Nike will "stop selling its sneakers and apparel directly" on Amazon, ending a program that began in '17, amid a "massive overhaul of Nike's retail strategy," according to Novy-Williams & Soper of BLOOMBERG NEWS. The move follows Nike naming former eBay CEO John Donahoe as its next CEO, a move that "signaled the company is going even more aggressively after e-commerce sales." The question now is "whether other Amazon partners will follow Nike's lead." Under its program with Amazon, Nike "acted as a wholesaler," instead of "letting third-party merchants hawk its products on the site." For years, the only Nike products on Amazon were "gray-market items -- and counterfeits -- sold by others," and Nike had "little control over how they were listed." But Nike also "struggled to control the Amazon marketplace." Third-party retailers whose "listings were removed simply popped up under a different name," and official Nike products had "fewer reviews, and therefore received worse positioning on the site." Nike said that it will "continue to use Amazon's cloud-computing unit, Amazon Web Services, to power its apps and Nike.com services" (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 11/13). Nike also said that it has decided to "focus on its direct business, though it will continue to seek partnerships with other retailers and platforms" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11/13).
