A Swot Analysis of Skechers

Strengths are the characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others. Skechers is one of the fastest-growing athletic footwear brands in the world.

The strengths of Skechers is, it has a high growth rate. Skechers is a very professionally competitive company and well branded among consumers. Many consumers know about Skechers because the company offers their product worldwide. Skechers is quickly establishing its presence from domestic market to international markets. The company’s operations are more geographically diversified compared to other companies in the athletic footwear and active wear space including Under Armour (UA) which sales just under $4 billion compared to Skechers made $3.1 billion in sales, of which 40.4% stemmed from overseas markets in 2015. [1]

In addition, the price of Skechers is fair. Skechers is strong and trusted brand. Every material used is excellent in its quality and researched before use. Skechers is providing light weight shoes with high quality of materials. The quality of Skechers brings comfortable to customer when they wear it. Skechers’ shoes are flexible sole to keep out toes and feet happy while walking. There are a lot of good reviews from consumers that Skechers’s shoes were very comfortable, good quality and they are satisfied with the price that they’ve paid for the products.

Skechers created several product lines catering to a variety of styles and have different sizes and types of shoes. Skechers produces and sells their shoes for men, women and children. Skechers does not only produce athletic shoes but also producing hundreds of casual and trendy styles for men, women and children. Skechers even produces new designs of shoes in every season. Buyers have unlimited choices to choose and buy the shoes they want and this can increase the buying power of consumers.

Furthermore, Skechers has strong marketing campaigns. The company usually does sales especially during festival and end of the year. They also did some sponsor event such as badminton, running and basketball and in the same time these event help them to promote their shoes. They also sell their products through their official website which is. Besides, Skechers has an extensive network of global distributors that sell its product in over 160 countries and territories, and more than 1,410 Skechers stores around the world.

Weaknesses are the characteristics that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others.

One of the weaknesses experienced by Skechers’s company is suffering from limited presence in developing markets due to the problems of pricing, imitation and patent protection. Skechers has a lot of competitors such as Nike, Adidas and New Balance. For example, comparing Nike and Skechers, consumers still think and consider Nike is better than Skecher due to the pricing reason as in their mindset Nike is a famous and good brand in the running shoes industry. This is because Nike Company had used a very good marketing strategy to increase and promote their brand image with increasing consumer’s confidence. Regarding about the patent protection, Adidas had sued Skechers for the trademark infringement and followed by Nike sued Skechers for infringing on 8 patents according to the patent business journal on January 4,2016.

Moreover, Skechers’s company suffers from labor controversies. The company did not provide a better environment to the employee. The workers who deliver Skechers’ products in primarily shoes, apparel and luggage from ports to warehouses to retail stores around the world were mistreated by the company. The truck drivers and warehouse workers labor who deliver the Skechers’ products were under stressful, harsh and exploitative. The workers labor won’t be able to work efficiently. This cause the workers make a lot of mistakes and the profit of company would suffer. The companies have to bear the higher costs to make up the mistake of the workers. The company also did not share the good news and prosperity with their workers but pay them in low salaries.

The profits of Skechers are largely dependent on the footwear products while other products are not as strong as the footwear products. Skechers does also produce tops, bottom, socks and bag but the company does not produce more because footwear is their priority. Consumers do not have a lot of choices to buy other products and they are willing to buy it from other competitors such as Nike and Adidas. Other products will take a long time to sell it and the qualities of the products are not as good as before. Hence, this incident will make consumer feel lack of confidence towards Skechers’s products.

Opportunity is the environment that Skechers could exploit to its advantage. Skechers opportunity is growing demand of it product. Skechers has its own loyal consumers like others brand. Skechers products are for men, women and children. SKECHERS offers two distinct footwear categories: a lifestyle division which includes Skechers Memory Foam and the charity line BOBS from SKECHERS, and Skechers Performance which includes Skechers GOrun and Skechers GOwalk footwear. The Company sells its footwear in department, specialty and independent stores, as well as through more than 1100 Company-owned Skechers retail stores and online at skechers.com. [2] These can fulfill all age demand on shoes. To persuade consumers, Skechers have it own celebrity product endorsees. Celebrity product endorsees for Skechers’ collections include the world famous drummer Ringo Starr, multi-platinum recording artist Demi Lovato and Meghan Trainor, model and actress Kelly Brook, TV personality Brooke Burke-Charvet, legendary quarterbacks Mariano Rivera, and boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard. In addition, elite marathon champion and Boston Marathon winner Meb Keflezighi, elite runner Kara Goucher, and pro golfer Matt Kuchar represent the Skechers Performance Division. These show that Skechers also have a good quality and suitable for sport too. These celebrities can affect consumers to buy them. SKECHERS’ success stems from its employees, high quality and varied product offering, diversified domestic and international distribution channels, and targeting multi-channel marketing. This can increase their demand.

Skechers expose to external business risks. This can relate to the risks in the greater business environment. In economy, whether it’s boom time or bust, how the economy is doing impacts on your business. While you may not have control over the economy at large, understanding what drives it can help you manage threats and maximize opportunities. The risks could be in politic, economic, social or shareholders. Politic issues can be a risk because changes in government or government policies and legislation can impact on business, which is why business owners need to keep abreast of latest developments. Technological developments in one field and in the wider business sphere should be monitor in good system.

Beside, rising cost of raw material also can affect Skechers supplies. As been mention above, Skechers is using a good quality of materials. If the cost of raw materials that been using in produced a product are increasing, Skechers might face a problem which it could not supply the demand. This may decrease the profit. Financial capacity is another threat too. Skechers should aware of it effort on produced the supply. It cannot be more than the company financial capacity. This can make a loss of the company.

Plus, Skechers may have government regulations as it threat. Government regulation risks did cause a small miss on the bottom line. The real fallout for this stock came from the guidance. Cash flow also can be Skechers big problem. Cash flows will happen to the company if they bought those materials. This is because they need to exchange local money to get the material. Even though cash flows won’t react exactly, but slowly it will cause a problem too.

In addition, Skechers can also increase in labor costs. Since the raw material are expensive because it have a high quality, Skechers will not able to provide a high technology machine to make the shoes. Labor costs will increase because Skechers are not able to purchase or to have a machine to make the shoes. So, Skechers will need to employ more workers. Company has to pay the worker’s salary. This causes the increases of the labor costs. Increasing rates of interest can affect skechers too. Increasing rate of interest might cause the increasing of Skechers prices. Consumers will reconsider to buy this product if the price is increase. This also can cause loss of the company.

Last but not least, growing competition and lower profitability can also be Skechers threat. Skechers will face a great competition between other company, such as Nike, Adidas and Reebook. These are a few of high ranking shoes brands. Here, Skechers will have a hard competition between them. This might cause Skechers to have a low profitability. Because of the high growing competition, Skechers profit might decrease or low.