You've Been Warned: Buying Nike Products On Amazon Could Cost You

If you were asked to stop and think of some of the most dominant corporate brands in the world, it would be difficult to leave either Amazon or Nike off that list. Nike is known for leaning into partnerships of all kinds, even announcing a new brand collaboration with Kim Kardashian and her brand Skims in February 2025 — an announcement that excited investors enough to temporarily drive Nike's stock up by 6%. Nike's ability to still make these sorts of major deals and collaborations is just one of many reasons why expert investors are still buying Nike despite a 60% dip in share price. Similarly, Amazon is another company known for partnerships and deals with big name brands and retailers.

So, while a logical conclusion might be that these two companies are likely to have a partnership with each other, consumers might be surprised to learn that this isn't the case. At least, not anymore. While, in 2017, Amazon and Nike did embark on a partnership where the latter would sell wholesale products on Amazon's digital marketplace, the arrangement was short-lived. Just two years later, Nike ended the partnership for reasons that should still concern consumers today: counterfeit products. With little oversight from Amazon on this issue, it might be better to steer clear from buying any Nike products on Amazon today.

One of the largest challenges that Amazon faces is that, according to a Marketplace Pulse analysis of Amazon quarterly results, 62% of all of the company's unit sales came from third-party sellers in the fourth quarter of 2024. This means it's increasingly difficult for Amazon to keep track of sales from third-parties, let alone monitor or quality control them — leading to an increase in counterfeit products. It's also worth mentioning that this is not the first time a major brand attempting to sell a product on Amazon ended up terminating the partnership over counterfeit products. It's actually a major reason why you should also avoid buying Birkenstock shoes from Amazon.

While Amazon agreed to provide legitimate sellers of Nike products access to the platform, which Nike believed would help curb the amount of counterfeit third-party sellers on Amazon's marketplace, the reality was far from Nike's hopes. With Amazon incapable or unwilling to limit third-party sellers — and after two years of losing direct market sales to third-parties who were sometimes hawking counterfeit products – Nike had had enough. However, even though Nike ended its wholesale relationship with Amazon in 2020, consumers can still find Nike inventory on Amazon. With all of the sneaky ways that Amazon tricks people into spending more money, consumers should also consider the very real possibility that the Nike products they might purchase on Amazon not only aren't legitimate, but may even cost more than the real thing.

Aside from the counterfeit third-party issues that Nike had with Amazon, Nike had also already been working on its own Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) platform in an attempt to manage the sales of more products through its own websites and brick-and-mortar outlets. So, when Amazon failed to keep third-parties and counterfeiters off their platform, Nike chose to lean into their own DTC strategy as an alternative, an approach that should have helped to offset any losses from leaving the Amazon platform. However, as of 2024, Nike's DTC strategy has proved to be underwhelming for a host of reasons. 

Nike's failure to prioritize innovation, flashier marketing, investment in wholesale, and more sport focused products led to a third quarter hit of $1.2 billion to the company's net income. Worse, the executives at Nike are also currently being sued in a class action lawsuit for attempting to hide and/or downplay the problems inherent with their DTC strategy from Nike shareholders. Time will ultimately tell if Nike was better off with Amazon or by going it alone, but partnering with Kim Kardashian seems like a step in the right direction.