Bold Prediction: I think by 2035 neither Nike, Adidas, or Under Armour will be the dominant shoe brand. I believe we will have a new company which will change the game dynamically. A new Apple or Tesla of shoes.
(1) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/under-a...
> Good running shoes are not vought from any of these brands
The Nike Vaporfly has made numerous headlines[0] for "technology doping" because runners are using it to win marathons. From the recent NYC marathon, Nike and Adidas dominated in comparison to other shoe brands[1]:
> Of the total 36 podium finishers, 25 were wearing Nike shoes
> Of the 12 winners, 8 were wearing Nike shoes
> Adidas comes second with 6 podium finishers and 2 winners
> Other brands are Brooks (2 podiums), Asics, Saucony and New Balance (1 podium each)
0: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/31/801580146/amid-nike-controver...
1: https://www.runningshoesguru.com/2018/11/shoes-of-the-winner...
Absolutely. Any day now, humans will lose their taste for novelty and fashion.
Invest in burlap!
If we see a new shoe company, it will be an athlete-run business that comes from someone like Lebron or Curry starting their own brand. But Nike / UA would never let that happen which is why they pay them millions of dollars in endorsements. And if it did happen, Nike would acquire the new company in short order.
UA sells shoes, no question. Just not to sneakerheads.
Think of it this way, I remember as web engineer, when engineers were installing Chrome on family members computers to get them off the built-in browser. Chrome was far better (at the time) and the core audience - engineers - helped Chrome ascend to the status as most widely used browser (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share).
Nike, Adidas, and recently New Balance have just consistently produced more exiting designs beyond the initial hype machine.
A simple look at the StockX resale market reflects that.
I'm not surprised this app failed. UA is a big brand and, no doubt this will not kill them. But they aren't an 'exiting' brand. Focus on the core product - that marketing that the core product design provides effects all their efforts - this app included.
Obviously, such good design exists -- I like one cordless drill better than the other, for example -- but often time good design is not immediately obvious. What are the hallmarks of good shoe design that you look for? What excites you about one shoe vs another, and that prompts you to buy specific shoes rather than whatever happens to fit at $store?
In my collection I have all three types. Some sneakerheads are into collecting only the most valuable shoes in terms of reselling (this is not me).
Even for my utilitarian shoes/boots I obsess over details such as construction, comfort, and craft/style. It's why I'm a fan of some limited Redwing & Nick's Handmade boots and not something you can just pick up at your local big box store.
What I consider a great shoe design, another sneakerhead might think is trash. Some sneakerheads only collect specific types/brands. For me it's usually a combination of style/design, quality of materials, and comfort. If a shoe isn't comfortable I won't wear it and if it's valuable in the aftermarket I'll probably sell it for profit at some point - unless it's a pure work of art in which case I'll keep it indefinitely. Yes there are shoes like that (for me).
But there are trends - shoes that a great many people find "exciting" or good design for various reasons. As I mentioned in my original comment, there are reselling marketplaces such as StockX (stockx.com) that track trends and display the value sneakers - the value can be dictated by a combination of factors such as design/style, materials and rarity with a peppering of comfort & utility.
I totally get that some people just want a shoe to be a shoe and don't care much about style/design. I just happen not to be one of those people.
To the gp's point, the single pair of UA sneakers I own are highly functional and sport-specific that only come out at the gym...but picking them out of a crowd of UA's lineup is difficult.
Most people won't use it, but for those who want it, they can have it..
Someone should start a "service shutdown customer data export as service" business.. :-)
The company quietly pulled its UA Record app from both Google Play and Apple's App Store on New Year's Eve. In an announcement dated sometime around January 8, Under Armour said that not only has the app been removed from all app stores, but the company is no longer providing customer support or bug fixes for the software, which will completely stop working as of March 31.
Source:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/smart...
As for sports tracking, there are a few reasons I can see to use them: Social, Health, Visualization, & Data collection/management
Maybe a little off topic for some, but here is my experience with sports tracking after using a couple of different solutions during the past 10 years:
I like Endomondo, and joined fairly short after they launched the website.
They have had a pro version, a plus version, and now a premium version. Just when the app launched, I bought the paid version from the app store, which was a single payment and I liked to support a new, and in my case local, initiative.
One thing which was really nice with particularly this app, was the audio feedback, while running, so no need to look at a screen to get the lap time, pace, heart rate, etc.
I don't use the social features a lot, but it seems that Strava[0] now dominates in this space, I have tried their app, but I don't like their data vis, and find their privacy/sharing permissions to distracting to modify to suit my preference.
I have since moved to using a running watch from Garmin and don't really rely on the tracking capability of a smartphone.
Now I have copied my running activities to runalyze[1] a project which used to have all their code base on github in their earlier days. They do a fantastic job at visualizing data from both my watch and surprisingly also very well from 3rd party footpod powermeters[2], they do this much better than Garmin does on their own website[3] because they overlay right and left shoe on the same graph. They do on the other hand, not have 'social' features, but you can generate a public sharable URL.
Luckily, Garmin is a pretty big company, and the will hopefully not close their service any time soon, but it bothers me a little that on my newer watch, 920XT, I need data connection to extract my activities from my watch directly directly to their platform in order to view it.
On my old 910XT, it was possible to extract activities to my laptop, or even to my phone with a 3rd party app[4] and an ANT+ chip. There was even a nice app for viewing activities locally on the device [5] - a really nice solution if you don't have a data connection, and you are using an older watch with an android phone.
Over all, I have been very happy with Garmin, just with the tiny exceptions of need for online sync, and the decision to remove support for their temperature sensor data field.
-cheers
[3] https://connect.garmin.com/
[4] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quantrity....
[5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sk.flashdev.gc...
