The elusive Air Mag sneaker is one of the brand's most sought after
Nike have discovered a new way to protect its customers from buying counterfeit sneakers and it involves teaming up with one of the world's largest online retailers.
Bloomberg announced that Amazon.com Inc. will finally be given the green light to sell Nike sneakers directly via its brand-registry platform designed to keep fake sneakers off the site. This reinforced sales process will ensure that counterfeits aren't being traded through third parties in the competitive online marketplace.
Prior to this, the Oregon sports company didn't allow Amazon to sell their shoes even though their main competition including Adidas and Under Armour both had dedicated storefronts on the retail site. With the pressure of dodgy knock-offs making their way into customers' hands growing, Nike finally committed to policing its online sales more aggressively.
This move isn't necessarily a bad thing since it could open up a new online market segment to the sportswear giant. And in Australia at least, that could mean an even greater access to exclusive sneakers that are hard to come by or rarely stocked. The keyword here is the 'millennial shopper', those who do most of their retail therapy via the web than a bricks and mortar store.
The aforementioned brand-registry program is quite intuitive in itself as it relies on a system called 'machine learning'. This platform can point out violations and have counterfeit goods automatically removed from the site. Amazon will eventually see the technology move to a point where it can detect and remove knock-offs even before they're posted to the site.
Are we scared yet? As a consumer you probably shouldn't be. Amazon officially arrives in Australia in 2018 to shake up the retail landscape.