International Marketing Study Program 2007
Nike, Amsterdam
18th January 2007
Christy Kilmartin, a Brand Manager for Nike Europe and Nth Africa, based in their head office just outside Amsterdam, was the Nike representative for our visit to Nike’s European Headquarters. Christy has a close link with the MIMSP program as he is a graduate from Monash and the Department of Marketing. Christy has held a number of positions with Nike spending 3 years in their Oregon headquarters as well as in Australia’s Nike operation, he also had experience in various marketing and sports related areas before moving to Nike.
Our visit to Nike’s European headquarters, located at Hilversum Sportspark, just outside of Amsterdam nearly did not take place as the wild weather conditions closed down the local rail system meaning we could not get the train the Nike’s offices in Hilversum. Fortunately Christy was able to come to us in our hotel where we were able to book and room and made a fabulous presentation.
The presentation started off with a discussion of the market segments that Nike Europe was targeting. Nike refer their consumers as runners and divide them into a number of sub segments including core runners, who structure their life around running and daily runners who just run to keep fit. Nike Europe use a range of psychographic criteria rather than just demographics such as age and income to segment their runners as lifestyle factors are very important when targeting runners.
Nike divide their operations into regions such as the USA, Europe (Europe, Middle East and Africa are under Europe) and Asia Pacific (Asia and Australia). The Middle East make up 35% of the European market with Europe making up the balance..
Christy discussed running shoes and the development of ‘Nike Shox’ a new design for Nike shoes. He explained the development of the shoe and how it started with only the heel and then moved on to the entire bottom of the shoe. The new shoe will not look like a traditional running shoe to a runner and so special strategies will be required to communicate with the marketplace.
An interesting part of the latest design for the Nike shoe was that designers used a visit to an Italian Sports car manufacturer and discussions with their designers as a method for helping design ideas for their running shoe. Using the high back and diving down nose as part of the main design, just like the car, Nike have come up with a unique shoe design. The main colour used was black with the use of lines of gold to highlight the contour of the shoe emphasizing the sleek lines. The time taken for a shoe to be put on the shelf for sale takes about 18 months from design to production then onto the shelf.
Christy also discussed distribution channels and the importance outlets such as Foot Locker who is one of their biggest customers in Europe. He emphasized that there are many issues to be negotiated with distribution channels and these require quite a lot of work.. The interesting part was that Foot Locker had a input into designs of the new shoes as they understand their customers. Nike Europe is focusing on engaging their targeted segments, attracting the segment and finally capture the segment.
Christy finished off with a question and answer session. We would like to thank him for making the effort to come all the way to the hotel to give us the presentation as we weren’t able to the site due to unforeseen circumstances.
Great visit thanks.
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