Won't You Take Me To . . . Niketown

Thanks to a Stanford connection, I was invited to go to a special event at Niketown San Francisco last weekend.  Being the dedicated sneaker freak that I am, I woke up at 5:30 AM to be at the store at 7:00 AM, a full three hours before store opening.  In exchange for my early rising, the reward was an employee discount of 40-50% off anything in the store.  Needless to say, I did some serious damage to my credit card bill; four pairs of sneakers and over $200 spent.

Aside from being an opportunity to get a great deal on some "kicks," the trip to Niketown was a great barometer for gauging which professional athletes are growing (and shrinking) in popularity.  I was last in a Niketown store in New York over the summer, and a lot has changed in the sports world since then.  Here's what I learned about the last half-year in sports on my most recent Niketown trip.

• LeBron James is DOWN.  Niketown confirmed what I already knew: The King's popularity has seriously dropped since he took his talents to South Beach.  The LJ23 logo has been swapped for an awkward looking lion's head, and LeBron's gear is now buried below tons of purple-and-gold Kobe stuff.  In fact, another Nike hoops stud seems to be quickly gaining groud on LeBron.  Kevin Durant is UP; it's the Durantula's shoes that sit alongside Kobe's on the racks, not LeBron's.

• Soccer is DOWN.  Last time I was in Niketown over the summer, the World Cup was in full swing and soccer gear (team U.S.A., Brazil and the Netherlands in particular) was all over the store.  Now, the soccer gear was relegated to a small area on the top floor, sandwiched in between tennis and golf.  Instead, Skateboarding and Paul Rodriguez, Jr. are UP.  The Mexican-American skateboarder has his green-and-gold, #84 apparel all over the store, much to my surprise.

• Manny Pacquiao is UP.  Pacman has his own line of blue-and-red gear and a weird-looking logo, now (see the back of the left shoe), and Nike seems to be trying to turn him into more than just a boxer.  He's essentially the go-to "workout" athlete right now, replacing some of the void left by Lance Armstrong's departure from cycling glory.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Pacquiao's stuff is taking over the real estate previously occupied by golf; Tiger Woods is WAY DOWN.  He still has a presence in the store, but he's not the Nike star child he once was.

There were other notable trends at Niketown, but those were the major ones.  I'll have to take another trip there before the school year is out to see how the trends change once again as winter turns into spring.  This will be my last post until after Christmas, as I'm headed out of the country for the next two weeks and likely wont have many / any opportunities to write.  Until then, Happy Holidays!