BEAVERTON — Victoria sweats profusely on the home trainer. Wearing leggings and a sports bra, the athletic young woman pedals at full speed in a tiny room fitted with sensors. The final detail: the thermometer at 35°C.
Outside the heat chamber, Dan Judelson uses his computer to control a series of data that measure in real time how her body regulates its temperature and how her outfit reacts in these damp conditions. “We can track almost every drop of sweat,” says the researcher at Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL).
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In the next room, another tester runs on a treadmill in very cold air, while robotic mannequins, dressed for a marathon, tirelessly “walk” in front of fans.
Climate rooms
“By combining different elements, we can recreate every environment on Earth to test our products under stress, their resistance to wear and tear, their effectiveness,” Judelson says, showing off a recently approved innovation, a fabric composed of mini capsules which swell on contact with sweat to allow for air circulation, and therefore thermoregulation.
We are at the start of a new cycle of performance and innovation.
These climate rooms are just one of the ultramodern facilities at NSRL, on Nike’s vast campus in Portland, Oregon, on the northwest coast of the U.S., for imagining, conceiving and testing the clothing and footwear of the future. The scientific-sports complex equipped with a mini soccer field pitch, a basketball court and an athletics track, where the brand’s athletes come to exercise in conditions close to the real thing.
This is all under the watchful eye of various and varied sensors, including 400 “motion capture” cameras (the biggest installation of its kind in the world) and even 80 engineers and doctors of biomechanics, physiology, neuroscience, data analysis and so on. It’s a sort of sports NASA, directly connected with the rest of Nike’s teams, “to transform athletes’ dreams into reality,” says John Hoke, the American giant’s chief innovation officer.
With the Olympic Games just a few months away, Nike invited a handful of international media, including Les Echos Week-End, to visit the secret lab. “We want to show where we are and where we are going to be in the next few years because we’re at the start of a new cycle of performance and innovation,” Hoke explains.
Nike’s latest running shoe embodies this new phase; the Alphafly 3 is billed as the fastest and lightest ever designed by the brand. Released at the beginning of the year, the shoes already received a stamp of approval from two Kenyan long-distance runners: Kelvin Kiptum, who wore them to break the marathon world record last year, and Eliud Kipchoge, the former marathon world record holder who wears them to continue his list of achievements.
Kipchoge is also one of the “fathers” of the model. The double Olympic champion was the head (and feet) of Nike’s flagship project to break the seemingly insurmountable barrier of a 2-hour marathon.
In October 2019, after several tens of millions of dollars spent on research, development and preparation, the company and the athlete developed the Vaporfly, which pairs a carbon plate and rigid foam to offer unprecedented energy return. This helped Kipchoge to finish a marathon 1 hours, 59 minutes, 40 seconds — a time that was not, however, recognized by the International Federation as it was not achieved in an official race. A revolution.
The era of “super shoes”
As a result, runners wearing these seven-league boots have racked up titles and records in various disciplines, among pros and amateurs alike. So much so that representatives of competing brands wear them discreetly, taking care to hide the Nike logo.
Five years on, rivals have now caught up with the frontrunner, jumping into the era of carbon-plate “super shoes” with both feet. And Nike is losing ground in the strategic global running market, where, more than its historic enemy Adidas, newcomers such as Switzerland’s On Running and Hoka (founded in France and subsequently acquired by the American Deckers) are cutting their teeth.
Above all, it should send out the message that Nike is back and ready to shine at the Games. Just what it needs right now.
“With Vaporfly, we shook up the running landscape. But the competition has caught up. Alphafly 3 puts us back in the lead,” says Andy Caine, vice-president of footwear design. In addition to its light weight, the latest model promises greater stability and comfort, as well as improved forward propulsion.
At 310 euros a pair, it is aimed at a discerning audience of runners — and those with bulging wallets. But it symbolizes the innovations to be found throughout the brand’s product range. Above all, it sends a message that Nike is back and ready to shine at the upcoming Summer Games. Just what it needs right now.
Bad winds in Portland
Nike’s world headquarters in Beaverton, on the outskirts of Portland, is an advertisement for American-style multinational campuses, with its green park blending into the landscape of Oregon’s wooded mountains, its benches engraved with inspirational quotations and its paths between the buildings bearing the names of the brand’s stars, Michael Jordan, Serena Williams or Tiger Woods.
But an ill wind is blowing between the themed cafés, the Olympic swimming pool reserved for employees and the mini-museums of sport that dot the 160-hectare site: CEO John Donahoe has announced a wave of 1,500 redundancies and a three-year, billion savings plan.
We know that we have to be faster, increase the pace of innovation, speed up time-to-market, increase our agility and responsiveness.
Inflation in the West has slowed demand for Nike products, disruptions to the supply chain caused by the pandemic have led to overstocking, which has to be cleared by slashing prices, and Chinese brands Anta and Li-Ning are eating into the Chinese market.
As a result, the world’s No. 1 sportswear company has revised its 2024 growth forecasts downwards, while analysts are predicting a squeeze on margins. Like the end of an era, several of its major stars of the past two decades are approaching retirement: LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, while the 27-year relationship with Tiger Woods ended by mutual agreement in January. And Kiptum, destined to take over from 40-year-old Kipchoge, died in a tragic car accident in Kenya in early February.
To get back on track, Donahoe has mapped out a path: “We know that we have to be faster, increase the pace of innovation, speed up time-to-market, increase our agility and responsiveness,” he told analysts in late December. The rebound will also rely on the technology that has underpinned the company for more than 40 years: “You’re going to see us using air a lot as a source of innovation, both in performance and lifestyle,” he promised.
The art of Air
At Beaverton, Nike has perfected the art of creating Air, the shock-absorbing nitrogen capsules placed in the soles that built the brand’s reputation. The site that produces them runs non-stop, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
The meticulously choreographed ballet of robotic arms and very human workers ensures the manufacture of a 100 million units a year, which are then shipped to various workshops around the world. While the Nike has outsourced most of its production to subcontractors in Asia, it jealously guards the Air plant.
Anna Schoborg, vice-president in charge of industrial innovation, says that there’s no question of divulging the ingredients of its secret recipe, “This proximity is also vital, as it enables us to constantly and ultra-rapidly go back and forth with engineers, designers, researchers.”
It’s a risky gamble, but one that should illustrate Nike’s ability to reinvent itself. And to stay one step ahead of the competition.
The result is what Nike describes as a “new frontier” in technology: Dn, for “Dynamic Air.” This latest generation of its capsules, tested in the NSRL lab, allows gas to circulate between four tubes according to the pressure exerted by the foot with each step. The result is a radical change in shoe cushioning.
The Air Max Dn was launched on March 26, totally revisiting one of the company’s most famous (and bankable) sneakers, the Air Max. In 1987, the first model caused a sensation by making the internal air bubble visible — a design inspired by Paris’ Centre Pompidou, with its external pipes and staircases.
In the midst of the retro sneaker craze, where rivals are bringing their old glories up to date, Nike is taking on a resolutely futuristic look. A risky gamble, but one that should illustrate the brands’s ability to reinvent itself. And to stay one step ahead of the competition.
