When it comes to innovation, no one pushes further and faster than Nike.Nike pulled out all the stops for its big women’s innovation summit yesterday. Twenty-seven of the world’s top female athletes, including Olympic gold medalists Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, and Adelina Sotnikova, paraded down the runway in the brand’s newest gear. Supermodels Karlie Kloss and Joan Smalls also made appearances on the catwalk to show off the company’s latest design collaboration with Brazilian Pedro Lourenço.
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Nike female athletes from around the world.
Courtesy of Nike
We might have expected Parker to take this moment to unveil the next FuelBand or maybe even a running shoe that could do the workout for us (the technology isn’t quite there yet, unfortunately), but he did no such thing. Instead, Parker and his team had a different message: Nike is still just doing it, and doing it better than ever. “I have been designing for Nike for more than 30 years and I have never been more excited,” he said.
Nike CEO Mark Parker.
One of the brand’s key weapons when it comes to innovation is Nike’s vice president of digital sport Stefan Olander. He helped launch the Nike+ program eight years ago. The Nike+ app has since been downloaded in 94 percent of the world’s countries. By the numbers, that breaks down to 16 million downloads of the Nike+ Training Club (N+TC) app for women, and 9 million have downloaded the Nike+ Running app. Those staggering numbers are expected to jump even more in the coming year, when Nike releases updated versions of both the N+TC and Nike+ Running apps.
Style.com sat down with Olander to discuss what’s really happening with the highly popular Nike FuelBand, the imminent oversaturation of the wearables market, and what the future of Nike digital looks like.
Michelle Beadle of ESPN with Kerri Hoyt-Pack and Stefan Olander of Nike.
When we started the FuelBand, the entire intention was motivation. Our job is to motivate athletes, and you can’t motivate people if you can’t measure, because you don’t know where you stand. We started talking about that and we said, What’s the easiest way to motivate someone? We started to think about if anyone is doing that and thought that we should just make it ourselves. We never made [the FuelBand] with the intent of being an industry hardware manufacturer or anything. At the end of the day, we make amazing products for sport and we are going to keep doing it, but we just wanted to test it out. It just so happened that a lot of people loved it. We wanted to sense the body in motion, either through a sock, your wrist, a shirt, whatever. Right now, we can take all the services we have created and apply it to lots of devices. The whole story is really that we have evolved Nike Fuel to make it in a form that is used everywhere, and we don’t have to make the only device for it. That was our strategy, but things always take interesting turns.
FuelBand started as our way to motivate people and that just seemed like the best way to do it. We never even called it a wearable.Just about every day it seems someone else has launched a new wearable or an activewear line. Are we reaching a point of oversaturation in the market right now?
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It’s inevitable, isn’t it? There is this influx of people who create things because it’s what they think people want and they don’t derive from true insight. It’s not that they understand what people need. It starts with “Oh, everyone is making a wearable, so I am going to make one and hope someone likes it.” FuelBand started as our way to motivate people and that just seemed like the best way to do it. We never even called it a wearable. Eventually the market will clean up again and what remains will be the stuff that really solves problems.
We have a great relationship with Apple, as you know, and we keep introducing amazing ways to partner with the company. We are obviously looking to dig into the Apple Watch as well. We know there are smart ways to insert Fuel there. It’s about trying to get there early and learn from that, and then implement our learning. We know how to measure people and how to motivate them, and that is what we are going to keep doing.
What sort of data and measurements are Nike women most responsive to? Are they most interested in calories, miles…what is it?
For guys, it’s more technical. For women, it’s much more about the social aspect and their friends and doing it together. The idea of measuring yourself is still a very big component, but we are trying to provide women with the social connection.
Is there any specific kind of data that you wish you could achieve with your Fuel technology but haven’t been able to yet?
It comes back to making it more seamless for our users. We want to get better at that. We want you to have one profile with us that works the same across all platforms. Then we can serve you much better. We have our heads down on this and we are working very hard on it.
We have been on this for a long time. We didn’t just wake up one day and say that this digital thing seems interesting.Mark Parker said this morning that everyone asks him what the future of athletic-wear looks like, but he’s more focused on the how. How are you guys looking at the future?
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We have been at this for 40 years. I have worked on the digital pieces for a decade and a half for Nike. We have been on this for a long time. We didn’t just wake up one day and say that this digital thing seems interesting. But it always came from: What is the problem we are trying to solve? What we find most exciting about the future is what happens when you line everything up—we know how to make great clothes, we have amazing events where millions of people show up, we have some great apps, we have people in retail stores that are incredibly knowledgeable. When you stitch it all together and we can recognize you as a member of our community, not just as a consumer, then our ability to serve you on all fronts is something that no one else has.
How will this change the consumer experience going forward?
The product used to be the end of our relationship with our consumers. Now you buy a product and that is the beginning of the relationship. The more we can connect the products to you and your profile, the better we can serve you. I am incredibly intrigued by stitching those pieces together and layering technology in a smart way, not a forced way.
At the heart of this, if it isn’t solving a true consumer problem, it doesn’t really matter what you do, because people won’t stick with it for the long run.How might fashion as an industry be impacted going forward by what Nike is doing?
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We are focused on function. We want technology that isn’t going to get in the way of what we are trying to do. We want shoes that fit so comfortably you don’t even think that you are wearing them. We want pants that fit so well that nothing chafes. It’s function and form. Not the other way around. Technology is at an interesting intersection because you have to think: At what point does it feel forced and when is it a natural part of what you have? I don’t think the code is cracked on that. That is why you have engineering cultures and design cultures coming together to try to fix it. At the heart of this, if it isn’t solving a true consumer problem, it doesn’t really matter what you do, because people won’t stick with it for the long run.
Karlie Kloss in the new Pedro Lourenço collection for Nike.
We don’t think of ourselves as a tech company, but we have always said we had better be a tech aware company. Tech helps people—that is an important distinction. For us, it always comes back to how things work in motion and how things function. That is a slightly different angle. The style of sport is really important because you want to look good when you work out. We have an opportunity to do that. Just as with technology, with some brands that come into this world, you can copy the look but you can’t copy the function if you don’t understand how the body moves. If you are doing anything active, you realize pretty quickly a brand that solves that and a brand that doesn’t. Those are key things to which we can bring great value.
Nike Flyknit shoes.
On the subject of run, train, live, absolutely everyone is doing this right now in activewear. I love that concept, but do you guys really think it’s realistic for women to want to wear the same outfit from the gym to work and then to cocktails at night? I don’t think it is.
You can, but as with anything, you aren’t going to be cookie-cutter about this one look carrying you through the day. I think it’s much more dynamic than that. We like to think about it that way so you see the line that runs through it and it’s not jarring how these things work. But I agree. I think there is much more creativity to it than that.
By Kristin Tice Studeman Via STYLE.com October 23
http://www.style.com/trends/fashion/2014/nike-vp-digital-stefan-olander-fuel-fashion-future?curator=FashionREDEF
My comments:
I love Stefan Olander's quote "The product used to be the end of our relationship with our consumers. Now you buy a product and that is the beginning of the relationship. The more we can connect the products to you and your profile, the better we can serve you." Nike is doing a great job of connecting with the consumer digitally through its apps. When they talk about motivation I think there is so much more they could be doing to motivate customers to purchase through motivating customers to work out. I am excited that they are focused digitally and also focused on the growing number of women who work out.
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