Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#341

Post by bpt3 »

jacknews wrote: post #161
bpt3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you propose something better that provides money and purpose? Keep in mind that most people are unwilling and unable to sustainably maintain self-employment.

"self-employment" seems like a bit of a joke, like `self-flagellation money to survive, purpose to thrive you don't need a 'job', and particularly a 'job' who's only purpose is to make profit for someone else we really need to rethink society

You need money to buy food, shelter, etc. to survive.

How do you get money when you are unable to do so without an entity (e.g. a company) providing direction and resources?

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#342

Post by bitsage »

tharmas wrote: post #119
Clubber wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if China decided to invade Taiwan like they've been threatening to do for a while. They would instantly cut off all exports to the US, because that's the smart thing to do. They would probably blockade Japan and other countries as well to keep them from exporting to the US, because that's the smart thing to do. Now since our supply chains were greatly disrupted (remember COVID?) we can only go to war with the…

I think the point being made is that under Trump's plan (repatriate production) China is MORE likely to invade Taiwan than before. Under the current situation China is LESS likely to invade Taiwan BECAUSE they rely on selling stuff to the USA. Once that reliance is gone, there are less negative consequences for China if they choose to invade Taiwan.

China could also use the US’ dependence on it as leverage to discourage them from intervening in Taiwan. We just saw this play out with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We routinely see Turkey threaten the EU with migrants over the bloc’s reliance on Turkey. We also saw Azerbaijan make a move for Artsakh knowing the EU needed their gas following the invasion of Ukraine. I believe China would prefer being able to extort the US rather than face the possibility of fighting an unbowed US.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#343

Post by chrisco255 »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #4

It’s like people excited about the new datacenter being built in their town, think of all the jobs that will bring they cry. Nobody realizes it takes 6 people to run a datacenter. Bringing “manufacturing back to the US” is a fool’s errand. The future of manufacturing is automation, not jobs.

Tesla's factories have a ton of automation, but the factory here in Austin employs 22K+ people. Automation will no doubt increase, but that just means the value humans provide is higher level and managing, maintaining, and redesigning the assembly lines as market demands and product categories shift. Datacenters are nothing like factories.

Meanwhile, if it ever gets to the point that automation has truly replaced humans, why not have the machines here at home? There's no good argument against it and plenty of arguments for it.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#344

Post by numpad0 »

giardini wrote: post #80
bryanlarsen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their population is declining Not where it matters. China has a much larger under-employed population base than the US has. They still have a few hundred million peasant farmers whose children can and are getting educated and moving to the city. Their pool of labour is growing while the US's is stagnant. Not that it needs to grow -- over the last decade or so China's factory employment has been relatively constant…

We don't need "peasant farmers" to educate, we need AIs to program!8-)) The race between manual labor and machine labor is heating up anew. We don't yet have humanoid robots but they're on the design table, so it may be time to fasten your seat belt.

You might as well start from educating peasant farmers even at that.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#345

Post by hnburnsy »

The thread was kind of hand wavy over the "$24* discount" for Footlocker? From the linked article...

>Footlocker’s purchase price (read footnote #3) for every sale of $100 shows up as $66 in their financial reports, and not $50. In plain terms, Footlocker sells its merchandise for a 24% discount on the average.

So $100 was never the sale price, just some made up, hoped for number that only appears on the shoe box, and not on anyone's financial statements. Really this should be Footlocker makes $6 on selling a $66 sneaker, for a margin of ~9%.

BTW, both Footlocker and Dick's have gross margins ~30% but Dick's has an operating margin around 12% while FL is 1-2%. Clearly FL is an inferior retailer.

And the linked article does cover Nike selling directly...

>And what happens if brands skip the retailers and operate their own stores? adidas and Nike already have their own shops, but direct-to-customer retail comes with its set of challenges. Brands will incur costs otherwise absent in the wholesale business model; spends like leasing+manpower+operational costs, store set-up and periodic re-modelling cost, the entire risk of inventory, and costs associated with warehousing and distribution. That’s only at the store level, there will be additional off-site resources needed in the back-end to support retail operations. The brands will make some extra margin selling out of their own stores, but the best case scenario will be an additional 10%, which is slightly above what a highly evolved retailer like Footlocker makes annually after taxes.

I would argue that a great deal of selling today is direct, no stores involved at all.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#346

Post by sdwr »

rayiner wrote: post #291
pjc50 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now The thing is .. there's a point here, but it's not at all tied in with physical products. People are obsessed with one side of the ledger while refusing to see the other. Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues. Things where the state is unavoidably involved and having better, more decisive lead…

The free traders also need to accept the reality that the UK’s decline started long before Brexit and disputes about fishing. In terms of per capita GDP, the UK lost its edge over the rest of Europe in the 1970s, and then simply never recovered from the 2008 global financial collapse. Without the empire, the UK’s “competitive advantage” in financial and legal services wasn’t worth shit. I strongly suspect the US cann…

Yeah this is arguably the tail wagging the dog - Trump is a reaction to the end of US hegemony, not the cause

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#347

Post by chrisco255 »

ibeff wrote: post #321
rayiner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bringing “manufacturing back to the US” is a fool’s errand. The future of manufacturing is automation, not jobs. That’s probably correct. But the current trajectory means that China will have the robot-operated factories, not the US. What do you anticipate the US will do to obtain goods from those Chinese factories? Especially when AI stands poised to obsolete a lot of the white collar jobs where the US still retai…

> China will have the robot-operated factories, not the US. What do you anticipate the US will do to obtain goods from those Chinese factories? Why not let the market take care of it? It's cheaper to buy things from China then make them yourself. When that changes, production will naturally move to the next best place. I don't see the issue.

Because China doesn't share the same goals, desires, or policies we do. They will have the power and cards to dictate world policy if you roll over and let them dominate. Realpolitik matters here. You either dominate the future (or at least stay competitive) or you become a vassal state.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#349

Post by grayhatter »

Clubber wrote: post #68
grayhatter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain the strategic value like I'm 5? I see people reference this idea all the time, but I'm unconvinced it's actually valuable enough to be worth it given all the other downsides. I don't actually believe it's a positive value proposition. I see the argument for things of military significance. The common one is electronic components. But PCBs manufacturing is easy to spinup quickly. Which leave the critical compo…

Imagine if China decided to invade Taiwan like they've been threatening to do for a while. They would instantly cut off all exports to the US, because that's the smart thing to do. They would probably blockade Japan and other countries as well to keep them from exporting to the US, because that's the smart thing to do. Now since our supply chains were greatly disrupted (remember COVID?) we can only go to war with the…

> we can only go to war with the equipment we have and will struggle to produce any more equipment in a short period of time. No more uniforms, no more tanks, no more drones, no more missiles, no more artillery shells, no more medicine, etc, because all the materials for those things are largely sourced from Asia, which would now under a blockade.

So if instead all of these weren't sourced from exclusively Asia, and were sourced from many different countries, including domestically, there wouldn't be a problem?

Also, is your assertion really that US military would be at a near term disadvantage, if exports from Asia stopped? That's a wild take.

> They would probably blockade Japan and other countries as well to keep them from exporting to the US, because that's the smart thing to do

You're the first person to try to convince me that it would be smart for China to start a world war with the US and it's allies over Taiwan.

Needless to say, I disagree that it would be smart, I disagree that china would be willing and likely to do it, and disagree they could do it if they actually tried.

Post reply on HN