By Nicholas P. Brown and Helen Reid
NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) -Nike is betting its endeavor to help Kenyan athlete Faith Kipyegon run a mile in under four minutes will recapture the attention of women consumers who have been looking elsewhere for running shoes and clothes.
Industry experts and women runners say it will take more than a bold spectacle to draw women back to the brand.
Kipyegon’s attempt, branded “Breaking4”, set for Thursday at the Stade Charléty in Paris, is part of new CEO Elliott Hill’s efforts to pull Nike out of a sales slump and improve its image.
From 2021 to 2024, Nike’s share of the global sports footwear market dropped from 28.8% to 26.3%, according to Euromonitor International, with consumers defecting to smaller, newer brands like On and Hoka.
Nike’s popularity has slipped with women in particular. Sales of Nike Women products grew just 4.4% over that three-year period, while Nike Men sales grew 13.5%.
Nike has been “obsessed with getting women back” since at least 2021, said a former Nike manager who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Understanding its female consumer base and how to draw in more women has been a key internal priority as Lululemon and others have eaten into its market share among women, the person added.
Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike declined to comment on those details. But Chief Innovation Officer John Hoke told Reuters the company is doubling its investment in research on women athletes’ anatomy and biodynamics versus 18 months ago.
Hoke declined to disclose the amount of that investment, but said in an interview that the company’s Sports Research Lab historically “had over-indexed on males, so what we are doing is we’re now right-sizing.”
Kipyegon will wear new track spikes that are lighter than those she wore to win 1,500-meter gold at the Olympics last year, a running suit with 3D-printed beads to minimize friction, and a 3D-printed sports bra Nike says is more breathable than anything on the market.
Mindful that track spikes are a niche product, Nike is putting its marketing emphasis on the bra, in development for more than two years, which it expedited for Kipyegon’s run, Hoke said.
Prototypes have been tested on other Nike athletes, including WNBA star Caitlin Clark, he said, adding that the company plans to market it commercially by 2028.
Nike’s goal with Breaking4 is to attract the attention of serious runners, says David Swartz, an analyst at Morningstar. But whether and when the publicity will translate to sales is unclear.
Nike has launched a line of running shoes and clothes in Kipyegon’s name, but the people most likely to buy them may not overlap with Breaking4’s target audience.
Angelina Monti, a Pittsburgh-based physiologist who, at 23, has already competed in 17 marathons, says she’s intrigued by Kipyegon’s effort, but isn’t likely to base a purchase on it.
LESS GROUNDBREAKING
The market is more competitive now than in 2017, when Nike held its last unofficial record attempt – Breaking2 – in which athletes Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese attempted to run a marathon in under two hours.
None succeeded at the time, but Kipchoge did break two hours in a subsequent 2019 attempt and the hype created around the Vaporfly shoes he wore helped Nike’s market share in running climb to a record high.
The Vaporfly, first introduced in 2016, included a carbon plate to help runners go faster for longer, and sparked a “super shoe” race among sports brands. Nike’s innovations for Kipyegon’s attempt seem less groundbreaking, experts say.
“The suit seems to be quite unique and envelope-pushing, whereas the footwear just seems to be a better version of what she has run in in the past,” said running shoe designer Richard Kuchinsky.
Still, “it’s nice to see (Nike) invest in a woman, even if this one feels more of a stretch than Breaking2,” said Alison Wade, a former college track & field coach and creator of Fast Women, a newsletter dedicated to women’s competitive distance running.
Nike has announced several initiatives focused on women since Hill took over, including the “After Dark Tour” series of half-marathon and 10-kilometre races in seven cities around the world.
But as it tries to regain credibility with women, it starts at a deficit.
In April, the company agreed to settle a 2018 lawsuit from female employees alleging widespread workplace discrimination.
Nike’s partnership with Kim Kardashian-owned Skims drew criticism from some former employees for its emphasis on products to make women “feel strong and sexy.” The partnership has yet to launch a product.
Any record Kipyegon sets on Thursday would be unofficial, as she will have pacers and won’t be in an official competition. Running experts are skeptical Kipyegon can break a four-minute mile, which would require shaving 3.1% off her previous record.
“But,” Wade said, “maybe Nike has something up its sleeve and it’ll turn out we were all wrong.”
(Reporting by Helen Reid in London and Nicholas Brown in New York, Editing by Lisa Jucca and Bill Berkrot)
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