Nike – Resilient Digital Strategy & 2022 Fiscal Outlook –
16 September 2021
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Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Karthik Ramachandran (KR)
Former Director, Go-to-Market & Enterprise Strategy at Nike Inc
Agenda:
1. E-commerce and digital marketing update for Nike (NYSE: NKE)
2. Wholesale accounts positioning
3. Consumer trends across sportswear
4. 2022 fiscal outlook
Contents
Q: Could you give an overview of athletic footwear and apparel? What has been the industry impact of e-
commerce and the shift to digital?
Q: How would you compare Nike’s digital processes to other firms in apparel? How do you separate
successful, resilient digital strategies from less successful ones?
Q: Could you elaborate on the e-commerce engine and what that entails? Is it more the UX, or is it more in
the back end, around the processes and how the different departments communicate?
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Q: Could you expand on what allows Nike to engage with the consumer more, such as new languages? What
has Nike been able to learn about consumers as they shop in omnichannel environments?
4
Q: How would you compare Nike’s digital strategy in the US vs China, where you’re forced into a much more
digital-centric environment to begin with? Would you say it started out in the US, or that there were some
insights taken from the way Nike operated in China and applied to the US? Do they work in a reverse way? 5
Q: Why do you think Nike has had such a grip over the footwear industry for so long? Is there any risk of
market share erosion from a product standpoint? What does it do differently that can’t be replicated by many
6
of the upstarts that are gaining ground?
Q: Is there any risk to Nike’s ability to keep prominent athletes? What are your thoughts on Nike being
maybe the old person in town and other athletes looking to upstarts? What are your thoughts on this new
generation who are saying maybe they want to start with someone else?
6
Q: How has ROI developed with everyone jumping into digital marketing, from the app servicing costs to the
channel availability? Everyone is going to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, options are very limited.
Presumably that drives pricing and dilutes the message. Could you talk about that dynamic when these
channels get so crowded with so many other apparel companies?
7
Q: How is Nike communicating its innovations to the consumer? What are the challenges there? What is the
point if you have a great product and the consumer doesn’t know it’s great?
7
Q: How would you assess Nike’s performance in athleisure vs more functional apparel and performance
wear?
Q: Could you elaborate on Nike’s lead times, from start to finish? You start out with a product, it takes 100
days to get to market. Could you talk about speeding up that timeline and how the company’s timeline
compares to the industry? Is there anything stopping the company from getting that product off the ground
quicker vs taking one-third of the year?
8
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Q: Nike has a big reseller market and it launched an app called Snkrs. How does that play into Nike’s release
of some of the Jordans, where you tend to find out many of the sneakers are going to two or three people,
and you have a large Jordan release which ends up on a reseller market? Is there any desire from the
company to fix any of that?
9
Q: Could you give us an idea of Nike’s wholesale footprint and how much further it has to go to reduce that
footprint?
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Q: It seems many upstarts are approaching women as the future of sport and fitness. Could you talk about
Nike’s success or lack thereof in its women’s categories, whether shoes or apparel?
Q: Where do you think Nike has opportunities across sports apparel, footwear or equipment?
Q: What has Nike done to get ahead of sustainability issues? Could you speak to its track record on
sustainability?
Q: How do you think Nike’s sustainability message is playing out globally? Do you think consumers are
trying to care about sustainability?
Q: Where do you think Nike is lacking or could do better?
Q: How does Nike’s marketing strategy differ from those of other companies?
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Nike – Resilient Digital Strategy & 2022 Fiscal Outlook
Transcription begins at 00:00:06 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview, entitled Nike – Resilient Digital Strategy and 2022 Fiscal
Outlook. I am Nyree Hinton and I’ll be facilitating today’s Interview with Mr Karthik Ramachandran, former
Director of Go-to-market and Enterprise Strategy at Nike Inc.
Karthik, before we get started with today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following
statement: You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any
such information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
KR: Yes, I agree.
NH: Thank you Karthik. Could you start by giving the audience an introduction of your background and
various roles you’ve held in the industry?
KR: I have about 20 years of experience, 10-plus years in the world of product management and technology,
and the last 10 years in the world of strategy. Early partner at McKinsey, led enterprise strategy at Nike, and
now I lead go-to-market at Adobe.
[00:01:07]
Q: Could you give an overview of athletic footwear and apparel? What has been the industry impact of e-
commerce and the shift to digital?
