What it is
In the fall of 2015 Nike was standing up a marketplace merchandising function beside category merchandising, under a program called Create the Future. Khounlavong moved from North America Basketball footwear to the Finish Line account. A Nike organization chart of November 2015 lists him as the director for Finish Line and the lead for men's and young athletes footwear. He knew the retailer from the other side. His career profile lists him as an assistant manager at The Finish Line in Lexington, Kentucky, in the 1990s.
Finish Line was a mall retailer with about 620 doors. Nike positioned it as the amplified running destination in the mall. The account review for fall and holiday 2015 showed the strain. Lifestyle running footwear sales were up 37.8%. Performance running was down 9.2%. Basketball sales were down 22% while basketball inventory was up 16%. Training inventory was up 38% on a business that was down 16%. Holiday 2015 cancellations ran at 12%.
What Khounlavong did
- Partnered with the planning team to create the first Finish Line door segmentation. A proposal dated November 10, 2015 sorted the doors into four tiers by volume, in bands from under $1M to $3M and above, and named a lead category for each door.
- Wrote the holiday 2016 account positioning roadmap, last updated November 11, 2015. It counted 622 doors in four tiers: 28 in the first and 44 in the second, both labeled Nike Track Club doors, then 221 in the third and 329 in the fourth.
- Wrote the Finish Line merchandising strategy for fiscal 2017 to 2019. Its priorities included integrated assortments, hyperlocal assortments, editing to amplify, FinishLine.com and the creation of door clusters. It named amplified running as the growth opportunity to be famous for.
- Broke the doors out by key city in the same plan: 13 in Los Angeles, 12 in New York, 13 in Chicago and 10 in Dallas and Houston.
- Completed the holiday 2016 hindsight review for the account. The opportunities he recorded were to narrow the category offering, drive depth in key items and eliminate the long tail. He asked whether the account's basketball concept should evolve.
- Started the door cluster framework with a business planner in November 2015. The work began with running stories and footwear capacity by cluster.
- Walked stores in Indianapolis for the holiday 2015 teardown in January 2016. His notes record a training wall bought for breadth and not depth, initiative tables that were over assorted, and a premium essentials presentation that was clear and well executed.
- Served as hiring manager for the Finish Line merchandise manager role and wrote the job profile.
Results
- Khounlavong's fiscal 2016 review records the door segmentation strategy and the three-year merchandising strategy as delivered in the quarter.
- The same review marks the goal "Build Door Cluster Framework" as completed for the year.
- The Finish Line version of the Create the Future deck, dated January 2016, carried the cluster model to the account with named muse doors. A muse door is the one store an assortment is planned against. Del Amo was the muse for a 28 door cluster and Staten Island for a 44 door cluster.
- No sell-through or revenue result is recorded for this work. He handed the account off in January 2016.
At a glance
| Project type | Account strategy and door segmentation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Athletic footwear, mall retail |
| Seat | Marketplace Merchandising Director |
| Ran through | Nike |
| Dates | Fiscal 2016 second quarter. Documents run from October 2015 to January 2016 |
| Location | Beaverton, Oregon, with store visits in Indianapolis |
| Related pages | Jimmy Khounlavong, Nike Marketplace Merchandising: four assignments in nine months |
| Principal | Jimmy Khounlavong |