Hotspot Analysis: What Is Nike Worried About And What Concerns It Is?

So far, the company has not made any mistakes, but that does not mean that it has no doubt about the future.

Hear nothing of

What CEO Mark Parker will think of Apple Corp's new product iPhone SE, but one thing may be the same: compared to those who are nervous, the first tier companies in the industry always have more choices and may be more painful about what they want to do next.

On the afternoon of March 16th, Mark Parker made a 15 minute minute speech at the 2016 Innovation Conference, referring to a pair of shoes that can automatically adjust the tightness, a upgraded version Nike+ that can help consumers to personalize, and 9 other product updates.

"Connection" and "relevance" are the words he mentioned most in his speech and after our interview.

At the two day conference, Nike arranged hundreds of media in more than 170 countries, comedians Kevin Hart's talk show, a demonstration of the Olympic Games admission style (with its own mini Symphony Orchestra), and a dozen small booths including the Flyknit maker.

Nike wants to prove to its consumers that it is the best choice in the field of sports products. It comes out of the future including those of HyperAdapt 1.

"Personalized" strategy.

HyperAdapt 1 comes with inductive chips, and tightens the back shoes from both sides, and comes with adjusting buttons.

Its designer, Tinker Hatfield, said, "if it can really be completely automatic, the relationship between people and shoes will change completely."

That may be a bit premature, at least now it seems that Nike needs this concept more than consumers.

After Nike posted it on instagram, it won close to 390 thousand compliment, far less than the Nike Air VaporMax Flyknit announced at the same time. The latter removed the rubber middle sole and hit Slogan Run on the air, winning nearly 440 thousand praise.

Consumers are more concerned about what they can get at the moment, and Nike wants to know what it can catch in the future.

You will know from the updated version of Nike+ App, which will be released in June, how eager the company is to seize the attention of future consumers.

The new Nike+ trains NRC and NTC for two training App and Nike+ SNKRS.

When applied together, you will recommend personalized sports products (from scarves to shoes) to your sports preferences, and click on them to buy them. If they are new products, you can make an appointment immediately.

To put it simply, it is to merge the electricity supplier and the sports community, and the so-called personalization is more like a moving statement because everything is still a product on the industrial assembly line, and nothing has changed for you.

In view of the fact that Nike+ SNKRS had only been tested in a small area, Nike could not provide pformation data from recommendation to purchase.

In essence, Nike has added an information portal to itself.

In the past, store display and social networking can inform consumers of new products, and can be matched by manual recommendation. Nowadays, they can be integrated with sports data and rely on recommendation mechanism to cultivate consumers' trust.

From this point of view, Nike has placed itself in a strange position.

As a sports product manufacturer and seller, Nike must consider the subtext in the data: the number of active users per day, the jump rate of product display page to the sales page, the final turnover rate, and another key factor: how to keep people downloading and opening the App.

They will face the cost of increasing new users, which is as complex as offline store tasks.

The unprecedented complexity of the sports industry, including UNIQLO, Zara, and small companies with unique selling points, is entering this field.

How to maintain contact with consumers has become Nike's most concerned topic.

Although Nike is the largest company in the industry, its target consumers of every product line are faced with extremely diverse choices.

How to maintain the relationship between the brand and users, and the anxiety based on this, is probably the main reason why Nike put forward the so-called "personalized" strategy.

But even though the movement is already in full swing, Nike also keeps silent about any words related to "style" and "fashion".

This is Nike's consistent strategy: linking itself with athletes at any time, and emphasizing "both professional athletes and ordinary sports people."

Then they talked about how to improve athletic performance. Just as Flyknit released a year long run in with Kobe and Blaine before basketball shoes, Nike thought that athletes' demand for products was much greater than that of ordinary consumers, and if they were satisfied, they could theoretically satisfy everyone.

Even when it comes to "style", Nike's response has not left athletes.