KR: Definitely we are in an economic crisis and a health crisis, so the disposable income has shrunk, and
because of that, last year, every company, their earnings were missed. Losses were made, including at Nike,
that’s just the nature of the business. Having said that, we are in a little bit more of a lucky spot, because of
this crisis, people are still working out. The may not be playing team sports, but they are still walking and
running and doing individual sports for their mental sanity. They are working from home, so they are not in
suits and dresses anymore, they are wearing casual wear, athletic sort of wear, and because of that, we have
been able to not really decline in revenue, but somewhat continue to sustain, and then we are seeing growth
maybe over the last 3-6 months.
[00:02:31]
Q: How would you compare Nike’s digital processes to other firms in apparel? How do you separate
successful, resilient digital strategies from less successful ones?
KR: I think it comes from leadership, it comes from the vision. How do they think about the business, how do
they think about digital, digital literacy, digital quotient of a company matters, in terms of its starting point.
For example, if you think about Mark Parker, he is a product guy. Been with Nike 20-, 30-plus years, grew up
with product, very familiar with product. You pull up a shoe in front of him, he’ll tell you whether the shoe is
going to be a hit or not, and he’ll tell you exactly what changes need to be made to that shoe before it hits that
market. Think about the current CEO, John Donahoe, probably has less experience in that, but then he’ll ask
you some of the business questions, “How long did it take for you to make this shoe? How many iterations of
this shoe did you make? What were the manual processes? How can you automate this? What can you infuse
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digital? Can you ship this shoe in two days? Can you customise this shoe?” He takes a much more digital lens
to it and speed-to-market lens to it, and you need both.
At the end of the day, you need the product to function, and you also need the aspects of the product making,
product movement and product design to be digitised. When you bring these two things, amazing products
and a vision with digital literacy, then you are able to completely differentiate from the rest of the market and
accelerate. The good thing about Nike, at least from my perspective, in 2018 or 2017, I came on board to write
Nike’s end-to-end digital strategy across the supply chain, across the entire value chain, I came and wrote a
strategy and we started to implement the strategy right away, there was no delay. In fact, we started to pump
money into that. Then, through 2018-19, we were in a really good spot, and then when COVID hit, we were
able to capitalise on those digital investments to be able to grow. Simple example, e-commerce engine. We
completely revamped the e-commerce engine and invested almost hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to
provide a sophisticated, seamless consumer experience and today that’s panning out really well.
[00:05:32]
Q: Could you elaborate on the e-commerce engine and what that entails? Is it more the UX, or is it more in the
back end, around the processes and how the different departments communicate?
KR: It’s both. Our e-commerce engine, the e-commerce stack, which, let’s say Nike.com, the consumers come
in, browse, learn about products, discover products, then they choose to buy products. Sometimes, they choose
to return products and also consume content related to their (? 06.15). Think of every aspect of a consumer’s
physical wellness. In terms of that, our e-commerce engine, or Nike’s e-commerce engine, was broken. It was
old, it had bugs in it. The availability of the platform was below 98%. Best in class is 99.99%, so we were below
that. We weren’t cloud-deployed, we weren’t able to scale. Because of that, we knew that digital is going to be
our next book, we need this. Consumers were coming to our site and they used to drop off, not buy, and as we
carried that through, the consumer experience was clunky. We barely accepted two forms of payment, and this
was all like three, five years ago, where digital was a small push from the entire business. It was almost 17-19%
more expensive compared to our competition, and it was a sinking ship, so we said, “We want to replicate this
more to a modern, cloud-native, API-led, modeller, micro-services platform which can innovate.”
Right now, we have multiple forms of payment, including leading buy now, pay later which we were able to
innovate and quickly bring to the platform in days vs months. We are able to customise and personalise our
platform to individual consumer experience, both from a language perspective, both from the personal choice
perspective, in milliseconds, vs not being able to do it. Those are some of the things, that’s one dimension of
digital transformation that I am able to explain right now and share.
[00:08:21]
Q: Could you expand on what allows Nike to engage with the consumer more, such as new languages? What
has Nike been able to learn about consumers as they shop in omnichannel environments?
