Nike CEO Elliot Hill is on a mission to get Nike back on track. His latest recruit? Kim Kardashian.
On 18 February, Nike announced the launch of a collaborative sub-brand with Kardashian’s Skims, called NikeSkims. Really, the deal has been in place since before Hill’s return to the brand, dating back to October 2023. The brand launch is framed as “for women”, and the companies promise apparel geared towards fitness and activewear, in line with Nike’s recommitment to centring sport, if you look at Skims’s shapers through the lens of performancewear. The first collection will debut this spring in select stores, followed by a global push in 2026 that will include expansion to new markets and retail locations as well as wholesale. Nike shares shot up 6.2 per cent on Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re energised by the opportunity to build a new brand and shake things up for the next generation of athletes with NikeSkims,” Heidi O’Neill, president of consumer, product and brand, said in a press release. “We will invite even more athletes into sport and movement with product that makes them feel strong and sexy.”
“This partnership is the culmination of that shared vision, delivering product that is meticulously designed to sculpt and perform for every body,” Kardashian said in the release. “Every single detail has been obsessed over and carefully considered. We’re incredibly excited to unveil our first collection this spring.”
At first glance, the collaboration might read as antithetical to Hill’s North Star strategy of putting sport at the centre of everything. “Moving forward, we will lead with sport and put the athlete at the centre of every decision,” he told investors in December. Where does a partnership with one of the world’s biggest influencers fit in?
It’s mutually beneficial, experts agree. “While Nike has an opportunity to leverage Skims’s brand equity and cult following, the move also allows Skims to enter the realm of sport in a more serious way,” says Krista Corrigan, retail analyst at EDITED.
This is key for a brand that recognised the potential for sports-fashion tie-ups, which exploded last year. In 2024, the shapewear brand became the official underwear partner for the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball and partnered with Team USA for the Olympics. Even before last year’s spike, Skims dressed the team in Tokyo (2020) and Beijing (2022). In December, Skims launched a skiwear collaboration with the North Face, which generated $5.4 million in media impact value (MIV) in the first 48 hours, according to Launchmetrics.
The Nike deal solidifies Skims’s sports ambitions, says Dan Hastings-Narayanin, deputy editor at strategic foresight agency The Future Laboratory. He dubs Nike’s involvement a “knighting moment: a major endorsement that legitimises Skims as a serious player in sportswear”.
And Nike has been talking about growing its women’s business for years now, says Brian Yarbrough, consumer analyst at Edward Jones who covers the sportswear giant. But progress has lagged. “When people think of the best workout leggings or sportswear for women, brands like Lululemon and Alo Yoga come to mind — Nike is not the first choice,” Hastings-Narayanin says.
Creative consultant and content creator Robyn DelMonte agrees. “With so many athletic brands out there now, I find myself reaching for others lately because I’m looking for something that’s stylish and comfortable, not just performance-driven,” she says. “While it’s an unexpected combo, if done right, this partnership could be exactly what the market is craving.”
Nike women: Showing, not telling
Under Hill, the brand has amped up the promise to grow women’s.
Earlier this month, Nike made its first major women’s splash under Hill, debuting its “So Win” campaign with a Super Bowl advert voiced by Doechii. It highlighted the rise of women athletes, featuring talent from Caitlin Clark to Sha’Carri Richardson to A’ja Wilson. It read as a first step in Nike’s creative comeback — and a bid to get more women on board.
And it’s a bigger effort. Previous fashion collabs (Bode, Jacquemus, for instance) were incredibly hard to acquire. NikeSkims, as a standalone brand, promises to be a mass market play, widely accessible in owned and retailer locations. (Though the price point is still under wraps.) “This is the biggest sign in a long time that I’ve seen of Nike showing that it’s investing in its female consumer rather than talking about it,” says Daniel-Yaw Miller, author of the Sportsverse Substack and brand advisor.
It also signals Nike’s commitment to developing technical products for women. Product innovation has been a pain point for Nike in recent years, Yarbrough says. Hill acknowledged this in December’s earnings; it forms the foundation of his turnaround strategy. In partnering with Skims on a joint brand, Nike is able to gain access to womenswear tech to help it rival the Alos and Lululemons of the world, which, Yarbrough says, would otherwise likely take Nike several years to develop, manufacture and scale. “This accelerates that path for Nike to compete with some of these other brands that have been growing rapidly.” It’s a smart shortcut, Hastings-Narayanin says.
These learnings are likely to bleed out beyond the sub-brand to Nike’s main women’s line, Miller adds. “Nike could use it to inform how it designs the rest of its products for women and take insights based on the data — they get to understand what works and what doesn’t.” (On the flip side, Skims will also gain access to Nike’s more technical activewear tech.)
Perhaps this is what sportswear giants should have been doing all along. These brands have long struggled to nail what women want to wear, says Nikita Walia, strategy director at brand and venture studio Unnamed. Brands have spent decades perfecting performance innovation, but have struggled to balance technical function with real-world wearability, she says. This focus on fit and feel is what Skims does well. “Any consultant that has touched a sportswear brand in their career jokes about the famous ‘shrink it and pink it’ approach brands can take,” Walia says. “This shows a willingness to try something different.”
The long game
Looking forward, the new brand bodes well for both parents. For one, women’s interest in sports is on the rise, and it’s rising beyond wellness, Hastings-Narayanin says. “The global shift towards women pursuing sports not just for wellbeing but for performance and self-optimisation makes this a long-term strategic play, not a passing trend.”
These days, consumers want products that work, experts agree, so emphasis needs to be on quality over hype. “Success today is about truly listening to your audience and creating products and marketing that connect with them, rather than just chasing trends or relying on a big budget,” DelMonte says.
This will make or break NikeSkims, Walia says. To succeed the product needs compression and support that adapts to different body types; pieces that move seamlessly between performance and everyday wear (“there’s room to refine this for women, in a post-athleisure world,” she says); and marketing that puts function at the fore. “If the narrative leans too much into aesthetics, it risks being perceived as just another lifestyle brand,” Walia says.
For best results, NikeSkims needs to be smart about its global ambitions, Hastings-Narayanin adds. For now, the spring launch will be in the US, but the brand has global plans via wholesale for next year. “China and the Middle East are prime growth markets, where women’s interest in sports and fitness is rising significantly,” he says. “If Nike and Skims want to become unstoppable, this is where the money is.”
Yarbrough believes that Skims can be the boon that Nike’s women’s business needs. But, he flags, this isn’t Nike’s only problem. “They’ve been struggling now for a year-plus. For Nike, this is an additive, but Nike’s bigger problems lie within their core business and where they have had a lack of product innovation, which has caused them to lose market share to the Hokas, the Ons, Brooks of the world,” he says. “Them figuring that out and fixing it is going to be a much bigger positive for them than this deal with Skims.”
Observers say it’s a solid start in recruiting women for the brand’s turnaround. “It’s one of those rare partnerships where it’s going to be really hard for them to not be a massive success,” Miller says. “I think it could be a slam dunk.”
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