Nike Acquisition Boston Retail Demand Forecast Analysis Company Wants To Do Direct Sales

US sports giant Nike (Nike) recently said it had acquired the retail forecast analysis and demand sensing company Celect, based in Boston, and the two sides did not disclose specific transaction terms.

Nike chief operating officer Eric Sprunk pointed out that the acquisition of Celect will help accelerate the group's Consumer Direct Offense direct marketing strategy and provide better customer services for global customers. The acquisition of Celect, the world's top data science company, will enable Nike to play our digital advantage faster and better, driven by their platform. With the growth of market demand for our products, we must be based on market insight, optimize data and pay close attention to consumer behavior. This is the way we provide personalized services to consumers on a large scale. "

That is to say, integrating Celect's technology into Nike's mobile app and website, Nike can better predict the type of sports shoes and clothing that consumers want, when they want to buy, and where they prefer to buy. "We must predict market demand ahead of time, because there is no six months to prepare for it, only 30 minutes."

Nike expressed the hope that Celect could help the group reduce the shortage rate and reduce the demand for sports shoes and clothing outside the planned range, which would further enhance the profitability of the group.

Founded in 2013, Celect has a series of cutting-edge intellectual property product portfolios in data science and software engineering. Celect provides patent insight based on cloud analysis platform to help retailers achieve inventory optimization through more precise localization demand forecasting under the environment of all channels. Before the acquisition, Celect accumulated more than $30 million in financing from the investor side.

Celect's team will immediately merge into the global operation team of Nike, and its co founder will be a consultant for Nike in the future as a tenured professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John Andrews, chief executive of Celect, said: "we can't wait to join the Nike team to integrate our unique innovative capabilities into the data and analysis base they have built over the years."

Eric Sprunk said that Nike chose to acquire Celect compared to "two or three years" trying to hatch a platform from inside. "It's too hard. Forecasting retail shopping patterns and consumer behavior, this acquisition has greatly accelerated the pace of our development.

Before Celect, Nike has acquired several digital companies, including:

In 2016, the New York digital design studio Virgin MEGA was bought to help the group build a shoe business platform SNKRS app.

In March 2018, it bought the consumer data analysis firms Zodiac to speed up the group's "digital transformation".

In April 2018, the acquisition of Israeli computer vision company Invertex Ltd., in order to enhance the competitiveness of the group digital technology platform, recently launched the 3D scan function Nike Fit is from Invertex.

The existence of Nike's Consumer Direct Offense strategy is aimed at directly facing consumers and further reducing dependence on wholesale channels. According to the US Securities and Futures Commission data, sales in Nike increased by 12% to $10 billion 400 million in the 2018 fiscal year, accounting for 30% of the total sales of Nike brand.

Since the beginning of the year, the stock price of Nike has increased by 8%, and its current market value is US $127 billion.