Why Skechers Is Suddenly Beating Adidas and New Balance
Money is not a client of any investment adviser featured on this page. The information provided on this page is for educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Money does not offer advisory services.
With consumers increasingly choosing walking and "fashion-casual" over running sneakers, California-based Skechers has pulled into second place in the sports footwear market, according to a new report by retail tracker NPD Group.
Nike and its Jordan brand still command a dominant 62% of the sneaker market. But Skechers grew to 5% market share last quarter. Third-place Adidas accounted for 4.6% of the market.
Though running shoes are still by far the most popular type of sneaker in the U.S., the growth in Skechers’s sales—up 29% last year—has mostly come from its casual and walking segments.
“Walking has been relatively dormant for a number of years, and they’ve kind of reignited it,” NPD Group analyst Matt Powell told the Wall Street Journal.
This hot streak follows choppier performance in the early 2000s, and amounts to a turn-around for a company that in 2012 was forced to pay $40 million in fines after the Federal Trade Commission found it falsely claimed its "Shape Ups" shoes could tone the buttocks.
One trend that's helped the company? Men are increasingly driving the shift to sneaker-as-fashion staple.