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The story
An article reporting that major sportswear maker Asics is closing in on ¥1 trillion in sales while the world’s top sportswear giant Nike continues to struggle went viral on 5ch. Commenters pointed to differences in foot shape, with posts like “Nike doesn’t fit wide Japanese feet” and “Japanese feet are flat,” and the thread cited data showing Asics has even overtaken Nike in shoe-wear share at the Hakone Ekiden relay. Some argued that Nike’s own discount sales and advertising strategy had hurt its brand image, and opinions were divided over what really separated the two companies’ fortunes.
10/12 (Mon) 8:00 JST — Shueisha Online
Asics is on the verge of breaking ¥1 trillion in sales. Meanwhile, Nike, one of the world’s biggest sportswear makers, keeps struggling. How did Asics, once mired in the red, pull off its comeback, and why has Nike lost its momentum? We break down the “sales approach” and management reforms that separated the two companies’ fortunes.
What separated Asics and Nike’s fortunes
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Asics fits best.
Exactly.
Maybe it's just me, but Japanese feet are flat.
There's no way I can wear Nikes.
My toenails end up bloody.
It's a domestic-only brand.
And if you actually look into ARENA, that's just Japan selling stuff under a borrowed foreign name too.
Overseas it's known as Onitsuka! (Onitsuka Tiger, Asics' retro sub-brand)
The article's saying that's not the case anymore.
Nike's the one on the decline now.
Though Nike itself actually started out as a distributor for Onitsuka Tiger.
"If you actually look into it" — so lame.
Sure, but neither company is a shoes-only maker — that goes for Asics too.
Nike just doesn't fit wide Japanese feet very well.
In a good way, they had a bit of a complex about the West, so they kept grinding away promoting themselves in Europe and the US. If they manage to break into the soccer and basketball markets, even a ¥2 trillion company starts to look possible.
That place is nuts — the ones at Namba CITY and Dotonbori are just as bad. Umeda's not as bad, probably because the store there is bigger.
The base of my big toe hurts too much for me to even think about that.
2026 Hakone Ekiden runner shoe share
Adidas — 75 runners, 35.7%
Asics — 60 runners, 28.5%
Nike — 35 runners, 16.6%
Puma — 31 runners, 14.7%
On — 3 runners, 1.4%
New Balance — 3 runners, 1.4%
Mizuno — 2 runners, 0.9%
Hoka — 1 runner, 0.4%
Look at Nike just falling off 🤭
New Balance does pretty much the same thing though — what's actually separating them from Nike?
Nike's apparently off-limits for some discount retailers to even carry now.
But Japanese people aren't reacting to it at all. It's rare to see a gap this big.
The classic go-to brands for gym shoes back in school.
Though I feel like that might just be the ads talking.
Sounds like we're close in age. You're into New Balance too, right? Still, these days it's Asics for me. Actually, the house-brand originals from Kutsuryu (a shoe discount chain) are pretty good too.
Their history and craftsmanship are second to none, but man, they're really bad at marketing lol
That's SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment), not Sony as a whole.
Background and key points of this discussion
The original article is a business-analysis piece examining Asics’ push toward ¥1 trillion in sales and Nike’s struggles through the lens of differing “sales approach” and “technology.” In the thread, several arguments ran side by side: a physical factor around how Japanese foot shape (wide, flat) suits Asics’ shoe design better than Nike’s; concrete data showing a reversal in shoe-wear share at the Hakone Ekiden; and criticism of Nike’s discount sales and advertising strategy. Worth noting: the Hakone Ekiden share figures are a single year’s data and haven’t been confirmed as a multi-year trend. Also, “Onitsuka Tiger” traces back to the same founder, Kihachiro Onitsuka, as Asics, but is run as a separate, sneaker-focused fashion line — though some posts in the thread treat the two as essentially the same. Asics itself went through a rough patch in the 2010s and rebuilt itself through investment in running gear and overseas market expansion, so this article and thread are really an extension of that larger story.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Why Has Asics Made a Comeback Toward ¥1 Trillion in Sales? The “Sales Approach” and “Technology” Strategy That Separated It From a Struggling Nike.”
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