scenario could also be "Visit dickssportinggoods.com" or "Visit finishline.com" or any number of reputable retailers that will sell genuine Nike products. Nike isn't saying they will be the exclusive seller of their products. Nike is just no longer doing business with one (large) retailer who is apparently 'unable' to separate counterfeit products from genuine ones.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      > such as if Nike chooses to collect and sell customer/transaction data. Assuming that Amazon doesn't? They have reciprocity agreements with credit card companies.

davidhyde 7y ago

People don't mind buying from a vendor's site directly but the vendor should do their best to reduce the admin / pain of doing so. Some tips I wish vendors would follow: 1. Don't capture more information than is absolutely necessary for the transaction. 2. Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something. 3. Don't automatically add the user to your newsletter and send their details to your ad network. Be very explicit that you won't do this. 4. Tell the user up front how much postage will most likely cost and expected delivery time before you capture all their details. You can guess their general location from their IP address of have them select a city. 5. Have multiple payment options (like paypal for example), not just credit card. 6. Up front, tell them what you need from them before they can complete the transaction. Nobody likes working through an endless data collection wizard only to stop half way though because you don't want to give up that data or get bored filling things in. It's really not that complicated.

mikece 7y ago
That would be ideal but every piece of data they capture is a component for a future sales funnel. The smart way to do this would be to have some boilerplate language about respecting user's privacy and having a minimum number of required fields and then baiting you to provide more info for discounts, insider info, and whatever else they are willing to give as digital tchotchkes in exchange for more and more marketing data.
- throwaway35784 7y ago
  Your suggestions are what give that icky feeling. It's creepy. People don't like creepy. You are losing costumers.
  - izzydata 7y ago
    Is your spelling of "customers" as "costumers" intentional? It feels like some inside joke I am missing.
    - 7y ago

dazc 7y ago

Manufacturers are moving towards selling direct to the consumer and, although this is an obvious progression, most seem to be quite inept at it? (@davidhyde has listed a lot of valid points). That said, amazon's fashion/footwear is a bit of a hit and miss experience here in the UK. Multiple listings for the same product, poor quality own brand merchandise, branded products with very limited colour/size combinations, and so on. I expected amazon would have smashed this by now but it seems to get worse and worse?

bduerst 7y ago
I'm not so sure about that. If anything, Shopify's more recent success is due to an expansion of consumers buying online from sites that are not walled gardens like Amazon.
- dazc 7y ago
  I agree, Shopify has had a positive impact with small-medium sized merchants. Big brands with custom solutions however are not very impressive.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

whamlastxmas 7y ago

Glad to see the counterfeit situation finally having repercussions.

cobbzilla 7y ago

Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? They own Zappos, whose focus is specifically footwear, and have a pretty good shopping experience. Never had a problem with counterfeits on Zappos.

lm28469 7y ago
People buy all kind of weird things on amazon, toilet paper, shoes, fresh vegetables &c. Convenience is king
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? They own Zappos, whose focus is specifically footwear, and have a pretty good shopping experience. Never had a problem with counterfeits on Zappos. I think a lot of people kinda lazily settled into using Amazon.com for all/most of their online shopping years ago when it was clearly better its problems weren't as pronounced. Those people aren't even bothering to find or look at other sites, and just buy whatever's on Amazon.com. It takes some extremely bad experience or serendipitous exposure to change that habit. I was in that boat until I had serious problems with the quality of Amazon Logistics delivery and went to a Best Buy and discovered that (for many products I was buying) Amazon doesn't have any price advantage over physical retail anymore (and often its prices are far, far worse).
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Me too. I actually have been ordering online from Best Buy and either getting it same-day or getting it in 1-2 days when it ships from a warehouse. There's no reason to buy from Amazon anymore.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? Why wouldn't I? I already have the account, app, and shipping set up. Why are shoes different to anything else?
- selectodude 7y ago

rubbingalcohol 7y ago

Amazon sells so many counterfeit Nike products that I've been using Nike and Adidas' online stores for quite awhile. Amazon is so bad when it comes to counterfeits that there are only two conditions that will lead me to purchase an item there anymore: - Either the item is listed as being sold by its original manufacturer and fulfilled by Amazon - Or I just need something and don't care if it's cheap Chinese crap I'm sure with Nike officially leaving Amazon this will only get worse. But practically any other big brand you're still looking at paying full price for knock-off merchandise. I can't believe Amazon gets away with having their "head in the sand" to this degree.

beerandt 7y ago
FBA is a red flag for co-mingled with counterfeits. At least with 3rd party shippers, (prime or not) you know exactly where it's coming from.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Unless it's sold by Amazon itself. Amazon is quite good at making sure their own inventory is never commingled with FBA inventory due to the risk of counterfeits infiltrating their inventory.
  - wil421 7y ago
    I remember reading an article recently that said Amazon will use FBA products and replace them to make shipping faster. Especially if Amazon itself is out of the product. Does anyone have a link or remember what I’m talking about? Just checked and the only counterfeit product I’ve received was RAM and it was sold by Amazon.com. The box was not similar to the original and contained a foil space blanket.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Fulfilled by Amazon, but was it sold by Amazon.com? I've ordered a ton of stuff from Amazon.com, from electronics to foodstuffs, and never received a counterfeit. However, almost every FBA product I've purchased was sketchy.

calewis 7y ago

I listened to a great pod cast about Amazon recently. On it they talk to the CEO of Birkenstock and he discusses about how they no longer sell on amazon and why. Its a great listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/land-of-the-giants/id1465767420 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/land-of-the-giants/id1...

dasKrokodil 7y ago

First Birkenstock, then Nike. I guess shoemakers don't like Amazon...

