Air Visi Pro III: a $65 shoe at the top of the October 2012 sales chart

What it is

The Air Visi Pro was one of Nike Basketball's entry price shoes, carried in sporting goods and department store assortments. The third version arrived for fall 2012 at $65, with a nubuck version beside it.

Khounlavong took over footwear merchandising in 2011. That summer the category's feedback to global product teams for fall 2012 listed core performance footwear among its weaknesses, with an estimated gap of $13.5M and 405,000 pairs, and named the Air Hyped III and the Air Visi Pro III as the two models in work.

What Khounlavong did

• Influenced the global core performance product team on the shoe. His fiscal 2012 review names the Air Visi Pro III first among his wins with that team.
• Recorded the changes to the shoe in his notes for the fall 2012 line review. The notes list four: the saddle moved forward to sit between the second and third eyelets, a cleaner toe, layers removed at the heel and micro perforations added to the collar.
• Planned the model against a comparison of 375,000 pairs, 220,000 of them in nubuck.
• Carried it at $65 as a key style for both sporting goods and department stores in holiday 2012.
• Widened the color offering. The category's business review named the "color blow out" on the Air Visi Pro III and two other core shoes as the lead for growth in sporting goods and department stores.
• Raised the nubuck version from $65 to $68 in the fall 2013 margin review.
• Carried the shoe as a Nike Factory Store model. The fall 2013 margin review notes that in that role it drove a higher margin for Nike at the regional level.

Results

• In October 2012 the Air Visi Pro III ranked first among all performance basketball models in the United States by retail dollars, at $2.43M and 44,429 pairs for the month. The source is point of sale data from NPD, a market research firm. The data for that month left out the LeBron X and Kobe VII.
• Advance orders for spring 2013 came to $4.7M, one of three styles that made up 64% of core footwear orders for the season.
• His fiscal 2012 review describes the result as an "extreme commercial success".
• The run ended. By fall 2013 the category's review recorded slow sales and a heavy inventory position on the model, which held back orders for its successor.
• In factory stores the nubuck version was still selling in spring 2015, at 18,126 pairs and $866,000 for the season.

At a glance