KR: A few things. One, I helped Nike build a consumer and a market intelligence team. Back in 2013-14, Nike
sold 90% of its goods to a wholesaler who, in turn, distributed to the end consumers. We had no idea about
who the consumer was, who’s buying, and we were dependent on the Dick’s Sporting Goods, the Foot Lockers,
the Amazons, the Walmarts of the world. At that point, data was very protected, it wasn’t like today where data
is being shared and being democratised, and also being secured and protected. It was a different world we
were in 7-8 years ago. As Nike wanted to focus on its direct-to-consumer business and the strategy came out
and it was set in motion, one of the biggest things that I had brought to Nike was, “As you’re going direct to
consumer, you need to know about the consumer. Today it’s a blank box. We don’t know who the consumer is,
we don’t know the segmentation, we don’t know how they are buying, we have no information, and what we
are doing is we are buying third-party data and acting on it. We need to build our own systems to be able to act
on it.”
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A combination of leveraging our own point of sale data, our own web analytics and app analytics data, in
addition to buying third-party data from Nielsen, NPD, Checkout, a couple of other smaller players like Civic
Sense, which provides both demographic and site-specific data. We were able to understand our consumer,
who is coming, how often they are coming, how many times they shop, when they engage, what is the return,
what’s the CLV? Being able to just get smarter and smarter about our consumer, and I think the work is still
not done yet, we are probably a little over halfway, but continuing to innovate in the space and truly
personalise at a one-on-one level is where the next evolution of Nike is going to be.
[00:11:04]
Q: How would you compare Nike’s digital strategy in the US vs China, where you’re forced into a much more
digital-centric environment to begin with? Would you say it started out in the US, or that there were some
insights taken from the way Nike operated in China and applied to the US? Do they work in a reverse way?
KR: Yes, it’s both. Nike is probably, in some ways there is centralisation, it’s some ways it’s decentralisation.
What I mean by that is Nike in China has its own priorities, has its own mission and strategy, but tying it to the
larger mission of the company, digital first, women-led and so on and so forth. As long as it’s able to tie to the
mothership, but they have the independence, the empowerment to go do what they want, at the end of the day,
that’s where the money is being made. If they want to spend X% of that money that’s being made into key
investments, that’s their choice. That’s where the President of China has the power and so on and so forth. I
think that’s (1). (2), there’s a lot of cross-pollination, and the consumers are different. The Nike brand in the
US is totally different from the Nike brand in China. The Nike brand in China is worshipped, it’s a luxury
brand, and if you are wearing a Nike shoe, it’s a pretty big deal. Whereas here, it’s not a big deal. Here, if you’re
thinking of an authentic, USD 400 Nike sneaker, maybe it’s a big deal, but not your average USD 60 Pegasus
running shoe. From that perspective, the market and the consumers are quite different.
(3), the digital-savviness of these two consumers is totally different. China’s digital growth is probably one of
the fastest growing within our four geographies, and probably dominated by the mobile penetration, how
consumers are adopting mobile, and the concentration of China’s population in tier 1 cities like Shanghai and
Beijing. In the US, it’s not that. There are no two cities where 40% of the population reside, it’s all over the
country. I think they are some of the key dimensions, I would say, from Nike China vs Nike US. The last thing I
would say is the Chinese model is different. For example, they are innovating through a super app, through
payments, there is Tmall. You have to think about their business model, what resonates with the consumer
and being able to tailor that towards, that is really important. For example, Tmall is huge in China, our
partnership with Tmall is huge, whereas we severed our partnership with Amazon in the US. It’s just totally
different dynamics.
NH: How does the company have access to that data if it goes through a third party in China? You mentioned
not having that data in North America because it goes going through a wholesaler like Dick’s Sporting Goods.
KR: In both countries, we have our own data today because our DTC business is fairly significant. It’s not the
majority, but it’s still pretty significant, that’s one. We have our own data from our own channels. Nike.com,
Nike factory stores, Nike partner stores, Nike full-price stores and so on and so forth. Then, when it comes to a
Tmall or, let’s say, a Walmart in the US, there are contractual agreements that say you have to share data.
What aspects of the data are to be negotiated and are confidential, but there is an opportunity to negotiate
that, “I want these aspects of consumer data, I want these aspects of product data, I want these aspects of
pricing data,” and so on and so forth, and that’s part of the contractual agreement negotiations, and how
frequently the data should be shared and so on and so forth. Those are all just part of the business negotiation.
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[00:16:04]
Q: Why do you think Nike has had such a grip over the footwear industry for so long? Is there any risk of
market share erosion from a product standpoint? What does it do differently that can’t be replicated by many
of the upstarts that are gaining ground?
