Nike Sportswear & Jordan Brand - brand executive (2007-2014)

This post is about my seven year relationship with Nike’s finnish operations, Nike Finland OY.

In 2006 I had already started the sales & marketing agency as a freelancer for Nike European Operations. I worked 4-5 days a week at Beamhill as a shop manager and did 1-2 days a week on Nike SB sales and marketing.

Nike SB shoes were available exclusively from Beamhill still in the summer of 2006 in Finland. One day a guy in his mid 40s enters the shop and walks directly to check the Nike SB shoe wall at Beamhill.

I asked him if he needed any help, helped him to find his size on some models he was into, explained some tech data about the shoes like Zoom Air cushioning etc. I probably told him some stories of limited editions Nike SB produces and how quickly they sell out from us.

He tried on some Nikes and ended up purchasing a pair of Dunk SB’s.

When he was paying for the shoes at the counter he introduced himself, Pete Alava, country manager of Nike Finland OY. He told me that Nike Finland staff can’t order any Nike SB models directly from Nike, so he had to come to Beamhill to get himself a pair. He thanked me for the professional customer service and mentioned that I seemed to have a good knowledge on Nike’s technology and history.

It was only years after this event that Pete confirmed to me that he had heard about a guy who was working at Beamhill and who had just started to do sales and marketing for Nike SB. So it wasn’t just about the SB shoes, he also was on a mission to know what kind of guy Nike Europe had hired for SB services.

Months passed and in spring 2007 Nike Finland organized a Nike Air Force One 25th Anniversary exhibit at Myymälä2 Gallery in Helsinki. I went there to check out the exhibit & drink some free beers and got to meet the Nike Finland crew there for the first time. Pete was in a good mood and introduced me as “the Nike SB guy” to all Nike people. They all seemed nice.

Few months after the exhibit just before summer 2007, Pete and Jan Koskinen from Nike Finland reached over to me and asked if I’d be interested in helping them to operate Nike Sportswear & Jordan Brand Specialty sales and marketing as an external freelancer. Nike Finland had seen the growing interest towards their lifestyle products and Finland’s sales numbers for NSW were next to nothing at that point. The crew at Nike Finland had their hands full of selling Nike products to their sport customers, lower tier lifestyle doors etc. Also they were missing the knowledge on how to properly enter the market in top tier lifestyle doors in Finland. How they told me - they needed a ”cool guy” to do it.

After one meeting at Memphis restaurant, Helsinki, I quickly understood that if I’d join them, I could do Nike as my full time job.

As Nike Finland office was located in Pakkala, Vantaa, close to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, and I really enjoyed working at Beamhill right in the heart of Helsinki centrum, I boldly told Pete and Jan that I’ll do the job if they help me covering costs to open a Nike Sportswear / Nike SB office / showroom to central Helsinki.

I was only 23 years old at the time but I managed to convince these guys it’ll be worth the money. I told Pete & Jan that the product has to be near the customers we want for the brand, and a traditional looking corporate showroom they had in Pakkala wouldn’t authenticate the NSW & Jordan brands enough to our potential new customers.

Nike ended up paying 80% of the running costs of the showroom, which I think was more than enough from their side.

My last paycheck from Beamhill was on June 2007, and from July onwards I was a full time freelancer for Nike & Nike Sportswear.

Pete believed in me, he even helped to build the showroom for NSW, located in Punavuorenkatu 4, next to Fredan tori. He literally did most of the renovation, drilled the shoe walls in and made sure the place looks good from Nike POV. How many country managers do that?

Nike Sportswear “Nike Trend Showroom” Punavuorenkatu 4. July 2007

Nike Sportswear “Nike Trend Showroom” Punavuorenkatu 4. July 2007

It was the right time to enter the market properly with NSW. I quickly opened close to 10 doors in Finland and helped the shops to find the styles that would fit their offering.

Sneaker culture was still far from mainstream it is these days. Let’s look at pricing structure for example. A pair of Air Max 90s cost 139€ retail in 2007, and it seemed to be way too much for most of the Finnish lifestyle shops. Most of their orders consisted of styles under 100€ and they dared to spend maybe a 10% of their budget to styles over 100€. In modern day’s sneaker business, a retail price of 200-300€ for a mass produced sneaker isn’t an issue to customers, and it’s aftermarket resell value of 500€ on top of that can be ok for some too. Times have really changed over the years.

