11 Going moonlight, an unconventional move OFF THE BEATEN

OUTSIDE ‘THE BERM’

There's an internal saying at Nike: To make something unique, you have to think outside the 'berm' – which is what employees call the perimeter of Nike's 286-acre campus in Oregon. The successful Nike SNKRS app started that way. The development of the SNKRS app represented a strategic decision by Nike to fully invest in its digital and direct-toconsumer capabilities. But getting leadership on board3behind this particular idea was difficult. It was up to a small team of creatives, developers and (junior) designers to go 'unconventional', bring the new idea to life, and convince Nike leadership to invest.

THE POWER OFF SCRAPPY, FAST TEAM - AND A PASSION PROJECT

An assortment of Nike employees from digital, commerce, marketing, and other categories were brought together to work on SNKRS as a side project. The project started out at a co-working space in San Francisco, hundreds of miles from Nike campus. The team referred to this approach as moonlighting. This kind of 'skunk innovation' defined the SNKRS project from day one.

The team was an extremely diverse mix of Nike employees and some outside contractors who had previously worked for tech scale-ups such as Dropbox. One key factor united them all: a genuine passion for sneaker culture and community. All team members had the same goal in mind: 'We were like, we need to level up how we romanticise sneakers, and then we have to figure out how we do that at scale.'

Show Them Something Digital

In 2012, SNKRS was just a concept, a 'bullet point on a slide'. The atmosphere within Nike was ready for change as direct-to-consumer and digital were important buzzwords. At the same time, sneaker culture was getting hotter. A proof of concept, a working prototype, would be the key to get the board behind the project. The project was dubbed 'Project Valiant', in reference to Nike's founder Phil Knight, who famously closed Nike's first sales from the back of his Plymouth Valiant. The SNKRS team was aiming for a similarly intimate, direct-to-consumer feel, but in the realm of the digital age.

One of the initial sketches of the app was called 'Nike Pulse', referring to the user's ability to stay on top of the pulse of everything Nike, from products to content. By June 2013, the team had a first working prototype and were ready to sell the whole concept back to Nike. The app was boosted in 2019, after the acquisition of Mega Virgin and the launch of the NY-based Nike Digital Studio.