KR: A few things. One, the focus on both performance and lifestyle. We know that performance is probably
the leading edge in innovation, but being able to leverage that innovation across a lifestyle where the market is
much bigger is really important. That dual-pronged approach and strategy was critical in differentiating, that’s
(1). (2) is the focus on innovation. If you go to the Nike Running Labs here in Beaverton, you can see the
amount of technology being invested to perfect the shoe. We’re talking about improving elite athletes’
performance by like 0.45%, that’s the level of competition they’re operating in. How can we really help them in
their journey, and focusing on the innovation, whether it’s material innovation or design innovation, or it’s
about the weight of the shoe, about the biometrics of the shoe and so on and so forth. Continuing to do that
innovation is important from a performance perspective. If you take innovation from a lifestyle perspective,
how easy can, let’s say, a person who’s challenged physically adopt a shoe? For example, Nike FlyEase.
Looking at modern innovative trends in the lifestyle that creates fashion-forward, it disrupts the traditional
formal shoe market, and being able to innovate in that space is also really important. Innovation as a theme is
where Nike focuses on being able to distinguish and differentiate from the rest of the marketplace.
The last thing is its influencer network. If you have the LeBrons, the Serenas, the Tiger Woods, the Neymars,
the Federers of the world being a big advocate of your shoe and influence your shoe and promote the shoe,
nothing can beat that. You can’t replicate that strategy, because it’s an expensive strategy to replicate. The
number of Federers in the world is limited, and if you’re able to tap into that brand image and framework,
then it’s great, but that’s a very differentiated strategy. For example, the partnerships with Jordan about 15-20
years ago was brilliant, and that’s where Phil Knight is an icon and a visionary leader at taking a business that
was a distribution to, now, a market-leading company.
[00:19:18]
Q: Is there any risk to Nike’s ability to keep prominent athletes? What are your thoughts on Nike being maybe
the old person in town and other athletes looking to upstarts? What are your thoughts on this new generation
who are saying maybe they want to start with someone else?
KR: It’s totally possible. If you look at the influencer model, whether that’s a LeBron or a Serena, there is a
huge influencer network, followership that they have, but they’re just one portion of the puzzle. The other
portion of the puzzle, especially when you’re talking about Gen Z, is the user-generated content, where a
normal person, not a super rock star, is wearing a shoe and promoting a shoe and there’s a followership on
that. You need both, and you need to balance both, and that’s where Nike’s struggle is right now. “Do I want to
spend another USD 15m a year on performance marketing, or do I need to spend that money on getting
sponsorship from an elite athlete?” What’s the ROI on that is where Nike start struggling right now, and
figuring out the internal politics.
NH: Why do you think Nike is struggling with that dynamic, since it seems to have the biggest balance sheet?
What is holding Nike back from putting more money towards some of these influencers? Many upstarts have
gone all-in on TikTok and seek prominent stars there to get close to consumers.
KR: This legacy way of thinking, that getting a Jordan, getting a LeBron, getting a Serena, works. Why change
that? When something is not broken, why fix it? That’s the legacy mentality that exists within certain leaders,
Nike, that’s one. Then the other one is the new leadership, where they have come from a digital native
company and have access only to performance marketing and see that, “Instead of spending USD 15m on one
elite athlete, I could take that money and reach 100 million consumers.” Out of that, maybe 10% of them will
convert and buy and that would be X billion dollars of business vs Y billion dollars of business that a LeBron or
a Serena brings to the table. I think that’s the struggle, and if it’s that clear, if you know the ROI of a LeBron, if
you know the ROI of that part of the equation, then it’s very easy to contrast and compare, because we do have
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ROI on the marketing performance data. We know that if we spend USD 15m on paid search, this is the
revenue that we’ll generate, but we don’t have a clear number of, if you spend USD 15m on LeBron, what does
LeBron bring to the table? That’s a very grey area. People have different perspectives on it.
[00:23:01]
Q: How has ROI developed with everyone jumping into digital marketing, from the app servicing costs to the
channel availability? Everyone is going to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, options are very limited.
Presumably that drives pricing and dilutes the message. Could you talk about that dynamic when these
channels get so crowded with so many other apparel companies?
KR: You need to have a presence across all channels, your paid search, organic search, your social channels
and your mobile advertisement channels, in store and so on and so forth. You definitely need to have a
presence. You need to figure out what’s the growth of digital and what’s the growth of your marketing spend
on digital and so on and so forth, and where is that money going to come from? It’s a constant battle when it
comes to annual budgeting processes.
