Nike Can Read Your Mind
Fancy yourself as a self-aware shopper? Having just made a new AI acquisition, Nike is probably a better predictor of your buying habits than you are. So, if you wake up realizing you own too many pairs of sneakers, now you know why!
Artificial intelligence is here and has been for a while. It’s a broad investment field, but a large part of it involves accurate predictions at scale. Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, is wooing investors with the company’s latest business move into the space. The fashion brand will buy Celect, who specialize in predicting consumer analytics. In other words, in reading your mind! If the mega-brand can pull the strings of your purchasing behavior, both in-store and online, that should translate into real dollars for shareholders.
Celect, a start-up in Boston, has been offering help to Nike for some time. It’s one of many smaller firms that Nike’s decided to gobble up into its ecosystem, hopefully making the most of its potential through ‘synergies.’ Both companies should hit the ground running, the technology being put to work on Nike’s enormous collection of data about its customers, predicting not only what they want to buy, but when, how, and where.
However, there are two sides to every story. Some in the market are bothered by Nike’s mute answers to the question of price. If a company you owned bought something very expensive, like another company, you might have something to say about it! No financial details have been disclosed, so investors are left to trust management. Still, AI could be a real game-changer for Nike. The question is, will the shoemaker pull it off?
