Those Nike and Adidas sneakers you want will be harder to find

If you're looking for some Nike sneakers, an Adidas sweatshirt or Crocs clogs to kick off the year in sporty mode, you'd better save your way to your favorite store and head straight to the manufacturer's locations.

A few months ago, major clothing and footwear brands, which also include Ralph Lauren, Under Armor and Canada Goose, began shedding their usual third-party retailers.

Now, the strategy that many companies have adopted is for customers to buy from their own stores - physical and online - as well as from a smaller group of wholesale partners.

"We're less interested in small brokers who don't have particularly good service levels or don't meet adequate standards in their stores," Crocs CEO Andrew Rees was quoted as saying by CNN in April.

Selling to customers without intermediaries allows brands to make more money, set their own prices, and display products exactly how they want.

Another advantage is that they can prevent their items from being discounted too heavily, which sometimes ends up weakening brand image and pricing power.

Under Armor and Ralph Lauren, for example, stopped shipping merchandise to discount stores like TJ Maxx.

You may also like:

“We are reducing the amount that we are selling to third-party discounters,” Under Armor CFO David Bergman announced in November.

When Under Armor goes back to selling to discount chains, "they're going to pay us a little bit more because they know we have less product to ship," Bergman said.

Nike broke up with Amazon

In 2019, Nike announced it was pulling out of Amazon, a move that ended the pilot the two companies launched in 2017.

That year, Nike had agreed to sell a limited variety of products to Amazon, in exchange for stricter surveillance of counterfeits and restrictions on unauthorized sales.

The fear for many businesses has always been that by partnering with Amazon, they lose control over the customer experience and how the brand is represented on the website.

Under Armour, Adidas and Crocs have maintained their relationship with the e-commerce giant, but other brands such as Canada Goose and Ralph Lauren have chosen to keep their distance.

The pandemic, a turning point

"Even if they weren't very focused on direct sales before Covid-19, they are now," said Susan Anderson, an analyst at B. Riley Securities.

After the huge supply-demand mismatch caused by the pandemic, some apparel companies were left with little or no additional merchandise to ship to retailers, choosing to focus on inventory from their own stores and websites.

Nike, which also owns Jordan and Converse, was one of the first to announce that it would reduce the number of retailers and focus on growing its direct-to-consumer business.

The company kept just 40 retail partners, including Foot Locker and Dick's Sporting Goods, and cut ties with independent shoe stores and small chains, as well as big box sellers like Urban Outfitters, Dillard's and Zappos.

Adidas and Under Armour, its rival brands, followed suit and cut back on their own wholesale networks.

Nike was DSW's biggest supplier of sporting goods, accounting for about 7% of the company's sales in 2020. Last month it shipped the last of its products to the retailer.

You may also be interested in | VIDEO: An influencer uncovers several clones of Shein's cheap clothes identical to Zara's