John Hoke, vice president of Nike design, said: "our technology ensures that all products we produce can pass the highest intensity test (with professional athletes' standards), while the art part ensures that our products can be accepted by the public and resonate with a wide range of consumers and society.

People can feel confident when they wear them, but they can produce confidence in athletes, and naturally perform better on the field.

Is Nike the best sport equipment?

At least many runners disagree.

But so far, the company has maintained an astonishing growth.

In the third quarter of the 2016 fiscal year, which was released in March 22nd, revenue rose 8% to $8 billion, and Mark Parker called it "strong growth".

From 2006 to 2015, Nike's share price rose by 600%, and its annual revenue doubled. It not only maintained the leading position in the basketball market, but also surpassed Adidas in the 2009-2010 season, and won the first place in the football market.

If you have foresight to buy its stock a few years ago, I am afraid it is one of the highest return investments (another similar company is Starbucks).

CEO Mark Parker called Nike a collection of "several start-up companies".

Let a big company maintain the attitude of a start-up company. Similarly, you may have heard of apples in the Jobs era.

According to Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, in "subversive innovation", this is almost one of the most difficult things in the business world.

In 2006, when Mark Parker took office, the company's business departments were reorganized according to specific sports items. The brand was changed from the previous sub brand and product based structural mode to 7 customer oriented product categories: running, basketball, women training and so on.

He said: "in this way, we can ensure that the company's professionalism in every market segment is no longer bulky and the development of the company will not be aimless."

In many interviews, he referred to the importance of management as "editing and enlarging" the underlying ideas.

"190 countries, 13 sports departments, and you add them up, we are talking about thousands of product sectors.

This is a complex fast-paced business. You must calm down and think about what is the highest priority.

Thinking about consumers' first consideration can help us to edit.

He also reassigned the business area, taking China and Japan as the new focus of development, streamlining the reporting process, reducing the middle level management of the region, and hosting a rare round of layoffs in the company's history.

After 2008 years of reform, sales increased by 70%.

As reflected in the retail end, this idea is similar to what we said before in the Nike retail strategy. The stores in Beijing Sanlitun and the stores next to a university in Shanghai may have different focus.

The preferences of the surrounding groups determine the type of Nike sales. If you open a flagship store, you should balance the relationship between the dealer and other Nike stores.

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The Flyknit technology that benefits Nike today is only a pile of socks made of foam plastic.

It was stacked on the designer's desk, and Mark Parker asked, "what is this?" when Parker learned that knitting technology could be applied to sports, Parker realized that this is a great opportunity.

Although the situation is regarded as "intuition" afterwards, Parker has enough accumulation for design and how to achieve a design.

He is a person who always likes to draw sneakers.

John Hoke has worked with Mark Parker for many years. He said that the CEO always sends the sketches in iPhone, and this picture will become a topic for discussion at the conference.

The Flyknit department now employs more than 100 employees in Nike. They do not produce independent products, but cooperate with other departments.

The structure from scratch is the so-called "magnification" of Mark Parker.

When CEO itself acts as a deep participant in the project, the project will get enough support.

Exploring the birth process of Flyknit, you will find that it is the same as apple and even any company's disruptive innovation, essentially inventing a manufacturing process, not just a product.

After confirming the development of Flyknit, Nike started looking for manufacturers who had the desire to develop this technology, not only exploring the production process, but also developing the machine for making this product.

In the past 3 years, Nike's strong financial performance has been largely attributed to the high margin products, which are the Flyknit series and the Jordan and Kobe Kobe shoes that have been launched since 2012.

So far, the company has not made any mistakes, but that does not mean that it has no doubt about the future.

The "personalized" strategy looks like an uncertain bet. Its core is the problem that any company wants to solve: how to seize future consumers.

Q:Qdaily

MP:Mark Parker

Q: you say different departments are start-up companies. How do you make every team operate in a disciplined way, but not bureaucracy?

MP: This is an art of balance.