[00:24:09]
Q: How is Nike communicating its innovations to the consumer? What are the challenges there? What is the
point if you have a great product and the consumer doesn’t know it’s great?
KR: Yes. Two things. One, if you look at the running category, there is a shoe for it. If you look at the
basketball category, there is a shoe for it. If you look at a golf category, there is a shoe for it. Looking at that
specific athletic space and designing a shoe for an athlete in mind, the shoes cater for the specific sport, if you
will. For example, if you think of golf, we work with Tiger Woods, we work with Rory, we work with some of
the top female golfers. They come into our Labs, they do their movements, and the shoe is designed to support
that specific sport. You can’t take a golf shoe and put it into running gear, and when Kipchoge broke the two-
hour marathon record, we worked with him for over a year, perfecting the shoe to help him break that two-
hour marathon record. That’s a marathon running shoe, and you can’t use that shoe for basketball sport.
When you think of a LeBron, there is so much biometrics and biomechanics and innovation that goes into how
he moves, how various basketball players move, what matters to them. Through that, we understand patterns
and design the shoe based on that specific sport. That’s the highest level of innovation catered to that specific
sport, and if LeBron or Federer or Rory or Tiger Woods endorsed that specific shoe, then it makes sense. If I’m
looking to play basketball, I’m going to look at what are the top shoes that athletes sponsor and go after that.
That’s the basic version of it. The second aspect of it is what I would say is sustainability. It’s front and centre,
so it’s both performance and sustainability. It’s front and centre, what percentage of the shoe is sustainable?
Where is the shoe being manufactured? Who has manufactured the shoe?
Building the transparency into sustainability, environment, and that really resonates with Gen Z. Right now,
we are sending shoes in boxes that are made of recycled materials and we tell what percentage of materials are
recycled, and if you want to return a shoe, you can return the shoe and here’s how we will decompose the shoe,
if you will, that way we are saving the planet. That aspect of sustainability, it’s really, really important for the
Gen Z generation and even some part of Millennials. It’s purpose over profits. That’s the next era of growth.
Being able to address both of these things is really important. Lastly, it’s the user-generated content. People
are running with the shoe, they see the shoe has really worked for them. For example, I’ve had a Nike running
shoe for the last 20-plus years. That’s the only shoe that fits me, that works for me, so I’m not going to break
my loyalty with that and move to a different shoe. There’s also quite a bit of loyalty with that and trust with the
consumer.
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[00:28:34]
Q: How would you assess Nike’s performance in athleisure vs more functional apparel and performance wear?
KR: You talk about lifestyle, which I talked about earlier. Continuing to innovate in that, if I look at how many
pairs of shoes I have in my closet vs how many sets of athletic apparel I have in my closet, there is an order of
magnitude in the difference. Then, with COVID, for example, I started work, I wore my running gear and I
walked, and I would not have done that. When I worked at Nike, obviously I did that, I walked. In previous
jobs, I would not wear that to work, but with COVID that has changed. Definitely that’s a really important part
of the business and business clothes, because performance is only going to get you so much. Maybe the elite
athlete, the performance athlete, and then, as you go downstream, you really have to think about a mass
consumer stream, you have to think about the athleisure market, that’s the next growth.
NH: How does that digital strategy also apply to apparel? Could you talk about Nike’s loyalty and membership
programmes and how they differ from traditional ones at a grocery store, for example?
KR: Obviously, Nike’s membership, I rewrote the strategy for Nike’s membership programme. Some of it is
confidential, it’s not come out yet so I can’t share, but at the highest level, the membership programme was
used as a marketing channel, and I was able to pivot and help our leaders think of it differently. It’s not about a
marketing channel, yes, that’s true, but it’s also about a business. How do you think about membership as a
business, for example, take an Amazon Prime, or Starbucks Rewards programme. Being able to think of it
differently and using that as a driver of growth is how I thought about it when I rewrote Nike’s membership
strategy. Going back to the digital strategy, there’s not a lot of difference between, whatever you do for
footwear, you can leverage for apparel. The nuances are different, the mechanics of it are different. For
example, from concept to production, it takes over 100 days. For footwear, it’s probably less than half the time
than for apparel, but some of the technology, some of the tools, some of the mindsets and processes that you
apply for footwear can be leveraged for apparel. It maybe needs to be modified, but at the highest level, the
concept can be applied. Simple.
