Hoka has a new retail partner - Costco

The type of people to wear Hokas are exactly the type of people to frequent Costco.

Looks like it’s not so new as I see social media posts going back a year, but yeah, I do wonder how this has been affecting specialty retail stores. Maybe Hoka is offering them incentives or special colors?

ON has also been dumping a lot of surplus onto Nordstrom Rack. Run specialty brick-and-mortar is an industry on its knees. Even the online players are taking a pounding from Zappos/Amazon as well as brand direct-to-consumer sales.

Lol

no one who can run faster than a sub 3 hour marathon would be seen dead in a pair of Hokas. Absolute joke of a company

I wore Hokas exclusively for training runs when I was in 16:30 5k shape. They were comfortable!

Do you tickle your running partner?

Absolutely. lol

That's because On shoes are a joke and ugly as sin.. The only people who wear them are soccer moms, aka Costco customers

Oh noooo these mass-produced running shoes are not actually a super-special bespoke product that requires over-pricing at specialty shops, who can't profit as much from them nooooo.

Wow, this is major red flag and tell-tale sign of the state of affairs at Hoka.

Brands like Nike and Adidas have been in Costco for ever - but they are 45 and 27 billion dollar revenue brands - Hoka is about 2.3 billion. Point is, Nike and Adidas are so big and diverse in their customer and consumer bases, that being in Costco doesn't impact their brand perception or cache at all and almost all the products you see there are designed and developed for that market and price point (aka very low landed cost product you won't see in any other channel). It's like their "rainy day" bank account (metaphorically speaking).

With Hoka, the Clifton model is basically their Pegasus (Nike) or their EVO SL (Adi). This shoe should never be in Costco, so what this says to me is that Hoka simply has too much inventory and they have too much inventory because your specialty running channel has better options now (which I know is the case because I know people in the running specialty channel). The are also selling the Bondi there too BTW.

Hoka just tipped into the "fatigue" stage of long term business cycle but just sat there too long procrastinating/not having any idea what to do. They did the classic "expansion" into lifestyle product which always works for a bit as it piggybacks onto the momentum of the performance business, but once that falls away so will the need for "cool" Hoka sportswear shoes (which are more ironic than cool if we are perfectly honest).

They have absolutely no innovation on any level at all there - not functionally or even perceptively. I mean they kicked off the "maximalist" running boom and let every other brand overtake them on that. The product direction is "be more like Nike" which makes sense as their head of product is a former Nike "heavy hitter" (reject). Anybody remember Under Armour? 10 years ago they had a market cap of over 23 billion dollars and a share price of nearly $53. Today they have a share price of $5.32 and a cap of just under 2 billion. Forgetting who you are and trying to be someone else rarely works in this industry, just ask UA. Hoka right now are on the precipice of cratering what they were able to do in the last 4-5 years and this brand isn't that special that they are immune from this potentially happening. The adoption of smaller, more niche brands that aren't Nike or Adidas has been great for the industry as a whole and has created a lot of opportunities for brands like Hoka and ON. But on the same level it means that those opportunities also exist for other brands who are just as hungry and your seat at the table isn't guaranteed for any fixed period of time.

This brand really lost it's way and it certainly wasn't and isn't big enough to be taking on this much water. Costco, yikes.

I feel like they started as a niche shoe for hardcore running but sometime in the last five years they morphed into the sneaker of choice for yuppie grandmothers. They're not super attractive or hip looking. They are comfortable. They don't seem to advertise much so I have no idea how people even learned about them. Anyone know what happened?

On has always been a little douchey. Roger Federer was one of their early endorsers and kind of fits their demographics as a rich fancy man who likes fine products (tennis legend and probably a great guy, no offense to him.) Their logo is attractive but I find their shoes hideous and assume their open design will get filled with small rocks so I've never purchased them.

I had a female teammate who loved training in Hokas and ran sub 5 in HS, she was pretty good.

That being said I'm never going to look at any of their shoes myself.

Costco = good. Hoka = bad. No sure the relationship.

This is not the first time Hokas have been sold at Costco. They had them for a season in around 2017 or 2018 in at least the Seattle market.

Sorry we can't all live at walmart

Just bought my girlfriend hokas 10s for Christmas at a specialty store for 180. If I knew they were in Costco for 115 I wouldn't have even bothered. She's not a runner and absolutely thinks that because things are more expensive they are worth more. This is going to absolutely nuke their brand. Im never paying any more than 120 for hokas again. They're great shoes but now that I know theyre worth 110 bucks well that's all im willing to pay.

Sorry, what is the issue here?

There have been a number of brands that were once considered specialized (maybe at one time in their corporate expansion even I dare say "exclusive") that are or have been sold at Costco.

Examples include: North Face, Under Armour, Oakley, Patagonia, Columbia etc.

Hoka is just another 'popular' name brand that lost some of its shininess and cashing in on appeal to a broader market.