According to Nike, industry research suggests that 60 percent of the public wear shoes of the wrong size. In response, the Oregon-based sports behemoth has spent the past year working out a new selling scheme. In addition to branding, style, quality and materials, Nike is going to play up the actual fit. Rather than changing the shoes themselves, however, the company is changing the way customers select them.
The resulting system, Nike Fit, is a foot scanner crossed with a database. It measures a customer's feet at 13 points with the help of a smartphone and then finds the right size, which can vary by model or style. The same person might best wear a size ten in this and a size nine in that, even within Nike's own product range.
Nike Fit will begin in July as an update to Nike's existing app and as a stand-alone system in select Nike stores in the U.S. It will be launched in European stores later in the summer.
The product page on Nike's app currently shows a menu for sizes. With the update, a new option will appear for foot measurement. A tap will bring up the camera and instructions to stand by a wall and aim the phone at your feet. Two augmented reality circles will appear to level the position of the phone. Then the scan begins, and the system will put out an ideal size for your selected model along with a further comment, such as a notice that the model tends to run small or a percentage of people with similar feet who have purchased the same size. The system can also detect disparities in size between the left and right foot. The procedure takes less than a minute.
The results of the scan will be saved to the customer's individual Nike profile, so adults generally will not have to perform the scan more than once. Parents can scan their children's feet every two months or so. At the retail stores, clerks can scan a QR code from the Nike app on a customer's phone to pull up the profile and determine the right size. Otherwise, customers will be able to use an in-store Nike Fit mat to perform the scan.
Nike has been able to develop Nike Fit thanks to its acquisition last year of Invertex, a 3D scanning firm, and to recent trials in Dallas, Seattle and Los Angeles. The initiative stems from Nike's Consumer Direct Offense strategy, which was announced in 2017 and is intended to reorient the company's approach toward individual service.
But Nike Fit is also part of a broader digital trend. It would seem that changes are afoot throughout the industry. In January, as we reported at the time, Nike announced the Adapt BB, a low-cut basketball shoe that laces itself and adjusts its fit in accordance with settings entered into a smartphone app called Nike Adapt.
Just a few days later, as we also reported, Puma announced a self-lacing sneaker of its own, the FI, which was itself incorporated into a digital platform: Fit Intelligence. It is true, however, that Puma's shoe builds on the Disc system, introduced back in 1991. In April, finally, we reported on Safesize, a Dutch foot- and shoe-scanning company that has combined 3D scanners with databases, a questionnaire, an app and e-mail to develop a system that matches the feet of retail customers and their usage of footwear to deliver purchasing recommendations for existing shoe models.
