Nike Adventure Club – The sneaker club for adventurous kids
Source: Nike Adventure Club
In typical fashion I allowed others to share the information about Nike’s first subscription service to make sure that any ideas other analysts and sites had were not similar to what I see happening. Also in typical fashion I’m going to drop a few links here to establish what I’ve been stressing in regard to Nike and their wholesale accounts. Nike could be the Amazon of the sneaker industry and I’ve been screaming this for about 4 years now. Maybe this time someone will listen.
Let’s dig in:
Nike had been working with Easykicks since 2017. I honestly didn’t know this, but as I began working on this post I got a bit of insight that forced me to shift gears. My response to Nike Adventure Club this morning was, “Nike is going to utilize Footlocker for their data which I think is a mistake and now Nike is showing how agressive they are by disrupting a Footlocker investment that is barely taking off.” That was my first thought. What am I talking about here?
Why Foot Locker’s Investment In Super Heroic Is a Blueprint Move
I wrote two posts on Footlocker’s investments this year into Rockets of Awesome and Super Heroic. I thought both moves were extremely smart and would help to offset the future issues involved with relying so heavily on Nike. Obviously Nike thought that Footlocker’s investments were smart as well. They thought it was so smart that they bit the move in creating the Nike Adventure Club. I’m slightly wrong about this as Nike has been invested in Easykicks; but it is a bit ironic that they just now decided to go public with a full takeover of the concept at back to school time.
While a Nike subscription service can only provide athletic apparel, and Rockets of Awesome can provide a full range of apparel, when Footlocker invested in Super Heroic, who has a very similar concept in getting kids to be more active, I saw it as an opportunity to strengthen Rockets. I also saw Super Heroic gaining momentum via being placed in Footlocker’s doors. What has to be considered here is that even Super Heroic’s momentum was kind of disrupted prior to the Footlocker investment. It appears that Nike has been keeping a careful eye on Super Heroic as I wrote this post last year at this time:
Nike’s ‘Future Series’ for Young Athletes Reminds Me of Super Heroic and That’s Not Good
What does this mean? Should Footlocker be concerned? I say yes because subscription services happen with more savvy consumers. Those consumers are more likely to already be a part of Nike’s digital ecosystem via apps. Footlocker, while they have been making solid acquisitions, hasn’t figured out how to integrate the companies seamlessly across the multiple platforms they have. You can’t find Rockets of Awesome and Super Heroic quickly on Footlocker.com or on GOAT (which makes sense), but if a company is going to acquire multiple companies there should be a team insuring that their is information readily available on every channel to make sure that the stories and introductions are being made.
Nike launched NAC today and I’m willing to bet the coverage and interest have been incredible. At the same time, none of the articles and coverage today mentioned Footlocker’s kids subscription service in comparison. I’m actually willing to bet if you’re reading this you may not have even considered this side of the discussion. I’m thinking that you really should be.