What it is
Spring 2017 had booked $225.2M in North America men's performance running footwear. The target for spring 2018 was $244.9M, up 8.7%. After the global review gate of February 2017, which Nike calls AF, the forecast stood at $201.3M. That was $23.9M under the prior year and $43.6M under target.
The reasons were in the line. Free and Flex were 40% of the business. Max Air units were down 21% and Lunar and React were down 24%. The VaporMax Flyknit would be in its fourth season. Several of the prior spring's largest sellers had no replacement, among them the Flyknit Racer and the Zoom All Out Low. His read of the $100 to $130 band was that it was purely repeat business and needed a new offering to grow.
What Khounlavong did
- Wrote the breakdown deck and itemized $66.0M of gaps in a waterfall, model by model. The four largest lines ran from $9.5M to $14.4M each.
- Built $60.2M of requests against them: $40.5M at the statement level of the line and $19.7M at the core.
- Asked for product adds and updates: a VaporMax without Flyknit at $10.8M, the Air Max Sequent 3 introduced on January 1 at $10.0M, an FS Lite update at $8.3M and a Zoom All Out Low update at $8.2M.
- Asked to pull the Free RN Flyknit 2018 forward into the season, worth $4.0M.
- Asked for $8.6M of color adds, including $190K on the Zoom Fly to drive energy in boutiques.
- Wrote three packs with a story, a forecast and a distribution for each. Navy Tuxedo, for January 1, used patent leather and metallic details for award season. Multi Knit, for February 1, drew on 1990s running fashion. Triple White, for March, marked the move into spring.
- Set the distribution by pack and by account, with the reason for each. Navy Tuxedo and Triple White went broad because the colors were democratic. Multi Knit went to city specialty and boutiques only, to drive energy. Finish Line and Dick's Sporting Goods led the React platform.
- Recommended price moves in the same deck: Epic Pure from $175 to $165 and Epic React from $160 to $150.
- Tracked the status of every request model by model in a pack overview that carries his initials, dated April 5, 2017.
Results
- With the requests, the season forecast rose to $261.5M. That was 16.1% over the prior year and 6.7% over target.
- The April 4, 2017 business review lists three of the requests as actions: the addition of the Zoom All Out Low 2 to spring 2018, the pull forward of the Free RN Flyknit and the Free RN, and a VaporMax Flyknit 2.0 for Air Max Day 2018.
- Not every request was adopted. The April 2017 pack grid marks one geography add as confirmed and two as to be decided. It marks the Navy Tuxedo pack as denied on two models, one of them the VaporMax Flyknit.
- The final booked result for spring 2018 is not in the documents. Khounlavong left the category in July 2017, before the season sold in.
At a glance
| Project type | Seasonal line planning and product requests |
|---|---|
| Industry | Athletic footwear |
| Seat | North America Footwear Merchandising Director, Men's Running |
| Ran through | Nike |
| Dates | February 2017 to April 2017 |
| Scope | North America |
| Related pages | Jimmy Khounlavong, Nike Men's Running, North America: a $1B business in a contracting category |
| Principal | Jimmy Khounlavong |