Both have already built out an ecosystem of apps dedicated to general retail, new sneaker releases, and running or training.
Most visible to shoppers, though, are the ways they’re investing in technology to sell their goods. Adidas and Nike have also spent to digitally integrate their supply chains and increase automation. Adidas, Nike, and many other footwear manufacturers are increasingly designing in 3D software and using digital printing to create prototypes faster while reducing the number of physical samples they need to create. The push to digitize spans a number of processes across the companies. This February, it snapped up Datalogue, a data integration start-up Nike said will let it turn raw data into insights it can act on immediately.
The next year it acquired Celect, a specialist in using data to predict demand. In 2018, it bought data analytics firm Zodiac. Nike, meanwhile, has been expanding its digital capabilities and gathering talent through an acquisition spree it began following the 2017 debut of its “ consumer direct offense” strategy, intended to let it deliver personalized service to shoppers on a global scale.