Blue Ribbon Sports, located at 3107 Pico Boulevard, is just one of Nike’s community-driven spaces across the world.
Source: Runner’s Reprise: Nike’s Original Door Reopens in Santa Monica
When I was establishing ARCH in 2009, I was wavering between trying to make basketball shoes again or making lifestyle shoes. The reality was I wasn’t coaching anymore and I wasn’t hooping as much as I used to, so I settled eventually on making a lightweight, neutral running shoe. I didn’t take any business courses to launch my second sneaker company. I used what I learned with Sho-Shot and I applied every lesson I read about in the book Swoosh and the book Just Do It. Those books became my master’s class in business as I created each of my running shoes.
The story of Jeff Johnson really appealed to me. As employee number 1 at Nike he was the mind behind slapping foam from a flip flop between the upper and rubber of an Onitsuka Tiger. He was an athlete that founded the original grassroots movement for BRS. He was the perfect storm of creativity and common sense. Johnson chose the name Nike over Phil Knight’s “Dimension 6”.
That’s not what this post is about. What this post is about is a section from the book I’m writing about how Nike has shifted sneaker retail. When I saw that Nike was reopening the original location three things came to mind:
- Nike understands the importance of its history. As the older guard begins to fade away (Nike is a 50 year old company and the men who created it are all moving to the background) the creation story no longer resonates as it once did. With retro gaining ground, it’s the perfect time to relaunch BRS as a category of Nike to begin sharing the history with a new generation. Opening the original location is genius.
- If BRS is reborn, then it’s only natural that as we move towards the Olympics that Nike will also begin to reintroduce Athletics West; the running club Nike founded to prepare track and field athletes for Olympic competition.
- This new BRS is a small door that represents the hyper local approach that the brand is moving towards in the Nike Consumer Direct Offense.
In the book I’m writing I discuss that Nike’s direct to consumer strategy is the biggest threat to the sneaker market that has ever existed. As the brand learns more and more about their customer via their digital platforms, where the customer spends 30% more, the natural progression is to realize that small is stronger and faster than big. In the book I stated what I’ve talked about here on the site:
The reopening of BRS for Nike is another warning shot to the sneaker industry. Small retail is usually the realm of startups, but Nike realizes that a personalized, more community friendly approach to building relationships with their consumer is a much better way to provide a “bespoke” connection, especially in running where specialty stores dominate that market.
BRS reopening is another great play by the Swoosh, one that I recommended over and over and didn’t see any other brand do… it’s not too late for the others, but now they’re chasing Nike again.