Rafa Ace crew more $$$ than the Fuego!?

[VAMOS DAN]

Ok so im from the uk and paid out £39.99 each for the mandarin and crimson fuego nadal shirts.

Im liking the look of the new ace green shirt, but wait, its £41.99!? where are nike going with this?

Why are the prices going up and up! its getting ridiculous

[nicolaisidek]

In my country, 2011 RF and Rafa tops are priced at USD80. Nike UK and Malaysia have the same pricing system. Annoying

[PureAlph4]

Lol. Get used to it. Their prices are only going one way (68% hike in the past 12 months).

There is no way I will pay over GBP40 for a tennis crew, and as a participator in the market system I choose not to demand their produce at this ridiculous price point. A year ago I would buy stuff I liked / thought would sell out on release, but now only with at least 40% discount. Spend your money on other areas of tennis where prices are stable or deflated (lessons, rackets, ball machine, club membership, watching live tennis etc).

Even with commodity prices at their heady heights, I suspect Nike could rationalise prices a little by cutting some of their design team, seeing as they have come up with so much junk this year!

[rjg007]

Cotton prices rose hugely over the past couple of years, they are expected to fall by 50% in the next 2 years so although Nike is raising prices now we may see a price cut at the beginning of 2012.

[bezs]

Their tennis shirts are made of polyester though.

[T21D]

Originally Posted by bezs

Their tennis shirts are made of polyester though.

I thought they were made out of recycled water bottles. Little did I know they fetched that much.

[rovex]

switch to Adidas. You won't regret getting cheaper stuff and in addition far better designs and colours.

[rjg007]

The cotton prices will affect other parts of the Nike lines and instead of rising prices in one line they will have done blanket rises. I really hope we have a drop in price in the near future.

The prices are getting close to what I would pay for a designer polo, not a sports polo.

[Kunohara]

Adidas stuff is the fugly.

When will their idea of design stop being throwing a bunch of paint on a shirt with a brush in a random pattern ?

[Gasolina]

Originally Posted by rovex

switch to Adidas. You won't regret getting cheaper stuff and in addition far better designs and colours.

I'm an exclusive adidas user but I'd have to disagree. Nike has had the better designs over the last few years especially with the ridiculously bland showing of adidas FW2010.

I will say that Adidas really killed Nike in SS2011.

Also adidas is a lot more reasonably priced and has better quality / consistency than Nike

[PureAlph4]

I can't see the Nike prices falling at any point. The Rafa and Fed shorts did reduce in price in the UK market by GBP1 from spring to summer, but that was likely just a price smoothing move over the range, as the crews (which doubtless sell more) increased by an equivalent amount.

Oil prices are set to remain high, and the current gear was probably produced under oil forward contracts exchanged long before the current spike (i.e input raw materials being cheaper).

Oil obviously is used in the production of plastics (i.e polyester; maybe some bioplastics are involved) and feeds into the cost of just about every item.

As rjg points out, other commodities like cotton have also inflated massively.

Nike have moved production of certain items (e.g Rafa crews) to locations such as Israel, where it is likely wage costs are higher than in the Far East.

Those cost pressures have all been evident over the past year, and in spite of huge increases in the pricing of their lines Nike has felt its profit margins being squeezed, and have stated that they will raise prices over the foreseeable future to defend those margins.

Their endorsements of Rafa and Fed are now more important to them than ever, as the only way embattled consumers are going to continue to buy this gear at these prices is where the desire to associate themselves with the characteristics that idol represents is so great that their price elasticity becomes very low.

Either way, there's probably very little growth potential for them in N America and Western Europe, so they are probably focussing their strategy on increasing revenue in areas with rapidly increasing disposable incomes (i.e Far East: their China revenue already dwarfs Japan; areas of S America etc).