this is what lies ahead in new shoe innovations, and marketing, according to the shoe companies.
BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Mario Lafortune knows every one of the 52 bones in Michael Jordan's size-13 feet. He has measured the stress on Monica Seles's ankles as she skids around the tennis court. And he discourses knowingly on the fluid dynamics of the air in the soles of the half billion or so pairs of Nikes on the planet.
Mr. Lafortune, who has a doctorate in biomechanics, heads Nike Inc.'s sneaker lab here. The 15 members of his research staff, a third of whom also have doctorates, dream up about 350 new sneaker models every year and have helped to make Nike one of business's great success stories.
But there is a problem: After years of convincing buyers they need such sneaker innovations as air bags and see-through heels, Mr. Lafortune concedes it is getting hard to build a better sneaker. "We fine-tune," he says. "But it's getting harder to come up with innovations that people can easily see."
The difficulty is reflected in the sales of Nike and rivals such as Reebok International Ltd. and Fila Holdings SpA. Nike's domestic athletic-footwear sales -- about 61% of its overall footwear market -- fell by 3% to $787.6 million in the fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 30, reversing a three-year sales boom. No one expects the trend to change in 1998.
So Nike has a new game plan. Instead of endless innovations, it is revving up its marketing machine to new heights.
Under a program it calls "Alpha," the company will market its most expensive apparel, sporting goods and sneaker products as a unit -- or under the same "halo." For example, it might have an ad featuring a model wearing a Nike watch, Nike sunglasses, a Nike jacket and Nike sneakers. The Alpha approach is scheduled to begin at the end of this year, says Gordon Thompson, Nike vice president for design. He says Nike will use certain "Alpha Athletes" -- Tiger Woods, for example -- wearing Nike from head to toe. The athlete will even have a say in the product's design.
The onset of the Alpha program coincides with a backlash against an endless stream of new Nike models with little to distinguish them from one another. "We used to get one [Nike] catalog a year," says Thomas Courtney, a high-school running coach and store manager for Runners Roost in Buffalo, N.Y. "Now it's four a year, but all they do is change the shoe colors."
Thomas Brunick, director of research and development for the Athlete's Foot chain, says Nike's last substantive improvement in sneaker technology occurred in 1978 when it came up with the concept of putting air bags into sneakers. Mr. Brunick, who oversees about 2,000 volunteer shoe testers from his laboratory in Naperville, Ill., concedes that sneakers have gotten lighter and more flexible over the years, thanks to new materials that replaced the low-grade rubber compounds manufacturers used when the sneaker boom began two decades ago. "But don't ever kid yourself," he says. "This is Packaging and Marketing 101. There's a little snake oil here."
Indeed, some people say Nike has been coasting for years on its marketing muscle, even as it has grabbed 47% of the domestic sneaker market. "Nike stopped selling shoes and began selling cool in the late 1980s," says Melvin Roboff, a Boston-based shoe consultant who works for several large manufacturers, including the No. 2 sneaker seller, Reebok.
Nike's rivals have had their own share of gimmicks. Reebok's pump sneaker, introduced in the late 1980s, sold well for a couple of years but disappeared from its running-shoe line in 1993.
"What's happened in retail in the last few years is that the products have all become the same," says Paul Fireman, Reebok's chief executive officer. He adds that retailers began pushing sneaker makers in the early 1990s to convert to "Nike-style products."
Reebok and other sneaker makers followed Nike's lead in introducing see-through windows in the heels of their running shoes. The concept was a marketing success, even if it didn't add much to shoe performance.
"You could see inside the engine, even if you didn't know what was happening there," Mr. Fireman says. He adds: "Like fools, we followed their advice."
Mr. Fireman says Reebok is trying to break out of the me-too mold this year with its line of 3D Ultra-Lite foam sneakers. The shoes offer a series of air cushions in the sole -- plus see-through windows -- and weigh about a third less than most other running shoes. "These are totally different," Mr. Fireman insists.
Nike does still have a few of its own design gimmicks in its labs. At Supershow, the sporting-goods industry's giant winter trade fair in Atlanta, Nike unveiled something called Visible Zoom Air. The company's sprawling exhibit featured an 8-foot-long "Visi-Zoom Air" shoe, lots of throbbing rock music and a bunch of youthful employees bouncing around in the new shoes. The innovation: The foot is cushioned not only by a layer of air but, inside that, a nylon pillow.
Mr. Lafortune insists this new technology puts "little springs" into the new sneakers. The Visi-Zoom has been through the paces in Mr. Lafortune's lab, in the Michael Jordan Building at Nike headquarters here. The lab is filled with gadgets to measure sneaker performance -- infrared cameras to map feet in three dimensions, for example, and treadmills where some of the world's top runners have put on about 50,000 miles. Scientists driving the lab's "traction tester" -- it looks like a lunar rover -- mechanically stomp prototypes like the Visi-Zoom across the landscape to gauge durability.
But even Mr. Lafortune acknowledges that most of Nike's customers won't feel much difference between the new shoes and their predecessors. "On performance, we work toward the higher echelon of athletes," he says.
Charles Klawon, a buyer for Runners Roost, says customers aren't buying sneaker hype the way they used to. "It's too much, too fast, too soon," he says grumbling as he walks away from Nike's Supershow exhibit.
Mr. Brunick, of Athlete's Foot, says that even if shoe companies manage to advance sneaker science a step or two they may be too late. Younger buyers, who traditionally drive the footwear market, are turning to "brown shoes" -- hiking boots and walking shoes -- over sneakers, he says. Brown-shoe sales now make up about 10% of the athletic footwear market and are growing.
"Your dad could be wearing Nikes and your grandmother has Reeboks," Mr. Brunick says. "How cool is that?" |
