Jimmy Khounlavong

Overview

Jimmy Khounlavong is a brand architect and product strategist with 27 years across brand, sales, and product, from the sales floor to the boardroom. At Common Ground he is Principal, Brand, Product and Merchandising.

Khounlavong spent 16 years at Nike across nine roles, rising from the sales floor to General Manager of Nike Sportswear Los Angeles. He owned North America Basketball footwear through the LeBron, Kobe, KD and Kyrie era, growing it from $322M to $670M at a 20.1% compound annual rate, past $500M for the first time; built door segmentation and merchandising strategies across a $500M-plus wholesale business, first Finish Line, then city specialty and boutiques, then Hibbett and Shoe Palace; owned a $1B-plus men's running footwear business and ran the North America launch of the VaporMax, while Nike's global team seeded the franchise through The Ten; co-authored the NIKEiD to Nike By You global rebrand mid-flight and grew the platform to $181M, delivering 30% FY18 global revenue growth across Nike By You and the Nike.com and direct integration it powered; and led Nike Sportswear Los Angeles, a $1.2B-plus lifestyle business, holding Nike's number-one cool-brand position among LA teens. Before Nike he started at sixteen as a stockroom clerk at Finish Line in Kentucky and sold for Medline and CDW. He holds a BA in Integrated Strategic Communications from the University of Kentucky.

He is the founder of Lip Loi Creative, a brand strategy and go-to-market studio whose operating line is “Creating Brands That Fund.” He also mentors founders through ACEL (Asian Corporate & Entrepreneur Leaders) in Phoenix.

Career, from his own account

Recorded September 19, 2026; figures trace to the Common Ground wins ledger.

Jimmy Khounlavong started at sixteen as a stockroom clerk at a Finish Line in Ashland, Kentucky, worked up to the sales floor and assistant manager, helped staff Final Fours in Indianapolis and filmed the chain's training videos. After a BA in Integrated Strategic Communications from the University of Kentucky he sold medical supplies for Medline in Chicago and Memphis, where surgery packs were the money maker, and then IT for CDW in Chicago for about eighteen months before taking a deliberate step back to enter Nike as an entry-level sales rep.

Nine roles followed over sixteen years. A territory of more than 200 accounts across five states became, within eight months, the lead footwear seat for the largest sporting-goods chains in the Midwest, MC Sports and Dunham's. He then led the boutique and energy accounts across Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee, and moved to Los Angeles to carry Shiekh Shoes, Shoe Palace and the West Coast boutiques that set sneaker culture. As North America footwear merchandising director for Nike Basketball he carried the LeBron 8 through 12, the Kobe 7 through 10, the KD 4 through 7, the first two Kyries and the Paul George inception, worked with the athletes themselves, and brought the Zoom Soldier to market at $125 to $130 as the accessible tier under a $210 signature shoe. Basketball footwear grew from $322M to $670M in that era at a 20.1% compound rate, past $500M for the first time, and signature footwear within it grew from $105M in fiscal 2012 to $321M in fiscal 2015. As North America marketplace merchandising director he merchandised the spaces for Finish Line and Hibbett, about $500M of business, with a team of four; the boutiques were the halo, the chains were the payoff. As men's running merchandising director he owned a $1B-plus business through the VaporFly and ran the North America launch of the VaporMax, while Nike's global team seeded the franchise through The Ten. As senior merchandising director for NIKEiD he co-authored the rebrand to Nike By You mid-flight, managing materials rather than SKUs across every geography. He was part of the concepts and ran the launches, including the ACG x Pendleton collaboration at ComplexCon with collector Jay Gordon in November 2017 and the first UV-activated Air Force 1 as the All-Star 2018 Air Force 1, told as the June Gloom story. He grew the platform to $181M, delivering 30% FY18 global revenue growth across Nike By You and the Nike.com and direct integration it powered, and set the strategy for the Nigel Sylvester launch that came after he left. As General Manager of Nike Sportswear Los Angeles he led a $1.2B-plus lifestyle business on a planned 16% compound rate, with lifestyle driving 78% of Nike's footwear growth in the city from fiscal 2018 to 2019, worked with Drake, Travis Scott and LeBron James, including the LeBron welcome, a takeover of LA Live with apparel and footwear drops, activations and banner wraps, delivered Nike's first city-wide online-to-offline scavenger hunt with Netflix and BAIT for Stranger Things, staged across San Diego during Comic-Con on July 20, 2019 as the pre-release, with the official launch at BAIT on Melrose on August 13, 2019, and held Nike's number-one cool-brand position among LA teens.

He founded Lip Loi Creative on one promise, Creating Brands That Fund, with a two-phase method, market reality then fundability, and a productized ladder. His intake questionnaire is where every brand starts: what the person wants, what motivates them, what they test, which brands they aspire to sit beside. From that he has built full identities for Vincent Hancock, the world-record Olympic skeet champion, and for Luke Kwon, the 390,000-subscriber golf creator who went on to win the inaugural PGA Tour Creator Classic, along with the brand and narrative for the golf docuseries Drive for the Dream, a reconciliation venture founded by a former convict turned lawyer, a sneaker store's mall positioning deck, and Plunge Studio, a contrast-therapy concept. At LÏEF he is Principal, Brand, Product and Merchandising. He drew the leaf mark, created the Japandi and Sonoran concept, named the 22 Midtown residences, chose the licensed typefaces, adjusting the kerning of Piala for the logo and adding the diaeresis, and wrote the brand standards, alongside the identity, brand guide, design lookbook and three-tier selections program, and the first pass of the investor deck narrative with Jesse Fowler. The name LÏEF came from Jesse. He is a principal and equity partner in LÏEF Midtown. For Common Ground he wrote Built. Different., the signature system and the stackable two-page case study the group runs on, and deployed GA4, Schema.org and OG images across all 19 active portfolio projects. He mentors founders through the Asian Corporate and Entrepreneur Leadership organization in Phoenix and holds an Arizona real estate license.

Work on record