For example, if you want to customise your shoe and use 3D technology to do that, you could use the same
technology and do that for apparel. It’s not super different. Some of the things are different, for example the
amount of investments you do in the Nike Running Lab, where you look at the biomechanics of an athlete and
put them on a treadmill and so on and so forth. Some of those are not leverageable, but you can use the same
technology to look at the upper body to see how they move, what would be most comfortable with them and
what matters the most, and to be able to leverage some of the same platforms and technology and data
analysis, to come up with insights, but for a different product.
[00:33:05]
Q: Could you elaborate on Nike’s lead times, from start to finish? You start out with a product, it takes 100
days to get to market. Could you talk about speeding up that timeline and how the company’s timeline
compares to the industry? Is there anything stopping the company from getting that product off the ground
quicker vs taking one-third of the year?
KR: The longest pull right now in that is securing capacity from the factories. We need to secure capacity from
factories, at least 15-18 months, sometimes up to two years, and that’s one of the longest lead times. The
second-longest lead time is the innovation. It does take quite a bit of time to innovate, to perfect a product. I
remember a particular shoe, the Epic React, it was in Mark Parker’s office for two-plus years because the shoe
wasn’t perfect. Every quarter, the shoe came up to his office and he would give feedback, and then it took two
years to perfect the shoe. That’s just Nike’s rigorous focus on putting out the best product, especially if it’s a
new platform. The last one, which is the last-mile delivery, it’s an order of magnitude less from a delivery
perspective, but still, that’s what consumers see. Consumers don’t really see how long it takes for the shoe to
design in the factory or for the shoe to be designed in our Beaverton office, or the shoe to be manufactured in
the factories in China and Philippines and Taiwan. They don’t really see all those things. All they see is once
it’s on the website or in the store, “How long does it take to reach my home and when can I buy it?” That’s
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what consumers see. The last-mile delivery, how can we do same-day shipping, same-hour shipping, next two-
hour shipping, two-day shipping? All of that matters and continuing to innovate in this space is really
important.
[00:35:14]
Q: Nike has a big reseller market and it launched an app called Snkrs. How does that play into Nike’s release
of some of the Jordans, where you tend to find out many of the sneakers are going to two or three people, and
you have a large Jordan release which ends up on a reseller market? Is there any desire from the company to
fix any of that?
KR: Yes, it’s a very tough question. I can talk about my opinion, what I think, but this might be different from
Nike’s perspective. It’s a very tough question, there is no answer. Even if you asked this question within Nike’s
leadership, there are different points of view. One point of view is let’s embrace the secondary market and
bring it into our fore, and we see that, companies like Foot Locker investing in Goat and StockX and so on and
so forth. The other perspective, which is on the contrarian perspective is, “We should not be promoting this
resellers’ market.” On top of these two philosophies, the common thread is Nike’s gear is the number one fake
goods, number of fake goods, Nike ranks number one. Authenticity is really top of mind, whether you’re
talking about the primary market or the secondary market. Having said that, my belief is, if I were to head
Nike, what I would do is I would embrace the secondary reseller market, whether it’s used apparel or used
shoes or reintroduced shoes or bespoke shoes, I would definitely embrace that market and I would also expand
that to digital forms of the shoe. Just not the physical form of the goods, the digital form of the shoe. I think
that’s a new revenue model where people are collecting digital shoes vs physical, and being able to
authentically say that this is the shoe is really important as well.
[00:38:30]
Q: Could you give us an idea of Nike’s wholesale footprint and how much further it has to go to reduce that
footprint?
KR: I think 70% is wholesale, 30% is Nike’s own channel, I think that’s the split. I think a healthy equilibrium
is probably 50/50, which we would achieve over the next maybe 3-5 years. After that, we might still hold to
that and then further solidify our partner network, we may have five partners in the US vs a plethora selling
Nike goods, and we will continue to strengthen those partnerships as well as strengthening our own channels.
I think that’s how I see them all start to be, from an equilibrium state.
NH: Are there any risks with that strategy and meeting that 3-5-year timeline? Are there any supply chain
risks when you focus on a large part of your business from a digital standpoint where you have freight costs at
all-time highs? Is there a lack of availability or visibility in some of these wholesale partners?
