Nike Canada has assembled a new business unit that brings together hockey, in-line skating, inflatables, time pieces and eyewear to diversify the Nike brand and to take advantage of categories beyond footwear and sports apparel.
Bill Redford, director of equipment for the business unit and just three weeks into the job, says the division is so new even he isn’t privy to all the details.
However, he does know something about Nike’s proposed eyewear.
Redford says the eyewear could be new types of glasses for running, cycling or beach volleyball.
There’s enormous opportunity in the category, he says, and if Nike brings ‘performance technology’ to eyewear as it does to the other categories in which it competes, there is a market for it.
Redford says he isn’t sure if the company’s interest in eyewear extends to prescription glasses, but he understands Nike’s strategy is to innovate with sports-specific eyewear and position Nike in the marketplace as ‘authentic.’
As for inflatables, Redford prefers not to comment, since he admits he doesn’t know much about them, except to say Nike’s foray into this category is sometime down the road.
Nike, Redford is quick to emphasize, is starting slowly and wants to do things properly so when the company enters a category it is broadly understood that it is there for the long term and selling authentic performance brand equipment.
In the short term, Nike wants to learn more about the categories.
The business unit is obviously in its infancy, says Redford, but it will have its own salesforce and marketing department, as well as responsibility for profit and loss and customer service. It will operate under the Nike Canada and Nike umbrellas.
As for the marketing of the new categories, Redford says although the Thornhill, Ont.-based Nike Canada takes its direction from head office in Beaverton, Ore., some autonomy is allowed to deal with local market conditions.
In the u.s., for example, the company will continue to market around such players as Detroit Red Wing Sergei Federov and Chicago Blackhawk Jeremy Roenick, while in Canada the company uses Toronto Maple Leafs player Mats Sundin and will consider adding other Canadian athletes.
In Canada, says Redford, Nike isn’t known as a hockey name (although its ownership of the Cooper and Bauer brands make it a force to be reckoned with), so it makes sense for the company to target a younger audience and get them onside fairly quickly.
He says the way to market to young, would-be Nike hockey customers is through grassroots promotions, through the various governing bodies of the sport, or with campaigns built around high-profile athletes.
The key, though, Redford stresses, is the brand. Everything done on the marketing front has to enhance the brand.
‘We will not deviate. We will not take away [from the brand.] We want to build the brand and we feel we can build the brand through these new product categories,’ says Redford.
As for building awareness and gaining exposure in some of the new categories, Redford says the Olympic Games in Atlanta this July should supply that.
Nike will launch some of its new product at the Games, he continues, and some of the athletes Nike Canada sponsors in this country will be wearing it.
Nike’s agency is Wieden and Kennedy in the u.s.
Because Nike is introducing its new product in stages – ice hockey gear doesn’t arrive until late spring next year and in-line equipment arrives just after the fall of 1997 – Redford says the company has to be careful it doesn’t get too aggressive and promise more than it can deliver.
Working with Redford in the new business unit will be Andrew Mullen, product marketing manager, equipment.
