Zack Schlemmer 
In an effort to streamline their business and maintain their place as the #1 footwear brand on Earth, Nike has announced a new business initiative dubbed Consumer Direct Offense. After seeing more pressure from a resurgent adidas and a growing Under Armour than ever before, the plan includes a number of ways to make the brand more nimble while also offering a faster pipeline to serve consumers in an ever-changing retail world. The Consumer Direct Offense is fueled by Nike’s Triple Double strategy: doubling product innovation, the speed of production, and the direct connections with consumers, especially in the digital retail landscape.
If you want to learn every detail of the new Consumer Direct Offense, you can read the full press release from Nike HERE, but the biggest news of the initiative that concerns us everyday sneakerheads is the brand’s plans to reduce their number of footwear styles by 25%—quite a significant number when you consider how many different models they currently churn out each season. Will this edit of the brand’s output mean less ‘Ultra’ Air Max sneakers and other arguably superfluous models? Will a new “quality over quantity” practice reinforce Nike’s positive image and strength in the industry? Only time will tell, but we expect this 25% production reduction to actually be good news to many sneaker enthusiasts.
While most of the Consumer Direct Offense plan seems to be quite positive, one hit will be “the overall reduction of approximately 2% of the company’s global workforce”, according to Nike. While this is bad news for about 1,400 of the company’s employees, a reduction in jobs is simply a natural by-product of the retail industry’s growing reliance on digital and direct-to-consumer practices.