zwaps 7y ago
Any brand who cares should dislike Amazon. As a consumer, at least half of anything I order on Amazon is fake, and Amazon gives no indication of caring at all. Hence, if I order a pair of Nike shoes on Amazon, there is a good chance I receive an absolutely inferior product and blame it on the brand. Once that damage is done, I - and a perhaps a portion of my friends - will never buy the brand again. Ever.
- consumer451 7y ago
  It’s seems to me that this could be much worse than shoes. For example, how am I supposed to know if the Sandisk flash drive I bought was directly from the manufacturer, and not a 3rd party who is part of an industrial espionage effort? How about a Yubikey? This is likely not just a problem with Amazon, but it sure would be nice if they gave me an option to buy things directly from the oem, guaranteed.
  - chihuahua 7y ago
    For Samsung MicroSD cards, Samsung has a tool you can download that authenticates the card. I don't know the specifics of what the tool does, but presumably with proper use of cryptography techniques, it could be made nearly impossible to circumvent. A caveat - I used the tool and it said the card was genuine. Afterwards I put it back in my dashcam, and the dashcam said the card was bad. I just had to reformat it in the dashcam and then it was fine.

philip1209 7y ago

Will they still sell to Zappos?

kerng 7y ago

A couple of years ago Birkenstock did the same - for them it was about quality control and ripoffs. It's interesting because any Birkenstock Amazon sells is basically an assumed fake one.

wufufufu 7y ago

So in this world where every retailer does this I get to install N apps, re-enter my payment/shipping information N times, deal with N different return processes, update my credit card info N times when it changes, and have N questionably written systems know all my PII? I honestly much prefer shopping on the Nike app over Amazon, but I'm going to go to Amazon to buy whatever I found on that app.

mostlyjason 7y ago
If PayPal wasn’t such a crap company they’d be the perfect solution for this problem. Just enter your payment and shipping info once and get one click checkout on any site.
- buffin 7y ago
  I'm curious. What do you not like about PayPal? It seems to be working well for me.
dublinben 7y ago
Why do you need an app to purchase a pair of shoes? Nike has a perfectly functional web store.
draw_down 7y ago
This is why Apple Pay is really nice.
ikeboy 7y ago
You can still buy Nike from Amazon just like you could have done before Nike started selling to Amazon. There's lots of sellers who buy from Nike outlet stores and resell it on Amazon.
- wmf 7y ago
  It's impossible to know whether you're getting counterfeit stuff from a reseller.

alanh 7y ago

Whether or not this is smart, I’m just here to highlight the obvious BS of this statement: Nike claims to be removing its product from amazon so as to "elevate consumer experiences." ugh. Fluffy Subjective Possibly wrong I don’t need a massive hero image of a sports star to order gym shorts or a gym bag. I’m just searching amazon for what I need. My "experience" is worse if I never even see Nike's products, not better.

danhood 7y ago
“Elevate consumer experiences”, huh? I also call total BS. I’m not a sneaker guy, but recently tried to buy a launch pair of sneakers as a gift - only available by Nike’s store. It was a terrible experience with their storefront - crashing, erroring out, empty HTTP responses, app errors, redirect loops, self-emptying cart, etc. Finally got to chat with someone at Nike support after trying for an hour - sold out. They seemed completely indifferent to their storefront being a technical dumpster fire. Essentially, “better luck next time”. No thanks, I’m done - there will not be a next time.
- hellomyguys 7y ago
  Sneaker drops are notoriously bad experiences due to how many people and bots are hitting the website/app. I’m not sure your single experience of the worst case shopping scenario for Nike is representative of the average costumer experience. Besides that, as someone who has bought Nike/Adidas gear on Amazon, it can be a very bad experience. Description information is often lacking, especially if you are trying to see if this is the most recent model or care about sizing information, let alone if it’s going to be a legitimate product. And if it isn’t, good luck being able to immediately tell it’s fake. I can definitely see why Nike thinks this is a costumer experience improvement (as well as all the business benefits too, of course).
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    I have very little sympathy for nike on their forced scarcity bent lately, they're only doing it to themslves on this bad user experience.

pdq 7y ago

Pick your favorite designer perfume/cologne and look at the reviews on Amazon. (For example, Creed Aventus [1]). A large percentage will say "fake". I can't believe any trademarked brand would sell on Amazon, given they do not care to control their supply chain. It's a lose-lose: unhappy customers getting ripped off, and name brands getting disappointed customers of their faked products. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Creed-Aventus-Parfum-Spray-Ounce/dp/B06ZZGNMYD https://www.amazon.com/Creed-Aventus-Parfum-Spray-Ounce/dp/B...

vkou 7y ago
The problem is that even if you don't sell on Amazon, Amazon is more then happy to let counter-fitters crap on your brand.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  I believe you're right. But that makes me really wonder why any pimply faced teenager in Kentucky, who downloads a dozen songs illegally gets the full hammer of the law crushed on him, but Amazon can get away as a mass distributor of fake goods. I wonder if they're more careful in Italy or France, since those countries take a very dim view on fakes, entities that sell them and even buyers. Buying knock-offs in Italy can cost you a fine of EUR 7'000[1] [1] https://www.godsavethepoints.com/italy-knock-off-goods-fine-beaches/ https://www.godsavethepoints.com/italy-knock-off-goods-fine-...
CaptainZapp 7y ago
You don't even need designers or perfumes. Reviewers apparently even complained about fakes of this product[1]. I guess the margin must be immense, when you can have a knock-off manufactured for a couple bucks and then sell it for "half price" compared to the original. Your "savings" won't lead to a happy kitchen experience, though. [1] https://ch.kuhnrikon.com/en/kitchen-essentials/kitchen-essentials/garlic-presses-peelers/epicurean-garlic-press-stainless-steel-box.html https://ch.kuhnrikon.com/en/kitchen-essentials/kitchen-essen...