Trimmed down Nike wants to tap into market trends faster

Nike wants to trim down, saying goodbye to 2 % of its staff. It has 70,700 employees worldwide, which means about 1,400 jobs will be cut.

Focus on 12 cities

The company wants to cut costs through a restructuring program following weaker sales. Classic clothing manufacturers have become more competitive, with sportive touches in their own clothing. Online sales have only sped up that competition.

At the same time, Nike wants to focus on about twelve cities: London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Milan, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul. It hopes to generate 80 % of its growth until 2020 from those regions, which is an ambitious claim. Its growth plan forecasts a sizeable turnover growth by 2020, from 30.6 billion dollars now to 50 billion dollars then. Doubling down its efforts on a few core markets should help it create a more effective marketing and logistics chain.

Hit the market faster

In these particular areas, it also hopes to tap into faster-evolving market trends even faster. The goal is to halve its new product development process.

It will also tackle its internal structure, with only four instead of six regions: North America, Europe, Middle East / Africa, China / Asia / Pacific / Latin America.