After months of planning and dozens of overnight shifts, Nike’s House of Innovation flagship store on Fifth Avenue has a new look.
In a store walkthrough with Tim Rupp, senior creative director of retail and experiences at Nike, the executive told FN that planning for the top-to-bottom renovation kicked off in March.
“We were able to keep the store open throughout construction, which was great,” Rupp said. “But in short, 30 overnights basically did the trick to do the renovation. And the building is about 69,000-square-feet, so that was no small feat.”
Located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan, the flagship store, which first opened in 2018, was reconfigured to align with Nike president and chief executive officer Elliott Hill’s so-called “Sport Offense” strategy.
Outlined in the Swoosh’s first quarter conference call in September, “Sport Offense” aims to realign the product creation side and the marketing side by brand (Nike, Jordan and Converse) as well as by sport (running, football, basketball, tennis, etc.) rather than by men’s, women’s and kids’ categories.
“We’ll gain sharper insights to fuel innovation and storytelling and connect with the communities of each sport in more meaningful ways,” Hill noted on last month’s earnings call with analysts. “Collectively, we’ll have a better coordinated attack with each brand forming a distinct identity and delivering a clear attention to serve different consumers.”
At the House of Innovation flagship, this new strategy is evident. While Nike did keep dedicated men’s and women’s floors at the store, each one has clear areas for different sports the Swoosh aims to highlight.
Leading with Nike Running, the women’s floor on two, and the men’s floor on three, open with a robust offering of the brand’s full running assortment – followed by clear lifestyle areas and special moments for its Skims collaboration as well as its ACG outdoor line.
“We’re a running company,” Rupp maintained in Friday’s store tour. “So leading with running on the men’s and women’s floor allows us to create this head-to-toe shopping experience. While this isn’t rocket science in the retail world, the store was not set up like this before because of the separation. Now everything is together.”
Outside Nike’s House of Innovation flagship in NYC.
Courtesy of Nike
Another major change to the store is where the footwear is housed. Instead of the fourth floor serving as the dedicated shoe destination, Nike is highlighting its footwear offering across all of the store’s six levels. This allows the customer to achieve that full head-to-toe look by sport much easier with the apparel and shoes collocated together in one space.
“We originally designed the fourth-floor shoe destination to highlight the best of footwear in one area so that everyone had a dedicated place to shop across all of our shoe offering,” Rupp said. “And everybody did come to the floor, but it was hard to shop. It was sort of a labyrinth, and some styles could be easily missed. Plus, customers would go to the other floors, and the footwear was missing, making it harder to put together that full sport uniform. So now we created a layout that allows each sport to have its moment and bring the full uniform to life in one space across every level of the store.”
The new store layout also allows for more “world building,” the executive added. “Having dedicated spaces for football, running, basketball and others allow us to build out our storytelling even more,” Rupp said. “We are showcasing our distinct point of view for each sport while also celebrating some of our star athletes in the spaces to bring that sport to life.”
The House of Innovation is also bringing the Jordan brand to life in a major way. The top floor of the Fifth Avenue flagship is solely dedicated to the brand – showcasing the apparel and footwear offering from Jordan in what Rupp said was inspired by the label’s standalone World of Flight retail concept.
“Here, we brought in performance, sport and lifestyle together on one dual-gender floor to create a really focused and powerful presentation of Jordan Brand,” Rupp said. “We’re really excited for how this turned out.”
As for where else this new store design and layout can be found, Rupp noted that Nike’s Atlantic Center store in Brooklyn, N.Y., as well as its South Congress store in Austin, Texas, have also gone through a similar renovation. Nike’s Portland, Ore. flagship is set to debut a new facelift in the same vein next month.
According to Hill in last month’s earnings call, the House of Innovation “immersive sport experience” and refresh has already led to double-digit revenue increases in stores where the renovation is complete.
“This clarity [by sport] works in small format doors as well,” Hill said on the call. “We recently redesigned our South Congress store in Austin to focus only on running and training and sales have significantly increased. Ultimately, the ‘Sport Offense’ will maximize Nike, Inc.’s complete portfolio.”
The reimagined House of Innovation comes at the same time that Nike is seeing a turnaround in its earnings. Hill said in a statement last month that Nike in the first quarter “drove progress through its Win Now” actions in priority areas of North America, wholesale and running.”
The CEO added that while “we’re getting wins under our belt, we still have work ahead to get all sports, geographies and channels on a similar path as we manage a dynamic operating environment.” Total revenues for Nike in Q1 rose 1.1 percent to $11.72 billion from $11.59 billion the same time last year.