My first NSW future orders were done with pen and paper as I didn’t have access to online booking system. Times were different.

The best thing with about my work with NSW and Jordan was without a doubt the role to make these brands cool in Helsinki and Finland in general.

This was the era of print magazines, and as we didn’t have any budget for NSW advertising, we made our way to printed mags with good contacts with stylists who loaned samples from us to their photo shoots, and of course we gave away a lot free shoes to cool people who were in those mag pages anyway.

As there wasn’t a proper budget for product seeding either, most of the seeding was done with samples we had. That’s why I always told influencers and artists that they have the best chances to get some really good stuff if they’re a US9 on footwear or size M on clothing. Everything else could be manageable to get, but it was a bit of a hassle.

Some of the names I remember unofficially sponsoring in the beginning were JESSE (an electro / synth pop band full of energy), Top Billin’ (Helsinki’s coolest DJ crew & club night for years), Jaako Hurme a.k.a. DJ 3rrd (DJ & radio host) to name a few. Top Billin’ was the only sponsorship Nike Finland actually made written sponsorship contracts with at some point, as they were getting internationally recognized and some other footwear brands were interested in sponsoring them too.

Top Billin’, Image Magazine, December 2008

Jesse’s debut album cover. 2008.

Sneaker scene was already buzzing in Helsinki, and for the first time around in spring 2009 I realized it also changed my work for Nike Sportswear and Jordan Brand.

When in 2007-2008 it was me reaching out to shops and opening up the Nike accounts for them, in 2009 it was all of these new shops contacting me and I had to say no for many customers to keep the retailer list somewhat organized.

Some of the big names in the scene were Bisquit Stash, Popot and Turnin’ Point.

All of a sudden there was definitely more money around sneaker business, and within just a year or two Helsinki was in battlefield of who’d become the city’s #1 door for sneakers.

This was the beginning of how I see it, the “Quickstrike era”. Some shops weren’t only anymore asking for cool stuff, they wanted the most exclusive cool stuff and preferred if no-one else would get the same styles. Luckily Nike was bringing special releases all the time, so I made sure all the top doors were getting some gems, and depending on release it was my task to decide which shop would get it.

I think the problem here wasn’t about getting enough cool Nike sneakers to Finland, it was more about some people wanting to get them all and sell them from their shop. Even though I did my best for the brand. It was mentally hard at times to get into the middle of these battles between the shops.

Things were heating up and as the battle (probably) was mostly indirect between the shops, the brand sales reps were easy targets to get some fumes out. I’m sure the Adidas Original rep at the time, Pertti Prits, got his share of the shit-storm occasionally as well.

I think it was mostly just a status thing, not about greed that much. Many shops wanted to be the king of the city. Some shops made twice the business than another shop, but a certain smaller shop could reach a cool audience someone else couldn’t. Some shops were big on Air Max 90s where another shop could move dozens of Air Force 1’s a day. I was the peace maker in between trying to keep everyone happy and most importantly, keep Nike as a top 1 brand in all of these stores. Mission accomplished, Nike was ruling the marketplace in all of these doors.

Popot had always some nice flyers for the special releases

Jolle from Popot opening up the shop at Iso Roba with a re-release of Nike Air Max 1 OG colorways. Customers were already waiting for him. Sold out in 10min. August 2009.

My biggest project around Nike Sportswear was Nike Sportswear x Popot Studio in Summer 2010 with the help from Nike Finland’s marketing team (and finally a hefty project budget!)

Nike Sportswear x Popot Studio, Iso Roba 10. June 2010.

Pop-up shops were becoming a huge thing in Europe, and I sold an idea to Nike Finland that we should do a pop-up with a local NSW retailer in Helsinki, telling the stories behind NSW products on a larger scale. I had seen a very cool NSW retail execution in Berlin a year before and I knew that a similar concept would do well in Helsinki too.

We rented an abandoned retail space next to Iso Roba for 2 months. Three weeks was for building it up, and then we were open for 5 weeks. Budget was quite big for the project in my eyes, just the design studio we used cost us over 15k €. It might not sound much, but I was used to do marketing for NSW with nearly a zero budget for the first 2,5 years.

Everything was built around FIFA 2010 World Cup.

