Nike SB Do Good Strategic Plan

The Story

I joined Nike SB in the Summer of 2017 and quickly got to work with the team gathering insights from skateboarders around the world. Nike SB’s role in skateboarding is to serve skateboarders, and in each city we visited around the world, the number one ask from skaters was for a commitment to making the world cleaner and better. We quickly realized that what our consumer was asking for was bigger than any product or seasonal marketing plan.

They were asking for Nike SB to lead skateboarding with values and ethics.

Skateboarding sits at a key intersection in youth culture that includes fashion, art, music, pop culture, sports, progress – even the way we speak. It’s everything that’s important to Nike. Nike SB’s strength is not in the revenue it drives, but rather the consumer the brand speaks to. When done right, it’s a consumer that no other part of Nike’s business can serve as completely or authentically. Moreover, Nike SB’s competitive advantage at Nike is that it’s fast, nimble, and unafraid to pilot new thinking and processes for the brand.

I took my 20-year sabbatical in May of 2018. During that six weeks away from work I took a 2,500-mile road trip, camping and fly fishing my way through California’s National Parks. Early in the trip, while fishing the South Fork of the King’s River in King’s Canyon National Park, I had an epiphany. I immediately went back to my campsite to start writing the brief for what would eventually become the Zoom Flyleather Janoski RM.

However, over the course of that trip, that brief evolved into a second peice of work: a full-blown business plan. That plan would eventually become Nike SB’s category-defining Do Good strategy.

It took a village, a lot of late nights, and a ton of work, but nothing has been more satisfying than seeing the fruits of our labor come to life for skateboarders and our planet.

The Work

The plan pivoted Nike SB’s business to a values-led strategy with three key pillars:

1. Become the world’s most sustainable skate brand through:

  • Accelerated adoption of sustainable design, materials & manufacturing processes

  • Accountability through the incorporation of sustainability targets as performance metrics across category goals & within individual employee reviews

  • Adoption of an “open-source” ethos to share sustainable product creation technologies across the skate industry to foster industry-wide transformation and establish Nike SB as a leader in the future of sustainable skateboarding

  • Prioritization of materials reduction, post-consumer material sourcing & environmentally conscious fabrication/trims for all packaging & tagging

  • Employment of circular design principles in everything from product design to in-store retail brand marketing collateral

  • Development of end-to-end workstreams to enable sustainability roadmap, piloting new programs & thinking across all aspect of the value chain, from product design through to post-consumer product reclamation

  • The launch of a Nike SB-specific Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program to facilitate a goal of 100% footwear return and fuel circular design initiatives

  • The creation of a Nike SB-specific consumer & platform re-commerce strategy specifically serving the core skater

  • Enabling new partnership strategies to drive energy and awareness of sustainability in skateboarding, as well as position Nike SB as the key collaborator at the intersection of skateboarding, sustainability, art, and culture

2. Champion diversity and inclusion within skateboarding by:

  • Removing the barriers of access to skateboarding for disenfranchised skateborders by supporting, celebrating, and elevating the Misfits

  • Funding the activists and changemakers in skateboarding. They need the money most, are the experts on their communities, and are the most authentic way for us to show up and support as a brand.

  • Earmarking 1% of Nike SB’s yearly category sales for donation to grassroots organizations using skateboarding to fight for positive change in their communities (ex: Skateistan, Skate Angels, Skate Like a Girl, etc.)

  • Demonstrating inclusive values by ensuring all Nike SB brand communications always feature a diverse spectrum of our riders

  • Ensuring access to all Nike SB products for all skateboarders through Nike’s first-ever all-gender product strategy

3. Expand access to skateboarding for disenfranchised communities with:

  • The creation of a skateshop account partnership program to collect, refurbish, & redistribute used-yet-usable skate hard goods to programs focused on underserved youth

  • Support for women skaters and skaters of color through branded programs like the Nike SB Women’s Ambassador Program and meaningful partnerships with organizations like Skate Like a Girl

  • Relevant Nike SB media partnerships (ex: Thrasher) to launch new programming spotlighting social awareness & change within broader skate culture

  • A world-class roster of Nike SB Athletes - global & local - deeply authentic to skate, led by values, and with an on-going commitment to diversity, and environmental advocacy & action

But wait, there’s more

In addition to leading the creation and implementation of the strategy globally, I also lead a number of key workstreams identified in the broader strategic plan.

Click the images below to learn about two of them.

The Life of a Janoski Documentary Film

Nike SB X Nike Reuse-A-Shoe