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

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

#971

Post by Sammi » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

forgotoldacc wrote: post #731

lolinder wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful extrapolating based on China's current population and demographics. Too much of our armchair assessments of China's velocity is based on their meteoric rise on the backs of a historically large working-age population—a population that is now rapidly aging out of the workforce with nothing to replace it thanks to the one child policy. The US's demographics aren't stellar, but they're a lot better off than m…

India has a bigger population but they haven't risen anywhere near the way China has. China's rise was due to smart planning and investment in their people and infrastructure. The country went from peasant farmers to the manufacturing hub of the world in a generation. Now they're in the process of becoming a major hub of knowledge workers while keeping a strong manufacturing backbone. And one thing I rarely see menti…

You completely disregarded the central thesis of the comment you responded to.

The one child policy means there are no people to do the manufacturing in China in the future. The population pyramid is inverted. You can't do manufacturing without lots and lots of people. Or at least you'll get out competed by your neighbours who have lots of labor.

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

#972

Post by lolinder » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 10:02 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #967

lolinder wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not. The Chinese have never been especially unified until very recently and they're internally quite diverse on all the key measures of ethnicity: their languages are mutually unintelligible, their religious belief systems span the entire breadth of world religions plus a wide spectrum of home grown ones, and their value systems are very different. One China is a convenient fiction invented by an authorit…

ser, do I need to pull up a map of Europe or India at any time in history? "One country" is a recent historical phenomenon. by the standard of most large landmasses, China was, in fact, far more cohesive and united - compared to the hundreds of local lords and kings with their tiny little fiefs in, say, India

You're shifting the goalposts from "they're ethnically the same people with a shared culture" to "by the standards of large landmasses China was more cohesive and united than India".

Comparing Chinese unity favorably to India is damning with faint praise, and doesn't do anything at all to help your original argument that China has better "social cohesion and political stability" than Western countries by virtue of having less immigration.

We're not comparing the social cohesion of landmasses, we're comparing the social cohesion of states, and India is a particularly disjointed example to use.

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

#973

Post by snerbles » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 10:53 PM UTC

profsummergig wrote: post #305

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…

> Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. I blame Peter Zeihan for this kind of thinking. His views are immensely popular in the very powerful and influential circles. And he constantly derides China's capabilities. Since 2014 he's been saying it's going to collapse any day now. He still says it.

There are rank-and-file members of the western intelligence community that watch/read Zeihan just so they know what their own leadership is ingesting.

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

#974

Post by grayfaced » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #917

grayfaced wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't making a point about blockbusters though. Star Wars would fail my criteria as well. It's not about money it's about influence. The stuff you listed is the antithesis of that, watered down for a global audience. I'm talking about the "I want to visit CityX" because I saw what it's like and that's my vibe. It's not a matter of growing the industry because it's already orders of magnitude bigger then what it co…

No one in Asia wants to visit nyc because of friends, sienfeld or sex and the city. These shows to them are mostly raw garbage. The reason is because these shows are culturally focused. Its catered exclusively to the type of American humor and values that most people in Asia do not give two shits about. They want to visit Hollywood because they want to see the technology that built these blockbusters because internat…

You've completely missed the point. Crouching tiger/Hero are not modern chinese culture. I haven't even seen the shows I mentioned, but I also know if I mention New York overseas, that is what people think of it. They are known around the world. It's not about quality, it's not about blockbusters, it's about the raw influence of "what is New York". Are you suggesting that overseas, the lesson we should take on Chinese culture from Chinese media is that China is infested by demons, has no electricity and is a feudal system??

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

#975

Post by avar » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

literalAardvark wrote: post #786

lanthissa wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US wont end up in the situation that UK finds itself in because the land it occupies is some of the most productive land on earth and at a similar scale as china. The incredible wealth of america, is that its a land mass that in the old world would be supporting 500m-1.5b people, but is divided only amount 350m. The city at the center of the Missouri and Mississippi if it were in europe would be a major civilization.…

I'm not super knowledgeable about AU, but my gut impression is that it doesn't have much in the way of natural advantages. Yes, it's lowpop, but that's about it. Somewhat similar for CA, but CA is a lot better off than AU.

