Nike Top of the Pile

Statista had a nice post on the shoe industry, in order to see who's the king of sneakers. Due to the rise in athleisure, brands like Nike and Adidas can be found everywhere, including places where you least expect them, like the runway for example. This has led to these businesses raking in billions of dollars feeding the sneaker frenzy.

Nike comes up top of the global sneaker race with annual sales of $22.3 billion, Jordans are still the best-selling shoes of all time! Thank you MJ. Adidas is a strong number two with $14.6 billion in annual sales, but growth seems to have peaked there. A pleasant surprise was seeing Asics in third place with annual sales of $2.9 billion, the successor of the Tiger brand of shoes.

If you've read Phil Knight's book "Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike", you'll recall that Nike started out licensing Japanese running shoes for the US market under the brand Tiger. The deal fell through when the Japanese got greedy, and in the 1970s Phil Knight quickly started making superior running shoes under the brand Nike, The Greek Goddess of Victory, with the swish and the slogan "Just Do It".

Nike is our largest consumer retail holding that we own for our clients, outside of the e-commerce retail industry. It makes me very happy to see Nike dominate a growing segment but also take pretty much all the growth as they have superior innovation and style at the same time. In the wise words of the former GE exec Jack Welch, This Giant Can Dance!

You will find more infographics at Statista