By the end of the 2010s, resellers were flipping sneakers for record-setting highs, as outlets extolled the virtues of hyped kicks as alternative investments. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the market’s peak, however, a combination of factors has since caused today’s reselling landscape to change.
Many sneaker speculators developed a parallel interest in web3. On one hand, this brought quick short-term attention to the up-and-coming NFT market, but it also attracted the kind of profit-obsessed resellers who could care less about community (in sneakers or web3).
As this development in the sneaker community unfolded, Nike was watching.
In response to this shift, Nike’s web3 team elected to take an inclusivity-first approach to build its web3 platform .SWOOSH. The goal of going IRL was to build a more thoughtful community for sneakerheads who otherwise haven't had the opportunity to enjoy the brand’s most sought-after goods and experiences.
“There’s a hunger for our community to co-create the future of sports with us,” says Ron Faris, head of Nike’s Virtual Studio.
The last time I spoke to Faris, he was preparing the .SWOOSH team to tour US cities, hosting educational events about Nike’s entry into web3, partnering with local youth organizations and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to prioritize these community’s access to .SWOOSH.
Several times during our conversation, Faris reiterated that these sessions taught .SWOOSH Studios quite a bit about what people wanted out of Nike’s entry into web3. He notes that participants weren’t interested in flipping NFTs but just wanted to be a part of Nike.
“.SWOOSH is about exploring new ways to tell stories,” Faris continued. “It’s a shift for us, creating new relationships with our community through pioneering technologies. We feel that a true, authentic relationship with them demands a way to engage deeper with the Nike brand.”
Faris’ IRL-first approach has grown Nike .SWOOSH to over 330,000 members on its platform, making it one of the largest communities in web3.
For its first proper .SWOOSH event, Nike hosted the OurForce1 tournament where .SWOOSH members could vote on their favorite all-time Air Force 1 designs and established the Your Force One challenge, wherein four members won the opportunity to co-create designs featured in Nike’s latest virtual sneaker collection, which drops April 19.
Therein, Nike will be airdropping 106,453 digital OurForce1 posters — examples can be seen at the top of this article — to .SWOOSH members.
Priority will be given to participants of .SWOOSH session tour stops, the #OurForce1 challenge, and Nike’s DEI partners before the posters are distributed at random to those with a .SWOOSH ID.
These posters enable access to the OurForce1 Box sale on May 8, which comprises 100,000 Air Force 1-inspired Nike Virtual Creations (NVC) ranging from St Patrick’s Day-themed to The 21 Mercer exclusively featured below:
Furthermore, the four winners of Nike’s Your Force 1 competition will debut their co-created designs, part of a greater effort to simplify the process of creatively partnering with Nike.
“We started with a simple palette and questions that would create a mood board for color preferences and storytelling,” Faris said. “It was more about meeting people and hearing their design thoughts without the technical barriers.”
Priced at $19.82 in reference to the year that Nike's Air Force 1 sneaker debuted, OF1 Boxes will be available via credit card (no cryptocurrency needed) to OF1 Poster holders for a couple of days before being made available to all remaining .SWOOSH members during the subsequent General Access (no poster necessary for purchase).
OF1 Box owners will be able to either reveal what’s inside at a later date or keep it a mystery forever.
Though no official launch date has been announced, the team also shared insights about the .SWOOSH Marketplace, where members will be able to start trading OF1 Boxes and other Nike Virtual Creations on its secondary market.
Co-creators like the Your Force One winners will receive royalties for their creations, which Nike hopes to implement with future virtual collaborations too.
Although Faris didn’t outline any specific utilities around the OF1 Boxes, a portion of his presentation explained that NVCs will unlock exclusive access to products, experiences, virtual drops, gaming skins, and customizable 3D files.
Like we'll soon see with RTFKT’s upcoming Air Force 1 event, where NFT owners will be able to trade digital goods for corresponding physical shoes, Nike is laying the groundwork to give web3 fans the utility they’ve been daydreaming about. RTFKT is a itself a pretty effective signal of Nike's web3 strengths.
As for the potential utilities attached to .SWOOSH's virtual products, it’s one of the most fun projects to ponder over: all-powerful Nike could really do anything.
However, Faris remains tight-lipped when asked about what was to come, insistent on emphasizing the currently-available .SWOOSH projects over speculation
While other fashion brands are gifting virtual goods to consumers buying their products, Faris says Nike’s current focus is to first learn how its community engages with virtual products.
So far, the response to digital has been promising proof that Faris hopes will prove Nike’s skill at “[blurring] the line between physical and virtual products.”