Out of those three, Australia's economy is proportionally the most reliant on natural resources. Its mining sector alone is a bit over 10% of overall GDP.

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

#976

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 11:59 PM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #898

ezst wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, Republicans are hard at work making the USA a pariah state and turning away the educated migrants who've been behind most of the innovation and research of past decades.

What, non-migrant Americans are not up to it?

The US has benefited quite a bit by being a magnet for some of the most educated and driven people from around the world. This is not a controversial take.

Now, legal resident noncitizens are being deported for having political views that oppose the ruling executive party. This is not normal in the US.

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

#977

Post by hnburnsy » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #935

hnburnsy wrote: post #345

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, an…

I agree, isn't most selling online nowadays? This also doesn't make sense because buying shoes from Nike.com costs roughly the same as Footlocker. Is Nike taking that 50% cut in this case? Article definitely hand waves away a ton of the complexity around tariffs and global trade. My favorite line is: "Asian manufacturing in Asia produces US jobs. You go to Footlocker to buy a pair of $100 shoes because you can afford…

The quoted article from the thread is from 2016, so yeah more selling is online and direct from the manufacturers.

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

#978

Post by hnburnsy » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 12:07 AM UTC

hnburnsy wrote: post #977

ericmcer wrote: post #935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, isn't most selling online nowadays? This also doesn't make sense because buying shoes from Nike.com costs roughly the same as Footlocker. Is Nike taking that 50% cut in this case? Article definitely hand waves away a ton of the complexity around tariffs and global trade. My favorite line is: "Asian manufacturing in Asia produces US jobs. You go to Footlocker to buy a pair of $100 shoes because you can afford…

The quoted article from the thread is from 2016, so yeah more selling is online and direct from the manufacturers.

Nike Sales DTC versus Total

  Fiscal Year | DTC Sales (in billion USD) | Total Sales (in billion USD) | DTC as % of Total Sales
  ----------- | -------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ----------------------
  2020        | 12.4                       | 37.4                         | 33%
  2021        | 16.4                       | 44.5                         | 37%
  2022        | 18.7                       | 46.7                         | 40%
  2023        | 20.3                       | 47.6                         | 43%
  2024        | 21.5                       | 48.2                         | 45%

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

#979

Post by hnburnsy » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 12:09 AM UTC

soared wrote: post #604

hnburnsy wrote: post #345

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, an…

I work in marketing for a large number of e-commerce brands across a variety of verticals, including shoes. Brand direct on Nikes website is bugged, but is absolutely dwarfed by sales in brick and mortar retail stores. Think about target/walmart/dicks/big5/etc and then think about just Nike.

45% of Nike's sales in 2024 were DTC, see chart above.

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

#980

Post by ninetyninenine » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 1:42 AM UTC

grayfaced wrote: post #974

ninetyninenine wrote: post #917

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in Asia wants to visit nyc because of friends, sienfeld or sex and the city. These shows to them are mostly raw garbage. The reason is because these shows are culturally focused. Its catered exclusively to the type of American humor and values that most people in Asia do not give two shits about. They want to visit Hollywood because they want to see the technology that built these blockbusters because internat…

You've completely missed the point. Crouching tiger/Hero are not modern chinese culture. I haven't even seen the shows I mentioned, but I also know if I mention New York overseas, that is what people think of it. They are known around the world. It's not about quality, it's not about blockbusters, it's about the raw influence of "what is New York". Are you suggesting that overseas, the lesson we should take on Chines…

>but I also know if I mention New York overseas, that is what people think of it

They know of it for different reasons. It has nothing to do with the shows.

>It's not about quality, it's not about blockbusters,

Blockbusters are a form of quality. Just not your form form of quality. You prefer sex and the city.

> Are you suggesting that overseas, the lesson we should take on Chinese culture from Chinese media is that China is infested by demons, has no electricity and is a feudal system??

People know about NYC because it's just a famous city. It has nothing to do with some shows that nobody in Asia watches. I'm also not talking about any of China's cities as marketed by media. I'm talking about the idea of China itself.

The idea that America is a powerful country and that NYC is a great city is slowly dying. Dying because the reality of it is dying as well. It's a slow death one that may never finish in your lifetime but there's no denying that we see a lot of decline.