Nike Sportswear’s line was obviously full of football stories for that season, there was cool apparel kits from Brazil, Holland, France and South Africa. NSW had huge global push at the time for the AW77 track suit and the Wind Runner jacket to become the next big thing in streetwear apparel business. Unfortunately to this date, it’s hard for brands like Nike to get the same results in apparel sales that they do in footwear.

The store manager for the month was Jaako Hurme (DJ 3rrd), who was a perfect link between me, Popot guys and Nike. As Jaako was tightly connected with Basso Radio he made sure we were heard on radio waves too.

Nike Sportswear x Popot Studio, Iso Roba 10. June 2010.

4 weeks is a long time to run a pop up driven only with product storytelling, so we made sure there wasn’t a single dull day at the pop up studio. I can still hear the sound of vuvuzela in my head.

Every Friday and Saturday we had guest DJ’s playing live sets at the store, the sound system was big enough to blast in a 500sqm club, and this was only a 150sqm store space.

Also for every weekend I made sure we had exciting product launches. This was one of the only times we got Nike’s Tier Zero level releases in Finland, which were usually distributed only to top 10 sneaker stores in Europe. The closest Tier Zero retailer was in Berlin at the time so for us this was something truly special.

Also we had a big ass TV in the middle of the studio, and plenty of couch space. Almost all of the WC2010 games were shown there, and thanks to our drink sponsor there was an endless amount of free booze for the people.

For one night for instance we had a fake grass rug in front of the shop, and we held a football trick contest in collaboration with Nike Football Finland.

I think the contest last for hours as there were so many people wanting to show their skills. The winner got a free pair of shoes and an official Nike T90 Ascente football.

People at Nike Finland loved the studio, and this project sparked the interest of mainstream audience for sneakers in Helsinki. There was more traffic in sneaker shops in Helsinki than ever before.

In 2022 the concept of a pop-up shop is something we all know. In 2010 this was something none of the fashion brands had done in Finland. We were well ahead of our time, and the pop up studio really sparked the sales in general in 2010 for NSW not only at Popot, but in Finland in general.

I found myself a new showroom space in late 2011, only couple blocks away from my Punavuorenkatu showroom. The new place was located in the courtyard of Fredrikinkatu 31. The rent was few hundred euros more, but there was almost twice the square meters compared to the old one. I needed to convince Nike Finland to give me a bit more budget on the running costs, and I remember the key here was that I had started to take care of Nike Snowboarding sales to specialty customers as well, and winter jackets and snowboard boots were taking so much space that I really needed those extra sqm’s. A perfect excuse to get a new showroom.

The timing was perfect with the move to the new office, as budget wise it might not happened anymore a year later.

Looking back at it, 2009-2012 was a HUGE sneaker boom in Finland. Things went down south really quickly in 2012 and by the end of 2013 unfortunately almost all of the specialized sneaker shops in Helsinki had gone bankrupt.

Some of them couldn’t keep up with the pace what others were doing, and some risked it all by investing way too much to grow their business even more. Also online shopping was slowly becoming a big thing which made business tricky for shops who weren’t active on social media or didn’t have any kind of website or online shop. For most of these shops, things went bad financially in 2012-2013 almost as fast as the rapid growth had been in 2009-2011.

Nike SB / Nike Sportswear showroom, Fredrikinkatu 31. December 2011.

Nike SB / Nike Sportswear showroom, Fredrikinkatu 31. December 2011.

After the many bankrupts, my customer base changed a bit for NSW. I needed to focus to lower tier lifestyle shops around the country like Jim & Jill and Spirit Store and add the department store Stockmann’s One Way section to my customer list as well.

I did my best to keep the “real” sneaker scene alive in new ways, for example by adding the legendary Beamhill to NSW customer list as they were shifting their focus away from skateboarding with their new store in Yliopistonkatu.

Even though I didn’t get any real pressure from Nike Finland, I knew that I had to make some moves to keep my position.

Pete Alava kindly asked me to help with Kookenkä, a shoe store chain owned by Kesko corporation. They were into reaching for a younger customer base, especially they wanted ”skate style” shoes from us. We both agreed with Pete that I should sell them some lower tier ”action sport” shoes that used to be labelled as Nike 6.0, and some lowest tier NSW shoes that looked like retro basketball shoes.

Nike Backboard II Mid a.k.a. “This ain’t it chief 2’s”.

