Fashion: Sneakers? Not.

Fashion adds new bounce to the market for athletic footwear

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So when Adidas teams up with Yohji Yamamoto to produce sneakers that cost a paycheck, think of them as a lure, or what Adidas America marketing director John Kawaja calls an "image ploy." Says he: "We're never going to build a business out of Yamamoto products, but we're seeding the market and trying some different things we may be able to commercialize down the road."

This is the same strategy long employed by the most venerable fashion houses, which stage elaborate haute-couture shows featuring creations that few can afford but everyone lusts after. The resulting publicity draws throngs of customers into retail outlets to browse. The real money is then made through sales of items like perfume and scarves, or in this case, $100 sneakers.

Or in the case of Adidas, the line of $100 ClimaCool shoes, due out this month. Sure, the technology purports to control the temperature inside the sneakers, but their greatest appeal may lie in their variety of colors and sports-category options. The company also has a new collection of sneakers that resemble bowling shoes, available in light coral and lemon yellow.

The challenge in the women's market concerns image. For men, Nike can snag Michael Jordan, tack his name onto a shoe and watch as pair after pair fly out of Athlete's Foot stores everywhere. For women, designers have to find another way to generate sales. Thus Martin Lotti, Nike's global creative director of women's footwear, travels the world seeking visual inspiration that he can combine with the company's technology. As he puts it, "If you have an ugly shoe, no one is going to buy it."

On a trip to Bilbao, Spain, two years ago, Lotti was struck by the wildly spiraling metallic towers of the Guggenheim Museum. "It looked so different from everything around it," he recalls. "I wanted to do the same thing with a shoe." Eighteen months later, Nike unveiled the Air Max Specter, a slip-on sneaker with an upper sole of grooved, sinuous curves, available in the same titanium gray as the museum's exterior. The shoe became the season's No. 1 seller.

It should be no surprise that the sportswear powerhouse has thrown its weight behind the women's market. (For one thing, there are millions to be saved in endorsements.) When Nike started its women's division in 2000, women generated about $1.5 billion in annual global sales, or 20% of the company's total. The goal is to boost that to one-third, via products such as the Visi Havoc, a $70 sling-back, and the Air Rift, a split-toe design that has been spotted on actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The company has launched a Nike Goddess website (motto: Look Good. Kick Ass) and will open its second Goddess store in Los Angeles in mid-March. Still, for all of Nike's technological and marketing prowess, the Portland, Ore., company may have picked a fight in the wrong ring. "When you open the door to the fashion sector, there are so many more players," says Michael Atmore, editor in chief of Footwear News. "Skechers has done an incredible job. Puma is very hot, and Adidas and Reebok are making every effort to fight for their share."

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