The Future Of Sports Industry: Nike Imagining Communities And Data

Where is the gap between local sports products and the international front line? Technology is, of course, an important factor, but a more important field of vision than technology. In the international first-line brand represented by Nike, we are reinventing the sports industry with the idea of Internet and user experience. For the sports industry, Nike offers at least two lessons to learn from: the community and the changing consumer demand.

Nike was named last year by FastCompany as "the 50 most powerful companies in the world in 2013", on the grounds of two technological innovations of Nike: new vamp technology Flyknit and sports digital product Nike+FuelBand.

Quite humorously, after being elected the most innovative company for the first time in six months, Flyknit's R & D designer and InnovationKitchen laboratory leader BenShaffer was picked up by apple -- innovative kitchen similar to Nike's GoogleX in Google, responsible for the development and testing of Nike's internal frontiers, while BenShaffer's role in Nike is similar to Jonathan's Eve in apple. In another half a year, that is, in mid 4 2014, Nike announced the abandonment of wearable business Nike+FuelBand. Nike+FuelBand was also born in BenShaffer's innovative kitchen.

Opening up a brand new business is not easy for a company with a market value of more than about 60000000000 dollars and has been specializing in sports equipment for half a century, especially in the face of the technological market of countless Silicon Valley innovation enterprises. Nike's past accumulation has no obvious advantages.

Although the two incident is very "black", it did not ruin Nike's imagination in the field of Silicon Valley science and technology.

　　 Nike's imagination: community and data

Nike's first trial of water technology products is Nike+iPod, which cooperates with apple. In my view, this is almost the originator of wearable devices in the mass consumer field, a sensor embedded in running shoes. Nike+iPod is probably the easiest way to wear the wearable device at the moment: you just need to plug it into the soles (if you don't have Nike shoes, it can be tied to your shoelaces), start the Nike+iPod application in your mobile phone, and then take the two step, and the sensor is connected to the mobile phone application. In the whole process, you will find that it does not need to set up, or even have no buttons - to open the application, to take the two step and start it. It is very simple. Is the whole experience natural? It's not like a technology product. When I first used it, I was shocked by its simplicity. And the price is only 19 dollars, even cheaper than many T-shirts it sells.

Nike can design a running sensor so naturally. I think it owes much to its years of insight in the field of sports. After launching the Nike+iPod, Nike then launched Nike+Basketball, Nike+Training, Nike+Running and Nike+Move. Each product is highly targeted. For example, Nike+Basketball's soles can be used to measure more motion data such as bounce height. In order to encourage users to use its software products, Nike has done a lot of promotional activities, such as running ten kilometers in Beijing via Nike+Running to get a T-shirt free of charge at Nike flagship store. The ultimate direction of all Nike+ products and related activities is self-evident: Nike+ community.

Apple CEO Tim Cook joined Nike board nine years ago. The idea of "listening to music in running time" from the point of view to promote the cooperation of the two products "Nike+iPod" is inseparable from the role of Cook. Don't forget that Cook himself is a fanatical sports enthusiast.

In an interview with the Wall Street journal, Cook said: apple now has "closerthanit severbeen" to release a new type of product. In less than two days, Nike CEO MarkParker (MarkParker), in an exclusive interview with CNBC, said: "we will continue to invest in this (Nike+) field and continue to expand. So far, we have about 30 million FuelBand users, and we hope to push this data to 100 million. We will accomplish this goal through partners. Obviously, apple is the most obvious. We have worked with apple for many years, and we are all excited about our immediate cooperation. "

So far, you probably should understand that Nike will not abandon its efforts on Nike+FuelBand and cut off its digital sports (DigitalSport) department. Although it seems that the Department has fired some people at present, it is only hardware related talents, and the software field will continue to invest even more. Because community and data are the future of Nike. As a sports equipment brand, sports enthusiasts can gather together to build a sports (digital or physical) community, and track all sports enthusiasts' data. Because mastering the data is the future. As the commercial value in the "digital Nike rebirth" is about the story of the star of the future.

Many people admire the vision of Nike's choice of spokesperson because it is always able to excavate talented athletes. This is mainly due to a mature training system built by Nike. On the one hand, Nike will cooperate with the sports coaches in primary and secondary schools, and find talents through them. On the other hand, Nike will organize various sports training camps worldwide to create good seedlings every year. Nike+ brings third possibilities to Nike, that is, finding the gifted sports talents through user data. Maybe one day, when a kid using Nike+ starts to show his athletic talent far beyond his age, Nike will find him at the first time and do his best to help him become the next Liu Xiang or Boulter.

In the close cooperation between eight or nine apple and ten apple, the original Nike+FuelBand product leader, who left Nike, BenShaffer only needs to concentrate on hardware design in apple, while Nike only needs to concentrate on the Nike+ software and community of BenShaffer. In the future, after Nike+ has grasped enough data of sports enthusiasts, sports enthusiasts may not only love and rely on Nike emotionally, but also their bodies are more dependent on Nike. Because at that time, no one knows your body better than Nike, including yourself.