Entering a new year demands bold reinvention, fresh ideas and mindsets for footwear industry giants, if they are to reclaim cultural relevance and stem market share losses.
In the case of consumer product companies, the failure may be gradual or rapid but the result is the same: a lack of relevancy means the brand exits shoppers’ consideration set until ultimately shoppers don’t even notice that the brand is gone.
The uber brands that drove the $168 billion global athletic footwear market for much of the last 45 years are in danger of this exact fate. Under siege from ankle biters, legacy players are getting bested by fast innovation and response times that are rapidly capturing mind and market share.
While legacy sports brands (think Nike and Adidas) evolved into lifestyle brands—the kiss of death with athletes, collectors, sneakerheads and even fashionistas looking for the next new thing—next-gen players are innovating on product and go to market strategies, beating legacy lethargy.
Singularity of focus creates great brands. But the distasteful truth is just this, as businesses scale and MBAs work with and/or replace founders, the priorities of top line growth and margin expansion replace those of knowing the consumer and enhancing brand equity. At some point the brand DNA is watered down as the mantra to grow and grow faster extends the brand beyond its niche to a greater mass and then into adjacent categories that may or may not reinforce core brand values. It is a tightrope to execute, and most businesses succumb to brand dilution as they opt for growth, often to realize—and frequently too late—they lost their authenticity as they gained scale.
Scale vs. Growth: When Market Leaders Become Market Laggers
The U.S. athletic footwear market grew at a 6.6% CAGR 2011-2024, slowed to a 4.0% pace 2019-2024 and is projected to slow further to 2.9% in the 2024-2030 period according to Euromonitor. Nike’s sales of footwear in North America accreted at a more attenuated rate of 5.6% for the 2012-2025 period. Nike’s 5.3% 6YR CAGR is misleading as its base in the depth of the pandemic when North American footwear sales declined $713 million or 7.1%.
Nike’s Footwear Sales FY 2009-2025 ($-in millions)
Incumbents still dominate sales & visibility, but growth slows (slower than category) yet challengers posting outsized gains.
Domestically, Nike’s share of the athletic footwear market sits at 28.9%. While still the dominant athletic footwear brand, it has lost more 1160 basis points of market share in the past 10 years in the U.S.; globally Nike’s share loss was 540 basis points, to 22.9% in the 10-year period through 2025. And this is while Nike’s demand creation reached $4.7 billion, dwarfing the sales volume (and obviously the marketing) of many of its competitors. While Adidas kept its #2 ranking in 2019 and 2024, modest market share erosion occurred during the period (90 basis points or nearly one market share point).
Meanwhile the challengers have become formidable. Hoka, founded in 2009 and acquired by Deckers in 2013, has achieved a 42.3% 7-yr CAGR through 2024, when it reported $2.2 billion in sales, and driving Deckers into the top 10 athletic footwear brands this year with its huge comfy running shoes (dare we call them grandpa slippers). Similarly, On Holdings launched its innovative (cushioned) CloudTec in 2010, going public in 2021 and has achieved the #5 spot in the U.S., growing revenues to $2.6 billion in 2024. And 115-year-old New Balance has nimbly played the basics and collab game to differentiate while opening more stores; it reported a 20% increase to $7.8 billion in 2024 revenues and projects $9.4 billion for 2025.
