Suppose Nike wants to start a subscription shoe service. How would you size the market opportunity and validate it?
- Terry Anthony
Clarification –
Subscription shoe service – 2 possible options – either after sales subscription shoe service or subscription based shoe buying – assumption is after sales subscription based shoe service where customers pay a fixed fee to get after sales support
Any specific country – United Kingdom
Any specific gender – Assuming Gender Agnostic
For calculating the market size I will look at the total number of shoes sold per year in UK and then estimate the % of instances where customers might need after sales support.
Total UK Population – 70 Million
Total Population Wearing Shoes – 90% (excluding children under 1 and adults who maybe bid ridden and don’t need shoes) – 63 million
Average number of Pairs owned by customers – Most people have multiple pairs of shoes for different occasions. I will try to estimate the number of shoes owned by each customer based on the occasion for which they need to wear the shoe:
1 formal + 1 casual + 1 sports wear = 3
Total Number of Shoes in UK = 63*3 = 189
Average Life of Shoes = 2 years
Total Number of Shoes Replaced with new shoes every year = 189/2 = 94.5 Million
We can assume 10% shoe defect rate in shoes due to size mismatch, or manufacturing defect.
Total Market Size Opportunity for Subscription Based Shoe = 94.5. Million * 10% = 9.45 Million
We can validate these numbers by checking industry reports on shoe related statistics. We can also look at actual shoe defect rates and average shoe life of Nike shoes.

Nike