As some of you know I live in Zurich, a few kms away from the On Running headquarters. Many of my friends work there actually. Every third/fourth person walking in sport shoes walks in On.
Personally I mix Nike (Invincible 3, Tempo Run 5, Alphafly 1, Alphafly 3) and Asics shoes (Metaspeed Sky Tokyo, Noosa 14-15, Trabuco 11). I find Nike very comfortable and fast, although not durable (went through 2 pairs of Invincible 3 and 2 pairs of Tempo Run 4-5, and on average they lasted 400km only). I find Asics less comfortable (quite firm, less cushioning) and equally fast (but only up to 21.1km), but also 1.5-2x more durable than Nike shoes.
given that iam not so much a believer in the carbon in the first place and more in the foam that is fine by me
and given her biomechanics and weight i can see how this works for her.
I had to read the article about Turnschuhhersteller ON just because the sound of the word Turnschuhhersteller is the next awesome thing to Jon Stewart’s late night show.
The article, for those too lazy to read/translate, says On is criticized for only paying 18 swiss francs to its Vietnamese contract producer for a pair of shoes that retail for 190 francs.
Tell you what, I know those companies have hefty margins, but this is just next level. Well done On, you’ve made it
given that iam not so much a believer in the carbon in the first place and more in the foam that is fine by me
and given her biomechanics and weight i can see how this works for her.
The magic sauce, IMO, is the combination of the two – and when you marry that with what the athlete responds best to. But I get your point – it’s not dissimilar from the MetaSpeed Sky vs Edge and what is better for an individual athlete.
The margins aren’t quite what you think – at least, not until you’re selling your own shoes through a direct channel, and then you get the retail part of the margin as well as the wholesale side of it.
Speaking super generally: run shoes traditionally wholesale cost to retailers at “keystone.” Basically a 50-50 split. So if a shoe cost $200 MSRP, it cost $100 for the retailer to buy it. That margin has slimmed slightly on the retail side of the equation over the last decade plus, so you’re now at 45-47 points (which, futures orders often had better margin versus at-once; certain thresholds brought costs down; free shipping if your order exceeded a certain amount; we paid on AmEx plum cards to earn cash back, etc.)
Let’s assume for this basis (I don’t know On’s wholesale conditions as I have been out of the game for a bit) that wholesale cost is 100 francs on that 190 MSRP sale. So manufacturing / materials sits at 18. Then you have R&D, shipping, import tax, etc. on top of that. That’s just to get the shoe to the door of your warehouse / distribution center. Now you have staff there to actually get boxes to doors.
We also, obviously, haven’t touched any of the other overhead in the equation – marketing, HR, insurance, technology, and so on.
It is a finer margin game than any of us would care to admit – especially for the product we here tend to care about.
My point was, that the numbers, market share etc. does not distinguish whether you buy running shoes for fashion or for running.
What the discussion was above, was around “why is Nike losing runners?”
It’s why I traditionally only look at numbers from specialty run sales versus looking at footwear overall, so you can make more of a distinguishing factor.
Laura did a video on it - they tested at NB headquarters and it was the best shoe for her. It is also the marathon shoe they developed for Emily Sissons even though they market it as a 5k/10k shoe presumably for the lower stack…
Anne is still sponsored by Nike and so is Cam Wurf.
They have some athletes in the short course space but not many.
On short course you see more Asics than any other brand and not all of them are sponsored.
nice one at the same time how did they measure how the shoe works after 30k…
i assume she did not run 30 k and she does notice that she feels the muscles more after a race with the pacer.
i mean…i would assume she used the shoe in Roth (writing this without checking) but I would think that if you are more efficient with the shoe in testing - the idea is with her fitness and strength - they would bet on it being the best shoe moving forward.
It would be hard to think that it wasn’t her best choice and she had 2 more minutes in shoe choices.
yes she did use the pacer in roth and her feeling was the pacer felt better.
iam just more interested in the testing protocol how it is decided . what happens after 2 hours with a shoe .
the pacer was sater as stride lenght was longer but she feels miscle tighten up more so chances are solid that at some stage their could be a defelction point where shoes is not faster or slower and risk for tighter muscles.