| TOP 10 US ATHLETIC FOOTWEAR COMPANIES | |||||
| 2016 | MARKET SHARE (%) | 2019 | MARKET SHARE (%) | 2025 | MARKET SHARE (%) |
| NIKE | 40.5 | NIKE | 34.1 | NIKE | 28.9 |
| VF Corp | 8.8 | adidas | 11.0 | adidas | 10.1 |
| adidas | 8.6 | VF Corp | 9.4 | Skechers | 9.0 |
| Skechers | 8.4 | Skechers | 7.5 | New Balance | 6.4 |
| New Balance | 4.0 | New Balance | 3.6 | On AG | 6.3 |
| Asics | 4.0 | Under Armour | 2.7 | VF Corp | 3.9 |
| Under Armour | 3.4 | Asics Corp | 2.6 | Deckers | 3.8 |
| Wolverine | 2.6 | Puma SE | 2.5 | Asics | 3.6 |
| Kering SA | 1.7 | Wolverine | 2.4 | Puma SE | 3.0 |
| Brooks | 1.6 | Fila | 1.9 | Brooks | 2.8 |
| Top 10 | 83.6 | Top 10 | 77.7 | Top 10 | 77.8 |
Source: Passport Euromonitor, December 18, 2025
If we learn anything from Nike’s fiscal Q2 earnings call (Dec 17th) it’s that CEO Elliot Hall has a realistic picture of the state of the Nike brand globally. His commentary was anything but braggadocio despite the turn he has executed in the U.S., though Greater China continues to slide with sales off 17% in the most recent quarter (down 21% for footwear). Chinese consumers increasingly opt for domestic brands over international brands and concurrently Nike is cleaning up its exposure in the region to off-price and working to reposition itself as sports-first not lifestyle. Greater China may remain a problem for years with this secular consumer change in mindset. Corporate wide Nike’s inventory is in a good shape but not so in Greater China, where levels of obsolete inventory grew and will have to be worked off, eliminated. Nike’s stock plunged more than 10% in after hours following the investor call and where it closed the following day.
Incumbents’ channel conflict and bloated networks
The athletic footwear category (sneakers, running shoes, sports footwear) has a high e-commerce penetration, at about 35% versus 29% for U.S. footwear sales in total. During the pandemic, large athletic brands quickly adopted an online strategy and soon encountered rapidly rising digital marketing and customer acquisition costs (CAC), causing them to refocus their efforts on wholesale and physical retail stores. This about-face was most apparent at Nike, which had signaled to its retail partners that it could go it alone. But with more than 60 percent of sales occurring in physical stores, for an athletic footwear brand to be part of the consideration set (and not quickly forgotten) it needs a wholesale and brand store strategy.
The online retail channel turns shoppers into price seeking zealots and erodes brand loyalty as consumers flit from one brand to another for price, fashion and use case. While in physical retail, footwear giants are stymied by slow moving wholesale accounts and their store fleets; the smaller more nimble incumbents can respond to rapidly changing consumer trends. In sum, their sheer scale in an encumbrance.
For instance, running sneakers have enjoyed strong momentum for the past few years as the designs went from extreme comfort to more performance wear, as innovation and newness drove a 9% lift in running shoes for the 12 months ended September 30, 2025 (excluding sales at brand ecommerce sites), according to Circana. Non-participants joined athletes, driving up demand for the running category and even high-end designer Dries Van Noten’s trainer silhouettes powered demand. More recently the popularity of a dressier look, ballet flats and loafers are trending, and fast-moving athletic footwear brands have adapted their assortment to include these looks. One must ask, are these new leaders following the path that Nike is in the midst of correcting, growing by appealing to the mass market and chasing trends at the risk of losing their authentic athletic core?
The industry has changed. What was once an advantage in an encumbrance. While resiliency has always been an asset as ecommerce taught us, since the pandemic it is a requisite and small has an advantage over big with resiliency, opportunistic strategies and executing to building trends.
The Next Upstarts
Salomon, the quiet brand at Amer Sport sits at #20 in terms of top U.S. athletic footwear brands, holding a 0.3% share of this market, and enjoying momentum. Even less known but followed by sneaker cognoscenti and enjoying early cachet are Alohas, Camperlab, Li-Ning and Zimmerman. Each is sold online (naturally) and in selected specialty footwear stores.
The disruptors use their own DTC ecommerce and partner with athletic specialists to create brand awareness, engage in storytelling and feign scarcity, while collecting valuable consumer data not generally shared by chain retailers to build tribes. Meanwhile the incumbents wrestle with channel conflict and bloated distributions.
Big is the enemy of cool Dick Hayne, founder of Urban Outfitter told me 20+ years ago. I have long been amazed at the cool factor Nike enjoyed despite its huge global presence. Its limited drops supported exclusivity that created lines hours before NYC’s Dover Street opened and created hacks online. That may be over for Nike as hard as Elliot Hill tries to restore it. The baton may be midair on the way to the next iconic athletic footwear brand.
