TAKING 5 WITH JANE SAVAGE
WHAT IS NIKE CONSIDERED?
Q: What's your role with the Considered team?
I have an Industrial Design, and footwear design background. My current role with the Considered team is as the Director of Category Integration. With Nike's strategic focus on categories, and with our public targets to meet baseline standards for Considered in the next several years, I work strategically and tactically with the categories and product engines to help them meet their Considered goals.
Q: How far has Nike come in delivering more environmentally friendly, sustainable product?
It’s been a long journey with a lot of our biggest leaps coming out of the past few years. Nike’s first “green” team formed 15 years ago as the Nike Environmental Action Team, which founded programs like Nike Grind and Reuse-a-Shoe. In 1998, I got the opportunity to join Nike’s Team Shambala, which was formed to really deep-dive into sustainability. We brought in luminaries from the world of sustainability and set the framework for a lot of our projects today. Designs like the Presto Clip and the Air Woven shoes were early signals of Considered innovation, and for the Spring 2005 season, the Sport Culture (now named Sportswear) category recognized that consumers were buying boots, and saw an opportunity to create something really interesting. With the success of the Considered Boot, leaders in the company decided to embed a sustainability ethos across Nike.
Q: Why is Nike Considered so important? Why now?
People were asking for it. Designers were already moving in that direction. We started thinking about our toxic and waste footprints and asking, “How do we reduce these areas and promote game-changing innovation?” More importantly, “How do we operate with a positive environmental footprint?” For Nike, we recognized that there were also great business opportunities as evidenced in the original line of Considered shoes and how favorably people responded to it. So the question became, “How do we capitalize on what we have learned and bring it to scale?” Throughout Nike, teams are passionate about Considered and recognize the need to integrate it into what they’re doing everyday.
Q: Is Nike on pace to meet its aggressive Considered baseline standards across all product lines (Footwear by 2011, Apparel by 2015 and Equipment by 2020)?
We're doing a great job of tracking on our projected targets. In footwear we have some categories that have already hit our Considered baseline standards. They’re doing it on high-volume, high-performance revenue-generating product. It’s not just the niche products anymore. Apparel and equipment are also starting to ramp up and it’s exciting to watch our designers embrace the Considered ethos.
Q: What have athletes said about the performance qualities of Considered products?
This year we introduced two Considered premium-performance basketball shoes. The AIR JORDAN XX3 is a pinnacle performance product which is lightweight, durable and wildly popular with consumers, while also being Considered.
Then came the Trash Talk, which Steve Nash launched during All-Star weekend. For this shoe, innovation came from the cutting-room floor. Designers saw the extra material that was generated from shoe production and recognized that there were ways to use it. Steve’s reaction around the shoe was amazing and he was so inspired that he created his own video short with his production company.
Q: What’s next for Considered?
The innovation team is working on its North Star: the next step in innovation that is going to lead the company forward. Considered is reaching a global stage. This year, 24 percent of Nike on-field apparel in Beijing is Considered, and the Nike Swift ranges designed for Track and Field and Rowing are made from 100 percent recycled polyester yarn. The yarn is comprised of soda bottles, post-consumer uniforms and post-industrial fiber and fabric scrap. We have new footwear products reaching consumers this fall that are performance-driven Considered products. Considered is both a business and a very real sustainability movement, and we want to maximize this momentum. We’re planning on some really game-changing work.