KR: Yes, there’s definitely much more supply chain and more so an inventory list. If 15% of the business that
you own today, then you need to have much more sophisticated demand and supply capabilities, and if you’re
not able to sell your stuff with inventory, then you have to crush that inventory. Yes, there’s quite a bit of risk
with that, that’s why they’ve not dialled it in aggressively and said, “We want to be 70% our own channels and
30% wholesale,” because I don’t think that’s sustainable. That’s way too much risk, and if you look at the
inventory turnover, in fast fashion it’s about six times, ours is around three times. I think we still have ways to
go, especially if a lot of our business is going to come from international, if a lot of our business is going to
come from lifestyle and so on and so forth, that’s something that we need to take into consideration.
NH: Does the reward outweigh the risk? Does the margin accretion allow Nike to take on some of these
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inventory challenges?
KR: Yes, totally. The financials totally make sense, let me give you a simple example. Let’s say that the USD
100 MSRP shoe, we would sell that shoe to Foot Locker or Dick’s Sporting Goods for USD 50, and for us, that’s
USD 50 in revenue and Dick’s would maybe sell such shoe at a higher markup but they would make profit.
Now, if you are able to sell the same shoe in our own channels at USD 100, our revenue has just doubled. If
you take a look at Nike’s revenue, what it’s making today, if we say whatever shoe that we sold in the wholesale
channel if we sold through our own channels, Nike’s revenue would be closer to double. This is just the strat
map, there are implications to this. From a financial perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Then from a
consumer perspective, that’s what consumers are looking for. Consumers are looking to have a relationship
with a brand, and you see every company, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, buying direct-to-consumer
companies because they want to have that in for that consumer, so that (? 42.36) them from a consumer
perspective.
Then from a strategy and brand perspective, it makes sense, we want to elevate our brand further and
distinguish from the marketplace, our next competition is Adidas. Look at it through any angle, it makes
sense, but then, you need to operate like a retailer, you need to think of your supply chain operations like a
retailer and so on. There are implications to be able to bring that strategy to life, which is where the
investments are going and so on and so forth, the business has become a lot more complex. It was very simple
when you were a wholesaler, now it’s a lot more complex because we have to deal with both wholesalers and
our own business, so I think it’s just that’s what needs to happen to succeed in retail market leadership.
NH: What implications does this have for product rollout and the opportunity to market shoes effectively, if
you’re going to release it truly online and with a few select wholesalers? How does consumer demand and
awareness factor in?
KR: Think of this like Apple. If Apple releases a new phone, everybody knows about it. Similarly, Nike’s brand
is similar. I may not look at what an Under Armour is releasing, but I am paying attention to Nike and Adidas
in terms of what they’re releasing. I might not be thinking about what’s an Allbirds or a New Balance, what is
every new shoe coming, unless I’m the loyal user, but for Nike, there’s always this market pull. We always
know what’s BMW’s next car, what is Tesla’s next model. There is a brand image and pull to it. We are in a
different spot compared to some of the tier 2, tier 3 footwear players. For example, if there’s a new basketball
shoe which is going to be a huge hit, LeBron is going to be front and centre of it, and that’s great advertising
for us for free.
[00:45:20]
Q: It seems many upstarts are approaching women as the future of sport and fitness. Could you talk about
Nike’s success or lack thereof in its women’s categories, whether shoes or apparel?
KR: Nike is still figuring out its women’s strategy. There is a strategy, the strategy is yet to come to life. If you
look at Nike’s organisation structure, there is still quite a bit of focus on men’s performance, that’s the legacy
way of thinking, that’s where Nike started. There is work to be done there yet. Lululemon is kicking ass in its
space.
[00:46:27]
Q: Where do you think Nike has opportunities across sports apparel, footwear or equipment?
KR: Not so equipment. I would say international is a huge focus for us. China within that space is a huge focus
for us. Women’s is a huge focus for us. Digital is a huge focus for us across all geographies. International,
digital, women’s, and apparel is also a huge focus for us. These are our four big growth drivers.
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[00:47:16]
Q: What has Nike done to get ahead of sustainability issues? Could you speak to its track record on
sustainability?
KR: Sustainability, there is a whole team of over 1,000 people just focused on this. Hannah Jones was the ex-
president of this division. A fairly small team a decade ago, but now super focused on this. Sustainability is not
an afterthought. It’s in every part of the business. Whether you talk about shipping, okay, how has that box
been shipped? Whether it’s returning shoes, whether it’s designing shoes, whether it’s material selection,
whether it’s working with factory partners, having guidelines around that. Sustainability, connecting with the
consumers. If you look at the SpaceX shoe, Space Hippies, that’s 100% from recyclable materials. That’s really
important. It’s not an afterthought, it’s a conscious choice, a focus, that’s being made part of every decision.
