Nikes marketing plan
By Tolulope Gidado for A M Moore
Everywhere one looks in the fashion or sports world these days, it seems we are inundated with the phenomenon that is Nike. In fact it seems as though Nike has taken over the world, as we know it. The famous swish logo is now synonymous with our culture and can be spotted from a person’s feet to their ears. Who or what is responsible for this global marvel that has taken over our lives?
Nike was founded in 1972 by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman and has become the biggest training shoe company globally. It registers sales of up to 9 billion dollars annually and dominates the training shoe market on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, it has a 35% market share of training shoe industry and boasts an even more impressive 43% share in the United States. Nike has its shoes on sale in almost any sports shop worldwide.
Nike must firstly attribute its global success largely to its CEO and co founder Mr Phil Knight. Amongst many of the ingenious decisions Phil Knight made was his outsourcing strategy; an idea that set Nike apart. The idea was based on Nike outsourcing or subcontracting the manufacturing and production of Nikes training shoes to countries where production, labour and manufacturing were much cheaper. His reason behind this was more than just the obvious one of reducing production cost but he believed that the company would benefit by being able to spend more time focusing on designing and marketing their training shoes. He asserted that outsourcing would give the Nike team ample time to concentrate on innovation, research and development, not only adding value to the shoe but providing a real competitive edge. As a result, Nike spends very little on infrastructure that have to do with the up keep of machinery and factory buildings. This enables Nike to keep costs low and profits high. Neither benefit form outsourcing is these companies outside the US allow Nike to work with what is described as a flexible network meaning that shoes arw manufactured on an as and when basis. This allows Nike not to indulge in and lose money by over producing goods, so goods a manufactured and delivered in a very flexible manner and in the right quantities.