A man shopping for shoes in a Nike Outlet store in Los Angeles on April 10, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty images
Near the one -year bar in the New Nike CEO recovery plan, Elliott Hill, and at a time of growing prices on retail products made in Asia, prices on products through the Core Nike categories and the shoe categories have increased.
In nearly 3,300 SKU (shares conservation units) analyzed by Dataweave from online channels during the period from September 2024 to September 2025, shoes prices increased by 17%, clothing increased by 14%and the prices of equipment and protection increased by 18%.
An analysis month per month shows a moderate price increase in all categories in October 2024, and team clothes / league are jumping the most, but since then, price increases in this category have been at a slower rate. The major price increase started in January 2025, when the prices of accessory and equipment / protection categories increased by more than 10%, followed by shoes with two -digit price increases (11%). From February to September 2025, prices quickly increased on many products.
“This up regularly movement shows that Nike is based on pricing power in its main performance categories, even as external pressures such as the prices and chalises of compression margins,” said Karthik Betttadapura, co-founder and CEO of Dataweave. “The more modest ascent of 9% in team and league clothes indicates that consumers in this segment are more sensitive to prices than in others,” said Bettadapura.
Price data suggest that Nike is selective with its price increases, protecting its strongest products while testing where higher prices can hold without losing demand, according to Dataweave.
“In practice, Nike’s pricing architecture reflects a targeted approach, strengthening the value of the brand’s performance while using certain promotions to maintain accessibility,” said Bettadapura. “If they support this discipline, Nike can balance the profitability of consumer perception on a market where buyers are increasingly both value and innovation.
In the second half of 2024, Nike underwent a net slowdown, its drop in the most steep sales since the pandemic. In September of last year, the company announced Hill’s return as CEO. In June of last year, the retailer had planned a significant drop in sales, leading the change of management and a plan to focus on the fundamental principles that have long defined the company and made it the market leader in sneakers and athletic clothing.
Price increases were part of the plan, many products seeing bumps in May, according to previous CNBC reports.
During his last quarter, Nike displayed the growth of surprise sales, a sign that the recovery plan worked, but also provided for low months of holiday shopping, suggested a jumper road to the recovery.
“It will take some time,” said Hill in an exclusive interview with Sara Eisen from CNBC on Monday. “It is not linear. But it is a portfolio, and ultimately, the objective is to make the entire portfolio work to generate income and the profit that we hope to make for all our investors.”
The company declared in its most recent revenues which it expected that the prices cost it $ 1.5 billion and reached its gross margin of 1.2 percentage points during its fiscal 2026 in progress, an increase compared to the $ 1 billion and 0.75 percentage of gross margin margin that it planned in June.
One of the ways in which Nike, as well as other American importers, have sailed in prices, is the download.
According to Importgenius, which followed the imports of Nike from January 2025 to October, the company advanced imports in three separate periods: February (3,173 EVP) to April (4,427 EVP) before April 2, the world rates were announced by President Trump for the first time; May (3,622 EVP) until June (4,690), a period period when a temporary pricing truce was announced with China; and a third import wave from July (3,624 EVP) in September (4,203 EVP).
The Nike supply chain is diversified, but with the expansion of the trade war worldwide, the company now pays tariff layers all its supply chain. According to Panjiva, the port of origin of Nike import shipments for 2025 is broken down among a variety of countries: Indonesia (37.9%), Vietnam (25.7%), China (10.4%), India (6.8%), Pakistan (5.7%), Jordan (5.6%) and Israel (2.3%).
During the recent profit call, the financial director Matt Friend cited a variety of opposite winds for the gross margin, including higher wholesale discounts, higher discounts in Nike factory stores, cost of increased products, including new prices and winds of mixing.
Bill Simon, a former Walmart CEO, told CNBC that there have certainly been increased price increases that exert increased pressure on the costs of goods sold, direct costs associated with the production of a property, but the level of price increases in the past year also suggests other factors in play.
“Many companies have so far been able to alleviate substantial impact parties,” said Simon. “Others have not been able to do so for various reasons.”
Simon added that prices should be considered to be applied to the components of the products, not to the final retail price.
“For example, there are no prices on the profit margin,” said Simon. “A retail price for a pair of $ 100 Nike would include a 50% margin for the retailer (as well as an additional margin for Nike). In addition, shipping, the cost of logistics, etc., are not subject to prices,” he said.
Although Simon pointed out that he had no direct knowledge of the Nike strategy and cannot therefore analyze prices in a broader retail context, he said that even if all COGs were affected, which means that they were unable to mitigate one of the impact, an increase in prices of 17% would seem “excessive”.
“If this is the case, there is probably another reason for the price increases of this magnitude,” he added.
Under Hill, Nike reduced promotions as part of its recovery plan, citing excessive online updating. Last December, the company said online the online company would return to “a full price model”, but that it would be necessary to sell stocks first. Friend declared on the call for the most recent profits that the company continues to take measures to reposition Nike Digital as a company at high prices, but organic traffic continues to decrease with two figures. “With a business in the previous year which was more concentrated on conventional shoe franchises and the launch of sneakers, as well as on a higher mixture of sales at a reduced price, the traffic compositions will remain under pressure,” he said. “We do not expect Nike Direct to return to growth for exercise 26,” he added.
Christina Fernández, senior research analyst of the retail research company Telsey Advisory Group, said that Nike had increased the prices of shoes and clothing, but according to her research, other retail brands increased even more prices, for example, 50% of shoe increases on the American nike volumes of $ 10. She added that the overall dynamic of retail prices remains fluid. Adidas, for example, has not yet increased the price, according to Fernandez, and regular promotions remain a characteristic of this period.
Overall, Telsey’s follow-up on a limited sample of 76 sports products items since mid-April shows that clothing prices have increased by 3%, shoes prices increased by 1%and the prices of lasting lines / equipment increased by 7%. But that will be held above. “We expect more price increases to circulate in the rest of this year and in the first half of 2026,” she said.
