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

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

#541

Post by Symbiote »

stevage wrote: post #516
Symbiote wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Warhammer set during Covid and was amazed at the detail, compared to the 1990s stuff I had as a kid. I can't say what's more difficult to manufacture - millions of identical bricks that snap together, or a huge range of different, detailed designs which fit snugly together but don't lock. Just the first thing on the home page: https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Deathlords-Mortarchs-Ma...

> millions of identical bricks Clearly you are not aware of the extraordinary range of Lego pieces.

Proportionate to the size of each company and the amount of toys they produce, I'll bet there's significantly more variety in Warhammer.

Just from a quick search, within a year Games Workshop offer about 3000 different model kits, each of which will contain ~1-4 unique moulded sprues. There seem to be at least 50 new kits each year, possibly 100, otherwise what's available rotates around the older kits.

Lego have produced about 15,000 different sets since 1950, and a huge number of the parts are shared between sets. (That's the whole point of the toy, no?)

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

#542

Post by int_19h »

palmotea wrote: post #387
jacknews wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then we should change society that is my point

> then we should change society > that is my point You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Realistically, you're not going to change society to give people "money and purpose" without a job. Fixating on an unrealistic goal takes focus away from more realistic ones. I mean, for a least a century people have been proposing using productivity improvements to increase leisure time and distribute goods more e…

Up until 1970s or so, productivity gains translated to increases in worker pay, so it certainly doesn't have to be like it is now.

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

#543

Post by immibis »

callamdelaney wrote: post #490
philjohn wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except since no parliament can bind a future parliament it won't be worth the paper it's written on. The loudest voices calling for a scrap are exactly the people you DON'T want deciding what human rights you'll be "allowed". And incitement to violence is, and always should be, unprotected speech - your silly "two tier kier" is informing me greatly that you're on the "they locked them up for hurty words!" bandwagon.

Weird, the bill of rights act of 1689 is still in force. It’s literally the policy of this country to sentence white men to harsher custodial sentences with more chance of a custodial sentence than any other group, simply for the crime of being a white man. Are these the sorts of people you think should decide our rights? If the government would do what people have been voting for for decades and end mass immigration…

[flagged]

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

#544

Post by toephu2 »

lossolo wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #42

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…

This. Anyone who doesn’t believe it — please go spend some time in Shenzhen, Shanghai, or similar cities, like I did. I just got back from China. I’ve been (also lived and worked) to the U.S. many times, and I can confidently say that China’s tier-1 cities are on another level when it comes to development and QoL (and not only T1 cities, I was in smaller regions in the north too). It’s also incredibly clean, super sa…

Yup, Chinese Tier 1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen) are probably 20 years ahead of their Western counterparts (in terms of crime, or lack thereof, public transportation, convenience, cleanliness, etc).

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

#545

Post by ebruchez »

overfeed wrote: post #513
ebruchez wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to be convinced that China has lots of bright, hard-working individuals. I just want to point out that China faces immense challenges and that we should see beyond, and push back against, the propaganda. There is a massive asymmetry between China and democratic nations in this regards.

This is a fair assessment. However, I think there is propaganda or self-delusion in the west that leads some people to believe that free markets and/or democracy are preconditions for any number of desirable outcomes like creativity, economic success, product innovation, etc. That may have empirically been true against the Eastern Bloc/Soviet Union during the cold war, but is not obvious to me regarding China today.…

Future might tell. But while it's tempting, I wouldn't bet against democracy and freedom just yet.

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

#546

Post by int_19h »

sys32768 wrote: post #232

I prefer leather shoes that last five years or more, and will happily spend $200+ for them.

That is great for those who can afford $200+ shoes, not so much for those who're already struggling to make ends meet. Sure, in principle, they will save more long term. But it'll take time for those savings to realize, and they need shoes now (to wear them to work, for one).

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

#547

Post by blacksmith_tb »

tayo42 wrote: post #331
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a year of Mandarin as an undergrad, speaking is doable, reading and writing is hard, but Google Translate & Co. would make that less daunting now.

I thought speaking would be hardest with the tone changes. I took one online class, was overwhelming

I felt like it started making sense after a month or so, but even though I got up to ~1500 characters at the end of the year, reading was never easy.

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

#548

Post by hed »

amotinga wrote: post #313
crmi wrote: post #163

Interesting article but fails to mention about Nike big pivot to DTC around covid times. So will likely be taking home a lot more than 9% (or _were_ up til last year)

what is DTC?

Direct To Consumer. Selling directly to their customers on Nike.com disintermediating Foot Locker or another distributor/retailer network.

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

#549

Post by hermitShell »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #517
rayiner wrote: post #42

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…

> When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology Perhaps you should have considered that like in Art, the first step to proficiency in anything really is mimicry.

True, and now I believe China has kept their industrial might while also pursuing higher technology. So they have the mine and the steel plant and the car factory. I recall Musk commenting that through human history, it’s more normal for China to be the most advanced nation on the planet, not the USA. Still, brutal place to live and work. Ultimately you have to offer people a chance at happiness, or else internal failures tend to sabotage all external signs of success.

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

#550

Post by subsubzero »

A few things to unpack here:

Lets say a nike shoe costs $120 or so today(searching air jordans in google lists a huge number of shoes at that price point), in my mind this is quite cheap as I wanted a pair of Air Jordans in 1990 and they were the same price, $120 for kids shoes roughly 35 years ago. Adjusted for inflation thats roughly $303 USD in 2025 dollars. So basically through outsourcing manufacturing to China and supply chain efficiencies Nike has brought down their product price by roughly 1/3.

Another thing to think about is the insane amount of money offered to athletes in sponsorship deals, I believe Jordan was one of the first athletes to command big money from a company(they made a movie about it a few years ago). This cost paying hundreds of athletes millions a year is a huge cost on Nikes bottom line.

In addition to the sponsorships some athletes have profit sharing (Jordan for sure) so a percentage of sales go to said athlete. Throw in marketing and you have another huge cost.

Would I rather see manufacturing jobs come back to the US and Nike curtail sponsorship money and profit sharing, hell yes. This is easy money to get back and would bring tens of thousands of jobs back to this country, if people were snapping up air jordans for the equivalent of $300 a pair back in the 90's they will do the same in this day and age. And if don't want to cut back sponsorship money, just raise the shoe prices, things are really really cheap compared to what they cost 30 years ago and Nike would still make a hefty profit.

Fun fact - I always buy new balance shoes that are made in usa, they sell both outsourced and domestic production and would rather have my money go to a US worker. At the very least I hope to see other companies do this so I have a choice, most give no choice and force consumers to buy Chinese made products.

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