Insight Flash: Can This Power Duo Win Over Female Shoppers & Shake Up Activewear?

Sportswear giant NIKE has announced a collaboration with Kim Kardashian’s shapewear company SKIMS, with a new women’s activewear brand dubbed NikeSKIMS due to launch this Spring. The collection, which will be sold at various Nike retail locations as well as through a new NikeSKIMS website, will include training apparel, accessories, and footwear. The partnership appears to be a concerted bid by Nike, which has lagged faster-growing competitors such as HOKA, On Running, Alo Yoga in recent years, to reconnect with female customers who may have been drawn away to more innovative alternative brands.

Using CE’s U.S. transaction data, we assess SKIMS’ customer overlap with Nike as well as each brand’s exposure to key demographic groups – finding that the tie-up presents an opportunity for Nike to access a potentially younger and more affluent audience among the ~80% of SKIMS customers who are not regular Nike shoppers.

Key Cross-Shop Trends Among SKIMS Customers Over the Past 12 Months

  • SKIMS shoppers showed a marked preference for yoga/athleisure brands, with very high brand-to-panel affinity indexes (a measure of SKIMS shoppers’ propensity to purchase from competitors vs. that of the average panel shopper) for Alo Yoga (20x), Vuori (10x) and Lululemon (8x).
  • SKIMS customers’ affinity index for Nike was lower at 4x – though this still indicates that SKIMS shoppers are much more likely to purchase from NIKE than the average panelist.
  • 20% of SKIMS shoppers made a purchase at NIKE during the past year, indicating that there remains significant upside for introducing SKIMS customers to the NIKE brand.
  • The only brand with a higher percentage of SKIMS shoppers making a purchase was Lululemon – though the large percentages for both brands are partly explained by their overall size.

Shopper Demographics Insights

  • SKIMS’ customer base skews more affluent in terms of spend contribution than Nike’s, with a brand-to-panel index of 1.4x for the $150,000+ annual income bracket (which accounts for 40% of sales, vs. Nike’s 30% and index of 1.1x), indicating a potential opportunity for the partnership to bring the attention of wealthier shoppers to Nike’s offerings.
  • SKIMS is also heavily indexed toward the youngest age cohorts, with a brand-to-panel index of 2.3x for the 18-24 cohort ( 24% of sales) and 1.9x for the 25-34 cohort (33% of sales) compared to NIKE’s 1.5x (15%) and 1.3x (21%), respectively.

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Michael Gunther is the VP Head of Insights for the CEIC. Explore more of his insights here and follow him on LinkedIn.

Matthew Volpe is an Insights Analyst for the CEIC. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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