The $25 number comes from Steve Bence, Nike's Program Director in Footwear Sourcing and Manufacturing. I would also take that number with a grain of salt, but another cited source, Sole Review, an independent sneaker review site, estimates that manufacturing a shoe that's $100 at retail shoe costs $22.
So those are the article's sources. What are yours?
I'm also curious about your claim about $8-12 shoes that are equivalent in quality, because while you can, indeed, buy very cheap shoes on Aliexpress etc, the quality or lack thereof is usually commensurate.
I can't believe Nike spends 25 dollars on the actual making of the shoes, it just doesn't add up.
Nike sneakers regularly sell to consumers for ~25 dollars, in brick-and-mortar stores, in countries that have 20% VAT.
Naturally Nike wants to claim their shoes are as valuable as possible, and they can perhaps somewhat truthfully claim 25 dollars by including the cost of R&D, sponsorships and marketing etc in the cost of making the shoes.
Then they can spread the total cost of Nike operations creatively over models that sell 1 million units and others that sell only 50 000 units.
If shoes cost 5 dollars to make but you feel you need to pay Serena and Tiger 20 bucks per shoe to sell them, suddenly they "cost" 25 to "make".
They're not saying the incremental cost of making a single shoe is $25. They're saying that, after everything is accounted for, it costs Nike approx $25 to get a $100 retail shoe onto a boat in China.
And yes, Nike has cheaper shoes too, but per article, if it's retailing for $50, it probably costs $12 tops to make.
So those are the article's sources. What are yours?
I'm also curious about your claim about $8-12 shoes that are equivalent in quality, because while you can, indeed, buy very cheap shoes on Aliexpress etc, the quality or lack thereof is usually commensurate.