Nike's Women's Movement

How to Sell to Women

Nike Goddess began as a concept for a women's-only store, and there's a reason why. Niketown, the retail setting for which the company is best known, is also known to be a turnoff to female customers. Consider the San Francisco Niketown. The women's section is on the fourth floor. But getting there isn't a matter of taking a few escalators. At each floor, women looking for workout shoes or a yoga mat have to wade through displays on basketball, golf, and hockey to catch the next escalator up. The feel of the store is dark, loud, and harsh -- in a word, male.

"I got used to hearing people describe us as brutal," says Hoke, the designer behind most Niketowns. "But that's because our initial reaction to selling the Nike brand was to turn up the volume. Goddess is about turning the volume down. I wanted people to come in and take a breath."

Hoke, who was recently named global creative director of footwear design at Nike, headed to California for inspiration. He toured the house of Charles and Ray Eames. The 1950s designers, with their airy, clean aesthetic (known as Palm Springs Modernism), captured everything that Hoke thought a woman would want in a place to shop. "Women weren't comfortable in our stores," he says. "So I figured out where they would be comfortable -- most likely their own homes. The store has more of a residential feel. I wanted it to have furnishings, not fixtures. Above all, I didn't want it to be girlie."

At the first Nike Goddess store, located at the Fashion Island mall, in Newport Beach, California, the mood fits Hoke's plans. It's light blue and white, with dark wood floors. Milky-white mannequins with muscles fill the floor-to-ceiling windows. Shoes are displayed on tables or wooden shelves alongside pieces of Jonathan Adler pottery and white orchids. Overnight, the store can be overhauled to focus on a specific sport or trend -- whatever is fashionable for the times.

Nike declines to give sales numbers for its two Goddess stores in southern California. But they have proved popular enough for Nike to want to build several more around the country in the next year. "This tells everyone that we are serious about this business," says Grossman. "This isn't a little side project."

Next year, Lady Foot Locker will incorporate part of Nike Goddess's retail philosophy into its 600 stores. Nordstrom plans to take much of the Goddess look, shrink it, and install it in its highest-traffic stores. Macy's Herald Square, in New York, is getting a smaller version of a Goddess store later this year.

For Hoke, the real power of Nike Goddess is not about traffic at stores. It's about changing minds in Beaverton. "I knew that Goddess could galvanize us," he says. "It wasn't just an opportunity to do a better job for women at retail. It was an opportunity to recalibrate and reenergize our entire brand around a market that was taking off."

How to Design for Women

Designing a new approach to retail was only one element in Nike's effort to connect with women. Another was redesigning the shoes and clothes themselves. Nike's footwear designers worked on 18-month production cycles -- which made it hard to stay in step with the new styles and colors for women. The apparel group, which worked around 12-month cycles, was better at keeping up with fashion trends. But that meant that the clothes weren't coordinated with the shoes -- a big turnoff for women.

Those and other issues were spinning around in Darcy Winslow's head when her boss, Eric Sprunk, vice president of global footwear, came to her last summer with a proposition: take over as global footwear director for the women's division. She was happy as Nike's director of sustainable business opportunities. But Sprunk was offering her a chance to drive the kind of changes that she'd always criticized the company for not making. She took the job, on two conditions. "I wanted men and women to be allies, not competitors," she says. "And I wanted a seat at the table. The women's business had to be core to Nike."

Sprunk handed her an empty organization chart and told her to start filling it. And the job came with senior status: Winslow would have a line to Mark Parker, keeper of the Nike brand.

For Lotti, the shoe designer behind the Air Kyoto, landing on Winslow's org chart was a dream. Working in Winslow's group "was like having the blinders taken off," he explains. "Before Goddess, we never got to see the 'in-between places' where shoes like the Air Kyoto could make sense. We were always thinking just about running, or basketball, or soccer."

Now, those in-between places are guiding Nike's approach to design. One key insight: For most women, high performance isn't about sports; it's about fitness. "We never appreciated the whole world of the active lifestyle," concedes Parker. "We had such a jock heritage -- for men and women -- that we never saw anything beyond that." Adds footwear product director Cindy Trames: "It's about a woman's nomadic lifestyle. We go from doing yoga in the morning, to work, to picking up the kids, to going for a run. Nike has to fit into that kind of life."