I did the sales for few seasons, maybe couple years with some positive sales numbers here and there.

Dealing with Kookenkä I learned many things personally. Most importantly, for the first time ever I was doing something totally out of my comfort zone.

I felt I was too young (I was 27-28 years old at the time), too skateboarder looking guy at their sales events where all the brand reps gathered to show collections to Kookenkä owners. There I was sitting next to Vagabond and Ecco sales reps who had been in these events for years or even decades. I felt it all was a very 1990s way of doing business, a tradition from the era of travelling salesmen. I didn’t come from that background so I was feeling really weird about it.

I think everyone could see from my face that I felt I didn’t belong there, and truth be told I wasn’t 100% into footwear collections I was showing them either. They all were step down versions of the “real” Nike SB and NSW shoes I loved. Of course I could tell them how well Nike is doing in skateboard footwear in general as we were the market leader in authentic skate shops, but as we couldn’t and wouldn’t want to sell the best stuff for them, everything felt a bit luke warm compared to work I had done with other customers.

Around 2013 my freelancer position was switched to ”Nike Nordic Field Sales” team that consisted of ca. 20 sales reps from Finland and Scandinavia. In late 2013 Nike made all the sales teams cut down one head per team in Europe, and as I was the only external freelancer in the NFS team, my contract was ended and my customers for Nike Sportswear / Jordan Brand specialty sales were moved over to a NSW rep in Sweden.

I got it, the heydays were over and the sneaker culture seemed to suffer a bit from overproduction in general. Everything around sneakers had happened too fast and too big in 2009-2012 so people were over it. Simply put, my customer list was too small for NSW in 2013 and I couldn’t do anything about it.

I was smart enough to ask one extremely important question in that meeting where NFS team lead Tomas Antonelius was telling me that he has to end my contract with Nike Finland. I told him I fully understand the case with NSW but I asked him what were his plans around Nike SB’s future in Finland, as business was still strong for SB. He said the perfect answer to my ears - ”we haven’t planned that yet”.

I drove back to my showroom from Nike Finland office and emailed to my global Nike SB contact Kaspar Van Lierop over at Portland about the news, telling Nike is letting me go but most importantly that they don’t even have a plan for SB over here.

It took few weeks for Kaspar to ask around what’s going on in Northern Europe, but eventually I got a phone call few weeks after from Nike Europe’s SB sales lead Hannah Smith that they’d love to continue working with me with Nike SB, this time as a commission based sales & marketing agent, with a contract direct to Nike Europe. I was relieved to be back even though I didn’t even get to properly leave. I didn’t miss a single future sales season in between.

Only a handful of people has heard this from me, but actually the new agent contract meant just half the work (as I only had one brand anymore to take care of) and a payment raise vs. what I had used to get as my monthly salary. Best contract I’ve ever signed.

So in the end, I was somewhat happy that things ended with NSW, and this was a position that was built for me in Finland and it was ended the day my contract was terminated. I wasn’t replaced so I’m sure I did my best as long as it lasted.

Also, ending the work made me think of other opportunities, which lead to us opening My Favorite Things skate shop in 2014. Maybe everything was meant to happen like this.

Looking at NSW and Jordan Brand’s business in 2022, the direct to consumer business plan has been evolving to a point that there’s only few important retailers for the brands in Europe on top of Nike’s own SNKRS app & nike.com.

Nike Finland OY’s operations were ended completely few years ago where Nike cut down most of the country offices in Europe.

Without going into details, it wouldn’t make any sense these days to have country reps for the NSW brand anymore with the current Nike’s structure.

That said, it’s debatable if this structure is the right way to do business in the future, and especially past year or so there’s been a lot of market shifting out from Nike’s pocket for various reasons. I dare to objectively say some of these reasons can be found inside the company.

Maybe there’s a limit on how ”cold” can the business get, also another thing yet to see is people’s longing for a proper retail experience, especially after the pandemic. I will continue more on this topic later on with a separate post.

I want to thank Pete Alava, all the people at Nike Finland OY I got to work with over the years, Kaspar Van Lierop for saving my ass and helping me to get re-hired in early 2014 & Hannah Smith for the trust. Huge thank you to all shops, influencers and artist I got to work with around NSW & Jordan Brand.

”It’s gotta be the shoes”

Thanks for tuning in,

-Oki