Foot Locker Looks To Add More Stores In Partnership With Nike

At a time when retailers are shutting their brick and motor stores, Foot Locker (FL) is looking to open more locations with bigger footprints with the help of Nike (NKE). Foot Locker and Nike have partnered up to bring what they are reportedly calling Power stores.

The Power stores will be interactive locations that are four times the size of a traditional Foot Locker store, located inside of malls, which it has plans to open as many as 50 sites over the next three years, CNBC reported. The companies currently have three U.S. locations together – one in Detroit and two in Philadelphia, the news outlet said.

For the new Power stores, Nike will reportedly lend its proprietary technology to Foot Locker, allowing loyalty members to use the Nike app to gain free merchandise as well as win products such as sneakers.

“This is a big deal for us,” Ann Hebert, vice president of global sales at Nike told CNBC. “It’s not something that we traditionally do.”

For Foot Locker, the partnership makes sense as the retailer bought as much as two-thirds of its merchandise from Nike in 2017 and 2018. The reinvented Foot Locker stores are designed to draw customers in and keep them returning as it competes with Finish Line, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Famous Footwear.

“Our approach is definitely to understand how the technology and the consumer behaves within [the Power store],” Frank Bracken, vice president of Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, and Lady Foot Locker told the news outlet.

Foot Locker has more than 800 stores in the U.S., while Nike has about 30 branded locations and factory outlets.

Shares of Foot Locker stock were down 0.20 percent as of 10:49 p.m. ET on Friday while shares of Nike stock were down 1.19 percent at the same time.