LOS ANGELES — Melrose, Nike has arrived.
The sportswear firm’s first Nike Live concept, which it’s calling Nike by Melrose, officially opened to Los Angeles area residents Thursday with a fashionable assortment tailored specifically for locals based on data, store exclusives and a high-powered stream of technology aimed at making shopping convenient.
“First of all, it is really built as a service hub for our local NikePlus members and it’s designed for them, by them and it’s built for speed and convenience,” said Nike Direct president Heidi O’Neill. “One of the things we learned from consumers when we looked at their engagement with Nike is that they want it fast.”
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O’Neill pointed to the Nike Sneaker Bar at the center of the store as the biggest example of the company’s desire to speed up and offer a highly customized experience to visitors, where shoes can be quickly scanned, sizes can be culled up and, if it’s not available in store, can be ordered through the app.
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With Nike by Melrose, the athletic firm’s play ties together a suite of already existing services via apps such as the Nike App, Snkrs, Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club into the 4,557-square-foot Melrose Avenue door. Customers can also chat via SMS messaging with store employees, conduct returns or exchanges curbside and services such as bra fittings and tights alterations.
The space boasts one-on-one shopping for NikePlus members in a program the company is calling Nike Express Sessions; and Dynamic Fit Zone, boasting a treadmill to test product and styling rooms.
Nike App users will be able to reserve product that will fittingly be held for them in lockers and can check inventory online and in-store inventory among other services.
Los Angeles is one of a dozen cities globally that the company is focusing on to grow its business.
“L.A. is where our biggest pockets of members live and in L.A. we wanted to be close because we want to learn a lot quickly so that we can scale the concept,” O’Neill said. “We do know L.A. is style obsessed and there’s no other market like it as we looked at some of the other markets.”
O’Neill pointed specifically to the Nike Cortez where, in L.A., one of every 50 Nike shoes are a Cortez. No other market sees that frequency, O’Neill said.
“I also think L.A. has a really high threshold for change and fashion and new,” she said. “What we’ve programmed this store to do, which I think will serve this store well, is to change out 25 percent of the footwear every two weeks. It’s the right kind of pace of freshness and newness that I think is important to do here.”
Melrose Avenue specifically proved a central location for Nike App members, based on data and a study of traffic patterns, O’Neill added.
Whether the door ends up servicing a mostly local customer base or if it has a much larger draw area remains to be seen. Ultimately, the assortment has been culled based on localized data of what shoppers in L.A. are viewing the most or reordering the most on the web or through the app.
“I think we’re going to learn,” O’Neill said. “I do think when we look at the engagement of the community in this neighborhood, just in the five zip codes in this area, from last year to this year their engagement and activity with Nike was up 48 percent. So we just feel like there’s a shout from our members here that we want Nike in the neighborhood. I assume we’ll draw from other parts of L.A., but our mind-set is let’s serve this neighborhood.”
The store’s opening underscores two key themes that have been playing on repeat as of late: localization at retail and an increasing focus by brands on the growth opportunities to be had in Los Angeles.
Nike last month bowed its 10,000-square-foot training complex, the Just Do It headquarters, in Hollywood. Adidas is building out a new Los Angeles office to be located in downtown, a market it views as one of its key focus areas for a number of local events. Nordstrom on Tuesday held its investor day in Los Angeles instead of New York with a big chunk of the day focused on localization and the retailer’s near-term focus on its largest market — Los Angeles — where it’s doing roughly $1 billion in sales and where it bowed its first Nordstrom Local concept, with two more to open here this year.
Nike is now waiting to see what learnings come from Nike by Melrose, but O’Neill said Tokyo next spring is already being planned for the second Nike Live door. O’Neill said what works at Melrose can also be leveraged within the existing store fleet.
“We have 7,000 Nike doors around the world in our network and so a lot of these great services that we’re bringing first to Nike Melrose we’ll be able to take to our whole fleet,” O’Neill said. “So the Nike App at retail will scale and if consumers choose curbside [service], that will scale, or unlock boxes. What we plan to do is to take what works here and scale it so members across the world can have access, whether it’s a Nike Live store or a Nike store.”