Dive Brief:
- Nike on Friday opened its latest store concept, Nike Style, in Seoul, South Korea. The athletics giant in a blog post described the store as a “remixed expression of sports retail culture that blurs the line between physical and digital.”
- In terms of assortment, Nike Style stores feature “gender agnostic lifestyle product zones” for certain clothing, including fleece, tops, footwear and accessories. Like some of Nike’s other concepts, Nike Style stores also include localized collections.
- The athletics giant already has plans for a second Nike Style store, set to open in Shanghai in the fall, with “other countries” on the roadmap for the future. Nike did not immediately respond to a question about how big the fleet could grow.
Dive Insight:
Nike is returning to Seoul for its latest store format, after opening a Nike Rise concept in the city about a year ago. The Hongdae neighborhood, where Nike Style is opening, has a strong relationship with sneaker culture, according to Nike, and the store will be surrounded by local retail and entertainment.
As with many of Nike’s store concepts lately, Nike Style has tech baked into it. QR codes throughout the store allow shoppers to open augmented reality experiences tied to art installations and product innovation, a feature that was also recently on display at the Nike Live store in Los Angeles. A more unique feature, Nike’s new format includes a content studio with customizable backdrops where anyone from local creatives to shoppers can create content for their social media channels.
The Nike Style storefront will also host events around local sneaker culture and Nike By You workshops — a program aimed at allowing customers to personalize Nike products.
Stores that double as event spaces have become increasingly popular with brands aiming to build up a loyal community, and they’ve been a feature of Nike’s other store concepts as well. Nike Rise in Seoul, for example, includes a dedicated space for workouts and wellness discussions with experts, among other events.
Localizing the product assortment at a given store has likewise become a staple for Nike, pursued across both its Nike Live and Nike Rise storefronts as well as the Nike Style format. Even with its wholesale partners, Nike is careful to tailor its offering to what that store’s consumers are looking for.
Gender-neutral clothing has also become a focus point as Nike goes after a younger consumer. A Nike Live store in Williamsburg, New York, was opened with a particular emphasis on Gen Z consumers and featured an entire floor merchandised in a gender-neutral way.
As Nike has worked to pursue a direct-to-consumer strategy over the past few years, Nike’s store concept list has grown to include digital-focused formats like Nike Live, Nike Rise, Nike House of Innovation and now Nike Style. In March this year, the company also teased that it was planning stand-alone Jordan brand stores. The eventual footprint of those formats differs: Last year, Nike’s Vice President of Nike Direct, Daniel Heaf, told Retail Dive there “won’t be that many” House of Innovation stores, while Nike Live was destined for a large expansion and Nike Rise sits somewhere in between the two.
Nike did not immediately respond to a request for comment on where this new concept fits into its store strategy.
