Fiscal 2013Share, margin and fewer styles in the same year

What it is

Fiscal 2013 ran from June 2012 to May 2013. Jimmy had spent fiscal 2012 moving from sales to merchandising and from the field to Nike's campus. He had joined merchandising as a director in May 2011; the title changed its name to Category Footwear Merchandising Director in March 2013.

The footwear target for the year was $422M in wholesale shipments, 7% above the prior year. In his review he called it "a very established & mature business". The year held the LeBron X launch, the KD V and Kobe 8 launches, and a season of late factory deliveries. The category's business review recorded that air freight carried 22% of spring 2013 footwear.

What Jimmy did

• Ran the footwear line plan, forecast and assortments for the year, and kept the seasonal drop rate, the share of styles dropped from the line, under 2%.
• Cut the style count while growing revenue. His review records 597 styles against 618 the year before.
• Took the line through margin review each season, with price increases on the Zoom Soldier and core models and forecast shifts toward higher margin shoes.
• Made the mid price band a written goal and drove adoption of inline performance footwear between $70 and $125.
• Set out a point of view on channel segmentation, with defined leadership positions for House of Hoops, Foot Locker, Champs, Finish Line and Dick's Sporting Goods.
• Piloted "Basketball by Nike" with key retailers and rolled out the Signature Playbook in January 2013, with a weekly Monday meeting.
• Set weekly touch points with demand planning so that purchase orders were bought on time and shipment problems were raised early.
• Ran three market trips with athlete focus groups: Chicago and Miami in June 2012, and Washington, D.C. and Chicago in November 2012. The groups included club and high school teams, and one visit to an athlete's home.
• Built the category's room for the spring 2014 key account and sales meetings, which his review calls brand leading.

Results

• Footwear wholesale shipments grew 15% over the prior year and finished $30M above budget.
• By quarter against budget: $131M against $132M, $139M against $137M, $103M against $86M, and $79M against $68M.
• Margin finished at 31.4% against a target of 30.8%, up 90 basis points on the prior year and 60 on budget.
• Style count fell 3.4%, from 618 to 597.
• Nike's share of basketball footwear moved from 52.2% in fiscal 2012 to 67.1% in fiscal 2013, as recorded in his review.
• Inline performance footwear in the $70 to $125 band grew 31%.
• Retail sales in the marketplace grew $102M over the twelve months ending May 2013, on point of sale data from NPD.
• His own summary of the two years: fiscal 2012 was about changing functions and learning the organization, and 2013 "has proven to be a highly successful year".