Net Collectors Society: a March Madness brief that became a pack

What it is

The college tournament in March is one of the fixed moments on the basketball calendar Khounlavong planned against. The brief's appendix shows where the Hyper line, Nike's non signature performance shoes, stood the year before: the spring 2014 HyperRev was spread across 18 colorways, with sell-through by colorway running from 2% to 54%.

The brief started from an insight, "Every school has a story", and a concept, "Ignite the culture of March Madness". It set out a formula, a canvas, a plan to own Nike.com, storytelling through social media and a regional plan.

What Khounlavong did

• Wrote the spring 2015 March Madness brief. He used it as a work sample in a Nike interview in February 2015 under the headings "Celebrate the sport moment" and "Elevate Hyper to diversify the portfolio".
• Proposed school colorways on four shoes. The HyperRev 2015 carried six: Arizona, Kentucky, Oregon, Syracuse, Michigan State and Florida, the last two for Nike.com only. The LeBron XII carried Ohio State, the KD VII carried Texas and the Kyrie 1 carried Duke.
• Sized the program at $15.1M at wholesale and 185,000 pairs. The three signature shoes made up $10.6M and 120,000 pairs. The HyperRev made up $4.5M and 65,000 pairs.
• Set door counts by shoe: 2,500 doors for the LeBron, 1,458 for the KD, 1,042 for the Kyrie and 416 to 625 for each HyperRev colorway.
• Cut the HyperRev colorway count while growing it. The brief plans spring 2015 at 14 colorways against 18, down 22%, with wholesale revenue moving from $9.2M to $10.7M and pairs up 9% to 155,000, at a retail price of $130 against $120.
• Pioneered the Net Collectors Society pack. His fiscal 2015 review credits him with its inception and execution for March Madness. The collection page, dated December 2014, shows a HyperRev and a Hyperchase with a hat, a graphic tee and a crew sock.
• Carried the pack into the spring 2016 energy plan before he left the category. His notes from April 2015 and the plan from August 2015 list two limited editions, a HyperRev 2016 at $140 and a HyperLive at $110, at 15,000 pairs each, with a launch date of March 17.

Results

• The brief's own result page is the Net Collectors Society collection for spring 2015.
• The pack produced $2M in wholesale revenue, recorded in his October 2015 career profile under the heading of energy brought into Hyper and core footwear.
• The spring 2016 plans carried the pack forward as "Net Collectors 2.0", inside a March Madness assortment across Nike Basketball and Nike Sportswear. The launch date fell after he had left the category.
• The documents do not show whether the school colorways in the brief shipped as written. The figures above for those shoes are plan figures.

At a glance