Stifel’s survey reveals an unprecedented breadth of choice between style categories and brands and suggests that Nike is losing a few steps with consumers.
US retailers referenced Nike shoes as most popular in 38.2 per cent of checks in Stifel’s Back to School sneaker survey—a 23.2-pps YoY drop versus 2024 and an all-time low dating back to the survey’s beginning in 2008.
Though Nike is losing a few steps with consumers, its popularity rose in top e-commerce sellers.
There’s a broadening landscape of shoe popularity across brands, styles and price points.
Nike’s popularity, however, increased in top e-commerce sellers. On retailer websites, Nike and Jordan products represented 46 per cent of top 20 styles.
There’s a broadening landscape of shoe popularity across brands, styles and price points, it noted.
“We see a more fragmented and dynamic footwear landscape with diversifying preference across brands, style categories, and price points,” a release from Stifel said.
New Balance’s brand momentum continues, led by favourable style trends while Adidas also jumped by more than 10 points in popularity YoY.
New Balance is gaining the most share, benefitting from style preference shift to Retro Runners. Similarly, continued relevance of the Terrace Style trend drove Adidas popularity references, led by the Adidas Samba and lookalike products.
Saucony, a Wolverine World Wide brand received its first-ever BTS survey mentions, demonstrating traction in new distribution.
Consumers have yet to push back on price, and Stifel observed only modest like-for-like price increases versus prior checks.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
