In 2019, Nike hired me to help them map their next big swings across their digital and footwear/apparel products. There were several areas of focus that they wanted an Entrepreneur-in-Residence to solve. Personally, I love a leaky bucket problem, so I chose to zero in on their women 40+ demographic. The company had demographic survey data that showed a significant portion of women over 40 started eschewing the brand and adopting competitors after previously being loyal customers. These women had deeper pockets compared to Nike’s younger customers, but were spending their money somewhere else.
In order to uncover the why and what these customers wanted in lieu of what the brand was offering them and how it was marketing to them, I launched a medium-scale diverse qualitative and quantitative study. The small team I led went deep. We traveled across the country to interview women in this life stage and movement stage. We shadowed and accompanied people to their workouts and walks. We found that it wasn’t just a saying — 60 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30. People were increasingly focused on their personal health, trying to make their physical age feel closer to their personally perceived psychological age.
The lowest hanging fruit was that these women didn’t see themselves reflected in the brand‘s products and marketing. Diversifying the age and body types of models and trainers was key. We were encouraged to test further into a digital training subscription app concept that I led called Ourselves. We created a quick MVP using a white-labeled video streaming platform and launched a beta sign-up test. We were able to get 2000 people on our waitlist in the first 30 days.
