Serve the Underserved: Win with Watts and Revitalize East Los

What it is

Nike's energy in Los Angeles sat in Hollywood and downtown. Khounlavong's plan named the other side of the city. It stated that underserved communities had a severe lack of access to funding and to fields of play. One consumer profile in the plan, a teenager from Crenshaw, felt that kids in his community were underserved by community programs and by Nike.

Serve the Underserved was one of four project goals Khounlavong set for fiscal 2020. His working notes from June 2019 gave it a sharp point, the Latinx consumer. Nike's East Los store had been open since 2015. The plan was to revitalize it, and to open in Watts.

What Khounlavong did

• Set Serve the Underserved as a fiscal 2020 project goal, with Win with Watts, Revitalize East Los and the Foot Locker door in Compton as the spring 2020 work.
• Wrote the approach in June 2019 under four headings: product, experiences, distribution and marketing.
• On product, chose to extend sizing, use materials right for the consumer, create new product at core price points, and bring back key models, the Cortez among them.
• On experiences, chose to take what had worked in Hollywood and downtown and apply it in East Los Angeles and Watts, "for and of the community".
• Named the doors: Nike's stores in Watts and East Los, the Foot Locker community store in Compton, and WSS in Lynwood and Inglewood.
• Assigned the zone to Nike Direct to lead, supported by the wider marketplace, and built it for two mindsets, the sneaker obsessed and the sport inspired.
• Matched product to the zone: the Air Force 1, Air Max 270, Air Max 90, Tanjun and Blazer in footwear, the Windrunner and Club Fleece in apparel.
• Drafted a roadmap with the East Los Classic in October 2019, and the Foot Locker Compton opening and the Watts community store opening in February 2020. The roadmap was marked as work in progress.
• Asked headquarters to raise the points of distribution in East and South Los Angeles and to fuel the zone with informed and coveted product.

Results

• Foot Locker opened its community store in Compton on August 26, 2020, its first on the West Coast, at 12,800 square feet. It hired from within five miles of the store.
• Nike opened its community store in Watts on August 27, 2020, at 9,588 square feet. Nike hired 85% of the staff from within three miles of the store. It made Los Angeles the only city with two Nike community stores.
• Khounlavong drove Serve the Underserved, the Los Angeles plan for Watts, East Los and Compton, and built it with Nike Direct, Foot Locker and WSS. The roadmap had dated the two doors for February 2020. They opened that August, after he left Nike in January.

At a glance