NBY
NIKE BY YOU MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
Cross-functional Collaboration | FW, MTL Development | Shoe Construction | Iterative Sampling | Factory Partnership | Sourcing | Design Support | Process Development
The Nike By You category has transitioned to a heightened focus on offering consumers premium materials and executions exclusive to its online customization platform. In my current role as a FW Tech Developer, I guide complex project and factory teams in translating design intent into final commercialized product through clear communication, iterative sampling, and manufacturing troubleshooting. I approach my role as the project team’s navigator, gathering information from 10+ different internal teams, factories, and vendors, distilling that information, recommending courses of action, and then working with factory partners to execute on those actions in the form of samples.
In my previous role as a Materials Developer, I acted as a consultant, translating the team’s design intent into manufacturable material options within an abbreviated seasonal calendar. This included daily collaboration with cross-functional teams as well as international material suppliers and footwear factories. While executing my project work, I also took the initiative to establish new team collaboration processes to promote clear communication and increase efficiency and sustainability. My role also included longer term innovation projects like rethinking customization processes.
In 2+ years, I’ve supported commercialization of close to 70 total projects. During my time with the team, the NBY category has also undergone historic growth. The models below are examples of some products I helped bring to market, shown in my own custom colorways and materialization.
Key learnings
Open communication is key to complex cross-functional collaboration—the complexity of the NBY customization business required constant alignment between teams. The most impactful work I did on the team centered around streamlining the translation of design intent into commercialized product.
Testing manufacturing unknowns as early as possible ensures efficient and confident decision-making—the toughest projects all had questions of manufacturability that required more resources and problem-solving. For projects that were successful, those resources were incorporated into the beginning of the process for early testing.
Design decisions always have downstream impacts—regardless of how seemingly minor, every decision about color, material, construction, and graphics had some effect on commercialization. Because of the complexity of customization, even small design decisions could have multiple impacts like performance, manufacturability, and sourcing.
Use collective knowledge—the knowledgebase of the company is huge. When approaching complex projects, I would have been more intentional about finding and leveraging the deep experience of teammates who had already worked on similar projects.