Bloomberg – Nike Inc. (NKE) is gathering a specialized team and designers team to operate a new brand with the Skims clothing brand of the businesswoman and star of the Kim Kardashian Telerreality, with plans to launch its first collection oriented to women this spring.
Called Nikeskims, the project remained silent for more than a year until the two companies joked with an association in February. The vague announcement promised to offer a new line of “training clothes, footwear and accessories” and promised to expand the brand worldwide in 2026. Companies did not reveal financial terms.
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Now details about the alliance are being filtered, which according to people familiar with the project goes beyond a traditional collaboration in the field of fashion. Instead, they say that Nikeskims will operate under Nike as a sub-march, very similar to Nike SB, the company’s skateboarding business. That means that the Nikeskims brand will have its own products, marketing and growth objectives and will be managed separately from basketball, running and other Nike sports divisions.
The largest Nike association is with the basketball superstar Michael Jordan, whose brand has its own management team in Nike and has grown to become a business of almost US $ 7,000 million.
Kardashian hinted at the structure of the independent brand when he published a Nikeskims employee badge that indicated that she was the number one employee. Since then, project staff has worked on weekends, using key words and secret meetings to have the new brand to debut, said one of Nike executives.
It is much that is at stake for the largest sportswear company in the world, which in recent years has had problems to get novel products market and has failed to conquer the female clients such as their rivals Lululemon and Alo Yoga.
The Nikeskims collaboration also arrives at a critical moment for the CEO Elliott Hill, which left its retirement to direct the company last October after its predecessor, John Donahoe, was dismissed. Hill has promised to turn the wobble business, which is I leaned too much on its lifestyle sports shoes franchises of decades of seniority and was slow when developing new articles.
The arrival of Hill initially promoted Nike’s shares, but these have dropped more than 24% so far this year.
Change of course
Nike’s secretism about his Skims project caused confusion about how the underwear business directed by the Kardashian fits in the Hill’s Rumbo Changing Plan, which emphasizes a return to Nike’s roots in sport and focusing on athletes above fashion. Hill has said that fitness products are a priority.
Skims approached Nike with the initial idea and the two parties have been working on the project since October 2023 under the previous CEO of Nike, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about the association. Hill had discarded some of the other favorite Donahoe projectslike RTFKT, Nike’s virtual shoes division.
“He really didn’t feel very authentic for the brand,” said Gina Clementi, a brand strategist who worked in Nike for 12 years before leaving in 2017. Although she does not work in the new brand, she said she does not see how Nikeskims is “built on any type of athletic achievements.”
When they were contacted to comment, the representatives of Nike and Skims referred to a previous statement by Heidi O’Neill, president of consumption, product and brand of Nike, who said that the association “unlocks an incredible opportunity to disrupt the industry”, and a statement of the CEO of Skims, Jens Grede, who said that the couple is “prepared to create a new standard in the active clothing market.”
Kardashian, who raised US $ 270 million in 2023 to value skims at US $ 4,000 million, is not the typical Nike athlete. But it has been connected informally with Nike for years, according to people familiar with the relationship.
Kardashian’s beauty association with Coty Inc. (Coty) ended this year after she repurred 20% of the company that had sold the cosmetics giant.
His link with Nike occurs after years of supporting the ADIDAS AG shoes wearing Yeezy products created by his ex -husband, the designer formerly known as Kanye West.
A Kardashian representative declined to comment.
Job offers
In more than two months since Kardashian published his Black and Red Badge of Nikeskims, Hill has suggested very little about the brand. In March he only told investors that “We have identified a consumer need And we are creating a new market with style products that sculpt and pay. ”
In recent weeks, however, Nike has moved employees to Nikeskims, including at least five marketing and operations executives. The address selected Jordan Mills, 14 -year -old veteran in Nike, to direct the operations of the division, which is hiring more employees in product development, merchandise planning, study operations and graphic design, according to published employment offers. Nikeskims has two general skim co -director: Marketing Executive Tracy Romulus and Merchandising Paula Galperin executive.
Nike’s team, led by Femine Fitness Executive Jaclyn Safley, is located at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and Los Angeles, where he has its Skims headquarters, according to recent employment ads.
Safley, Mills and Galperin did not respond to comments requests. Romulus declined to comment.
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Wall Street analysts say they are waiting to see if Nikeskims can make Nike more competitive in the Athleisure market and boost the Female business of the sportswear companywhich has grown up to US $ 8.6 billion in annual sales but remains much smaller than its male business of US $ 21,000 million.
“Sports brands have an unequal history with associations with celebrities, but Nikeskims seems a great victory for Nike,” said Cristina Fernández, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group. “Help that skims already have a considerable income flow and be a fast -growing brand. ”
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