The company is getting bigger and bigger, and you are running in a different scale than before.

The important thing is to keep your mind sharp and maintain communication.

Here, we must ensure that the creative environment is rich, creative communities communicate with each other, operate, experiment and try new ideas.

Many of these are related to a specific strategy and agenda, and we must implement them at a high standard, especially those related to large-scale and innovative projects.

Take Flyknit as an example. When we sat at the corner of a table, I looked around, "what is this?" they explained to me that I said it was a Big Idea, so it is very important to nurture and support this idea.

Eventually, the resources of the company begin to tilt towards them and turn it into a team of more people.

Idea may occur in special corners, sometimes not part of the regular agenda.

I think the best thing is to allow them to exist and let them happen.

Then you can get the chance to thrive through your support.

Q: how can you know from the beginning that Flyknit is great idea?

MP: intuition, eh, sometimes intuition.

You see the potential of this kind of knitted shoes in engineers.

This is something we've never done before.

We have to redevelop the production machines and reprogram them.

From this simple and crude idea, if we can make it, it will be a product changing the rules of the game, changing the design and manufacture of our shoes.

It is not only a field, we start from running, but we are exploring its potential in all sports fields.

So sometimes you have to interpret idea from the perspective of category, whether it can scale, whether it is related to consumers, whether it can completely improve sports performance, or even whether it is also valuable for sustainable development.

We hope that designers and engineers will understand these standards creatively.

When they think of a new idea, there is a concept in their mind.

This puts us in a more favorable position for editorial thinking.

Q: when you find a good idea, what specific questions do you usually ask?

MP: how will it change the person / athlete who uses this product? Why does it attract them? It must be real, meaningful and purposeful.

It can cause impact on performance, comfort, beauty and vision, but it must be truly "meaningful impact".

Q: what do Nike think of opportunity nowadays?

MP: how do we create products, how to make products, how to use materials, how to design, how to collaborate with cross industry engineers to achieve our goals? How can we communicate with our consumers in new ways? How can we serve our customers more effectively? How can we make them more seamless and easy to access Nike? This is all about consumers and is of practical value to them.

This is our driving force.

Q: if you look back for ten years, where do you think innovation will appear?

MP: I think it's a more personalized product.

I can't change your baggage in real time.

But for example, you might want a pair of shoes that can be made of different colors? You may be able to do this in real time.

These changes and innovations made in terms of function and aesthetics, including new ways of production that we can't do today, will soon be realized.

3D printing is amazing technology.

Whether it is function or visual effect, it (3D printing) is more tools for our creation.

Investing in it allows us to create things that most people can't imagine.

Q: how do you communicate effectively with consumers?

MP: I think we still need to understand what is real, valuable and purpose.

Specific sports have their own unique needs and culture.

Therefore, athletes in their respective fields must be the most knowledgeable and speaking people.

This is effective - this rule is not only for product innovation, but also for communication.

Communicate with people in "local", because each culture has fine differences.

Sometimes, if the concept of a product is valuable in the East, it will be interesting to bring it to the West.

This is the value of a global company, the inspiration you get locally, and you can supply idea to all people worldwide.

Q: in your current position, where else do you want to get new knowledge?

MP: anywhere.

I was very close to my grandma. She taught me to study like a sponge, observing everything around, life, nature, searching for inspiration, things that many people wouldn't notice.

This ability makes me feel more profound when I look at a thing, it can be a visual angle, it can also be a problem solving angle or a communication angle.

I like the current interconnected world, so that we can share the influence of each other, mix different ideas, and effortlessly across cultural barriers.

You can see this phenomenon in music, fashion and food.

This possibility of bringing different elements together to create new things is incredibly exciting for me.

Q: is that what is called intuition?

MP: intuition...

I think this is just observation and curiosity.

This is the most important quality.

Eager to learn more, become a sponge, broaden our horizons and see things deeply.

Then look for your inspiration.