Founded in Oregon, USA in 1964 as Blue Riband Sports (the name Nike wasn’t registered until 1971), by 2021 the brand was worth an incredible 83.71 billion dollars and today sits at no. 17 in the big list of global brands*¹. Fun fact: Nike isn’t just the biggest sports brand on the planet but the biggest apparel brand, too – only beaten to the top 10 by colossi such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and McDonalds, and just one spot behind the iconic Coca Cola.

Nike has always aimed big, with ambition that sees them trading in 170 countries (meaning there’s only 25 places on earth where you can’t buy Nike). But their benchmark for success has never been about sales and reach alone. From the start, Nike was clear that it would be innovation that led the way and that thinking has kept the brand head and shoulders above the rest.

It might sound like an urban myth, but it’s true that co-founder Phil Knight started a kind of preacher network of devotees (named EKIN*² – Nike backwards) who, to this day advocate to retailers on both brand and products – a kind of pre-influencer network. The company also uses ‘corporate storytellers’*³ to keep the heritage and history of the brand alive and kicking among their 73,000+*⁴ employees.

Too many to list here, but Nike’s key advances which were once conceived in their Innovation Kitchen, or their Direct Division are routinely adopted all over the world as standards.

The ‘Collab’ – fast fashion’s 21^st century hotline to cool, was bringing cold, hard cash into Nike before it was a twinkle in H&M’s eye. Nike’s original collaboration with Michael Jordan netted $126m in the year they signed (1984) with the Nike Jordan brand still worth over $3bn in 2019*⁵.

Nike were first to turn stores into experiences, a theatre of retail – with sales decidedly secondary. Their biggest store to date is the cathedral to the customer that is their 55,000-square foot SoHo store in NYC*⁶ and their highest tech being their Berlin flagship, with its Mission Impossible-esque media wall and multi-touch footwear table*⁷.

But what Berlin is all about, and what Nike is now doing so much better than almost anybody else, is personalisation. With consumers 110% more likely to add products to their baskets when a shopping experience is highly personalised, it’s a no-brainer to add personalisation to the shopping journey – but of course Nike has gone above and beyond.