I can't believe Nike spends 25 dollars on the actual making of the shoes, it just doesn't add up. Nike sneakers regularly sell to consumers for ~25 dollars, in

I can't believe Nike spends 25 dollars on the actual making of the shoes, it just doesn't add up. Nike sneakers regularly sell to consumers for ~25 dollars, in brick-and-mortar stores, in countries that have 20% VAT. Naturally Nike wants to claim their shoes are as valuable as possible, and they can perhaps somewhat truthfully claim 25 dollars by including the cost of R&D, sponsorships and marketing etc in the cost of making the shoes. Then they can spread the total cost of Nike operations creatively over models that sell 1 million units and others that sell only 50 000 units. If shoes cost 5 dollars to make but you feel you need to pay Serena and Tiger 20 bucks per shoe to sell them, suddenly they "cost" 25 to "make".