Athlete focus groups: what 17 year old players told the footwear team

What it is

North America Basketball defined its consumer as the 17 year old player. The merchandising team went to meet him. The stated goal of the July 2014 trip was to connect with the 17 year old basketball athlete and gain insights that inform the future of Nike Basketball in North America.

The practice ran through Khounlavong's whole time in the category. The category's pre-season deck of November 2011 lists groups at high schools in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago that fall. His fiscal 2013 review lists groups with club and high school teams in Chicago, Miami and Washington, D.C. This page covers the three trips of fiscal 2015 and the summer that followed, where the write ups survive.

What Khounlavong did

• Led the footwear section of the Las Vegas focus groups, July 23 to 26, 2014. The team attended club tournaments and sat down with seven groups: four club teams, a Boys and Girls Club group and customers at two sneaker boutiques, 12AM Run and CRSVR.
• Showed the spring and summer 2015 inline and core performance line, and asked about innovation needs, signature against non signature, and price.
• Wrote the footwear recap, dated July 28, 2014, on two pages: what was hot and what was not.
• Organized the Los Angeles trip of December 8 to 10, 2014. The plan covered 34 retail locations across every channel, from Nike stores and boutiques to sporting goods and department stores, and one focus group with the varsity team at St. John Bosco High School.
• Planned the Chicago trip of June 24 to 26, 2015. It covered 28 retail locations and two focus groups, one boys team and one girls team. The schedule places one session at the boutique Succezz.
• Walked four Los Angeles trade zones in June 2015 and recorded insights by zone. For East Los Angeles and Whittier he noted a dense cluster of Nike retail and an opening for a segmentation strategy across categories. For La Brea he noted that boutique retail was growing.
• Shared the recaps with product teams. His fiscal 2015 review lists the travel recaps as the way current consumer and retail information reached product creation.

Results

The findings below come from the Las Vegas recap.

• Price. Players named $200 as the key price for a signature shoe. The LeBron Elite was wanted, but its $275 price was a major deterrent. For the Hyper line they would not pay more than $150, and the key price was about $125 to $130.
• The Hyper line. Players rated its performance on court as undeniable but wore it for utility only. They called the shoes Hyper "Whatever's". The recap's conclusion was that the line needed culture added to grow.
• Technology. Players asked for better traction first. They wanted the right weight more than the lightest weight, to avoid injury. They knew Dynamic Flywire by name but most could not say what it did, and some had seen it break on the Hyperdunk 2013.
• Loyalty. One player said: "I like Andrew Wiggins, but I wouldn't wear his shoe because it's Adidas."
• Color and materials. Players wanted black and white base colors with depth in the materials, still wanted all red, and called Volt stale. They would pay $5 to $10 more for details such as speckled paint or camouflage.
• Communication. Players and retailers both asked for printed material on the box to explain what the technology did.
• The same points appear in later plans. The Dallas recap of January 2015 repeats the $200 and $150 ceilings. The 2015 line plan lists high signature prices as a weakness and sets a refresh of the Hyper series around cultural relevance. The documents do not say that the focus groups caused those choices.

At a glance