I think before we blame the store owner, let's start with the source. To be able to purchase Nike merchandise for your store, you must follow their rules to some degree. You must price according to their MSRP when an item is new and you must promote the item in groups together and in a high traffic area. To keep everyone from having the same type of products Nike also has several "levels" of purchasing. This can be noticed more in stores that sell shoes. Stores that get the lastest shoes (the Air Shox, Jordans, etc) first and the store specific shoes (ie Foot Locker) are on the highest level of purchase. I used to be a manager for a chain of stores called Sports and Recreation. Each of the stores took the name of the city it was in (ie Birmingham Sports). After Christmas, all of the stores put our left over Nike windsuits on sale. As always, all sale racks were moved to the front of the store. Well, a Nike Rep happen to walk into that store and was offended that their product was now close to the fishing dept and reported that to their management. So in return, our chain lost it's ability to buy the Air Max shoes, the Jordan's, etc and could only buy the low end of their shoes. You could only imagine what impact that had on overall sales. The bottom line, yes the cost of the Nike products to the stores are very cheap but as long as the demand is there, who is going to stop it? (for example, if you are paying $120.00 for shoes, they only cost the store about $45.00). After 7 years working for different companies and selling the Nike product, I just don't have warm fuzzies about them. At every year end company wide meeting our vendors (Adidas, Reebok, K-Swiss, New Balance) would have t-shirts, hats, socks, shoes, etc for the store manager's as a "thank you" for helping to push their products.....all except for Nike. We would get a keychain or a bumper sticker. We joked to our Nike representive one time about their "thank you" gifts and his comment was "we are Nike, we sell ourself. We don't have to put our product on you for it to sell, everyone wants it." So the only Nike products you will catch me wearing are Bama related....never again will I buy their shoes.