Then you want to have big, (? 48.58) goals. If you look at our enterprise sustainability report, you can see the
various dimensions where the focus has been and where they are focused, and why they are making those
long-term commitments. Making sure we are carbon neutral by X date, making sure that the amount of water
we use to make our shoes, we are doing 5X recycled water back into the ecosystem, making sure that the
landfills that are now filled with shoes, making a commitment that, moving forward, we will clean them up.
It’s just becoming more and more continuous focus, and this goes back to my previous comment. The next era
is going to be purpose over profits. If you are not a purpose-driven company, your profits are not going to
follow. Being able to think about that is really important. You see companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Nike
are making bold commitments towards that and then striving towards that.
[00:50:12]
Q: How do you think Nike’s sustainability message is playing out globally? Do you think consumers are trying
to care about sustainability?
KR: Yes, totally. You need to continue to hit that message. It’s not like you do it once and get it out of the way.
In fact, two years ago, we had a complete global-wide event and called it Move To Zero. Every dimension,
branding, aspect of our thing had Move To Zero, which means zero waste. Making sure whatever you use from
this earth, resources, we’re giving back, and that way it’s balanced. there was a whole event and that was the
theme of the entire company-wide global Nike day.
[00:51:09]
Q: Where do you think Nike is lacking or could do better?
KR: We are a men’s, US-focused company. Now we are thinking about for China, by China. How do we think
about, for example, if you look at the design teams, 99% of the product and apparel design teams are based in
Beaverton, Oregon. That’s not going to work if we are looking to become a truly global company, so that’s one
thing that we’re working on. (2), if you look at the amount of folks that are dedicated to men’s, it’s
disproportionate to women’s. If they are really looking at a women’s strategy, then you need to figure out how
do you allocate resources and so on and so forth. (3) is, while we are in between this transition to become a
DTC company, I would say Nike is not a best-in-class retailer like a Nordstrom or a Sephora. We are still
inching towards that, so being able to operate like a true vertical retailer, I think we have room to grow both
from a supply chain perspective, from a consumer intelligence perspective, from an omnichannel capability
perspective, we have still room to grow. Lastly, if you look at our loyalty programmes, I think I am excited to
see what that looks like over the next couple of years. Right now, it’s very marketing-focused, so I would love
to see my strategy that I wrote come to life, and that would be probably closer to an industry-leading
membership programme.
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[00:53:19]
Q: How does Nike’s marketing strategy differ from those of other companies?
KR: I think there are three different angles to it. One is brand marketing, continuing to strengthen the Nike
brand. If you put a swoosh, nine out of 10 people can associate the shoes with the company, so that’s the power
of the brand, that’s number one. The second is performance marketing, continuing to make sure, instead of
throwing your dollars across all channels, how do you make your dollars work? And the same consumer,
moving across different channels. Let’s say I just bought a running shoe. How does Nike know that I bought a
running shoe and not send running email campaigns to me? They have understood that I bought a running
shoe, what’s the next step for me? Being able to put the consumer at the centre and work the channels around
it to help the consumer take the next step in their journey is really important vs focusing on channel-specific,
and making sure that ROI across channels, and within each channel, is maximised, but not missing the
consumer.
Lastly, I would say the influencer network. It has elite athletes, continuing to strengthen that, continuing to
support those athletes. For example, in the Olympics, you saw Nike’s strong advocacy for Simone when she
dropped out. You see a strong advocacy for Naomi when she had an issue. Being able to lean forward and have
the progressive thinking is really important. The last pinpoint I would say, and just going back to your
previous question, that I think Nike needs to solve, is its culture. Being able to solve that, starting from the
leadership level, is really important, else people are going to drop off and go to a smaller company where the
culture is amazing, collaborative and appreciates talent. I think that’s another important thing that it needs to
solve as well.
[00:55:44]
NH: Let me close by saying thank you, Karthik, for your input. Clients, if you would like to speak to Karthik in
a private call or meeting, please let your relationship manager know. Thank you again for joining Third Bridge
Forum's Interview today, this now concludes our meeting. Goodbye.
KR: Thank you. You too, bye.
Transcription ends at 00:55:54 of the recorded material
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