I wrote about Nike (NKE) a while ago during NBA finals. I joked about Nike is the loser in this NBA finals because their super star James’ team lost. Obviously in the real world Nike is doing very well, especially internationally (Europe and Asia, specificialy China). Here is their quarterly report. This is not surpising consider my mom, who is not into fashions or sports, asked me “buy a pair of Nike shoes” for my 12 years old niece. Note when she talked about the Nike shoes, she was referring to the shoes in sneakers category. Just like when people talked about “google something”, they are referring to “search something on the web”.
So here is the brand. Back more than 20 years, Nike came out of nowhere (Oregon to be exact), virtually created this sneakers category. Today it also makes many other sports related goods. But its soul remains in the shoes. Interestingly, if you look at the “footwear industry” at Google finance, after Nike’s $29.28 b, here comes Crocs, a sandals maker with $3.46 b market cap. Note one year ago, Crocs was about $1 b company (it grew 270% in last 12 months). I think the street got a bit nervous about Crocs today, they decided sell CROX (drop 4.88%) and bought NKE (up 8.31%).
I’m not suggesting we do those of kind tape reading all the time. But I think it’s fun to put things in perspective so that we don’t get too excited about Crocs or Nike, for that matter.