Nike starts online retail in India

US sports goods manufacturer Nike and of the world’s biggest maker of sports clothing and accessories, has started online retail operations in India through its own portal. India-based users can now order from the global portal and have it home delivered. Earlier, only certain markets such as Australia, Hong Kong and Indonesia were being served by the online division of the company.

As of now, Nike offers free deliveries to India on orders worth Rs 14,000 or more. For other orders, one has to pay Rs 750 as delivery charges. Delivery times range from five to seven days. Nike already has a large offline distribution network in the country, and competes with Reebok and Adidas. It also competes with France-based Deacthlon, which has rolled out a number of ultra-large warehouse-like shops across the country to sell its in-house sports brands such as Artengo. As of now online sales of sports apparel and shoes is dominated by Flipkart and Amazon.

However, Nike and other brands that operate their own showrooms and have exclusive franchisees have been loath to go aggressively on the discount-oriented online platform. Aggressive sales using online portals would hit the profitability of franchisees, who often bear very high location costs due to the upscale locations of these stores.