Hibbett Sports: a door cluster framework built on the retailer's own three store types

What it is

Hibbett Sports ran more than 1,100 doors in small and mid-sized markets. Its target markets had populations under 75,000. The account deck counted 281 stores with no competitor inside a 15 minute drive. Hibbett had typed its own stores by consumer: 338 Fashion doors, 461 Athletic doors and 311 Sport doors.

Nike sold to the chain through category catalogs. Khounlavong's notes to the account were plain about the history. The focus had been on breadth. Now it had to be on what was working.

He took Hibbett Sports and Shoe Palace together in March 2016 as his third marketplace assignment. He led a team of four and carried men's training and team sports himself.

What Khounlavong did

• Created the framework and timeline for Hibbett's door segmentation, aligned to the account's own consumer muses. He built on the store typing the retailer had already done. His note to the account read: "It's about your language & your locations."
• Named the core insight in the account deck: "Your doors are an anomaly as you have 3 different consumer types which in essence you are 3 different companies."
• Defined a store cluster for the account as a grouping of stores with common characteristics, each receiving a consumer right assortment.
• Positioned the work as a balance of chain strategy, meaning the stores below the top doors. His note read: "This new strategy is NOT a top door strategy." The question he put was how to fill the void in the balance of chain doors.
• Asked the retailer for floor plans for each muse door with counts of footwear panels and apparel fixtures, current product counts in total and by category, agreement on the number of clusters, and a commitment to distribute and track. A muse door is the one store an assortment is planned against.
• Committed Nike to deliver an assortment for each cluster, set against the consumer profile and total capacity, with a retail plan.
• Set the assortment timeline in four steps. Spring 2017 stayed on catalogs by category. Summer 2017 added a Fashion muse door assortment. Fall and holiday 2017 added Athletic. Spring and summer 2018 added Sport, with balance of chain assortments beginning in summer 2018.
• Presented to the account in the summer of 2016 as a "click down" from the presentation given by Nike's vice president that morning. He made four commitments: dedicated resources, a collaborative process, an earlier and more focused starting point, and increased visibility.
• Showed the account the request path, with marketplace merchandising as the first filter ahead of the category sales and merchandising directors.
• Wrote the Hibbett merchandising positioning for fiscal 2017 to 2019. Its merchandising priorities were fewer, better and deeper product, clusters planned to space, separation from moderate department stores and family footwear, and a distinct offer for Fashion, Athletic and Sport. For basketball it set a price band to own, the Kill Zone of $90 to $130.
• Built a Product Story Roadmap template for the account. It mapped product stories by month, with units, door counts and store level for each story.

Results

• Khounlavong's fiscal 2016 review marks the goal "Build Door Cluster Framework" as completed.
• His fiscal 2017 review describes the last three marketplace months in three lines: strong account relationships were formed, merchandising frameworks were created, and account specific strategies were implemented.
• The three-year positioning carried a growth objective of $156M for the account, from $394M in fiscal 2016 to $550M in fiscal 2019, a compound rate of 11.8%. This was a plan figure. No document records the outcome.
• The assortments were scheduled for summer 2017 to summer 2018. Khounlavong moved to Men's Running in September 2016, before the first one reached stores. No sell-through result is recorded.

At a glance