Nike’s premium positioning driving growth as it continues to ‘invest heavily’ in ecommerce

Nike’s revenues are up by 15% to $7.4bn according to the latest financial results for the second quarter of its financial year.

The brand believes this growth is largely due to tightening its collections down across the marketplace as well as a push towards premium positioning for the Nike brand.

It will continue its push towards premium positioning through e-commerce, where sales increased by 65% in the quarter.

In a conference call with analysts, Mark Parker, Nike president and CEO, said the brand is planning to “invest heavily” in e-commerce and mobile in order to promote its “narrow but deep” product assortment.

“E-commerce is, without a doubt, one of our biggest and most important growth opportunities, and will be for years to come,” Parker says.

“The world is changing. Consumer behaviour and expectations are certainly changing. It’s not a mystery to anybody that more people are shopping online. They want products easy, fast, and they want to be able to customise and personalise, shop on their devices, and in an in-store setting.”

The brand says it is committed to product innovation in apparel in order to stand out as a premium performance brand, something it is continuing to push through its investment in womenswear.

Nike is looking to tap into what it calls a “cultural shift” towards increased participation across sporting categories by women with a goal of increasing womenswear revenues to $7m by 2017 in order to catch up with the menswear category, which is currently three times larger.

The brand saw a “through the roof” spike in e-commerce revenue in the first quarter of this fiscal year, a rise that it credited to its NikeID customisation service, women’s merchandise, running apparel and the Training Club app for women.