Shoe shopping can be the bane of any parent’s existence, because children’s feet grown unspeakably quickly. Nike has decided to help solve that problem for parents, and perhaps invest in creating customers for life, with the launch of a new subscription program geared specifically toward children, according to a report on Monday (Aug. 12).
Called the Nike Adventure Club, it allows parents to order shoes for their kids ages 2 to 10 and to pay either $20, $30 or $50 a month to again access to new shoes quarterly, bi-monthly or monthly. The most expensive $50 option takes off around $10 per pair of Nike shoes purchased (as the average retail price is $60).
Nike’s kid business has been a reasonably powerful revenue engine for the nation’s largest shoe company — with growth of 11 percent over the last year — and the new program comes just as parents are engaging in the annual back-to-school festival of commerce.
“One of the things [Nike CFO] Andy Campion gets excited about, is we are now building relationships with kids from 2 years old,” said Dave Cobban, general manager of Nike Adventure Club. “Hopefully they will remember us and feel strongly toward the brand.”
And children need new shoes fairly often — because they play hard and because their feet are constantly growing. Under age 3 children change size four times a year, between ages 4 and 8 three size changes are not unheard of and between 8 and 12 two pairs of shoes a year is about average.
Cobban said Nike has been testing this subscription platform in stealth mode for the past two years under the name “Easy Kicks.” It amassed about 10,000 members via Facebook ads. The adventure box concept, additionally, provides more than just footwear, it also comes with an activity guide, stickers and an additional gift like a drawstring backpack.
It will offer about 100 shoe varieties to choose from, including ones made by Converse.
Two rules announced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) during the Biden administration suffered setbacks in Congress on Wednesday (March 5).
The Senate voted Wednesday to approve a joint resolution (S.J. Res. 28) disapproving of the “Defining Larger Participants of a Market for General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications” rule submitted by the CFPB.
The resolution was passed on a 51 to 47 vote, according to the Senate website.
The resolution still requires House approval, The Verge reported Wednesday.
If approved, it would ensure that the rule would have no force or effect, according to the text of the joint resolution.
When the CFPB announced the final rule on Nov. 21, the regulator said in a press release that it would help the CFPB ensure that the largest nonbank companies — those handling more than 50 million transactions per year — follow federal law like large banks, credit unions and other financial institutions already do.
For example, the release said, the rule would enable the CFPB to supervise these companies in terms of privacy and surveillance, errors and fraud, and debanking.
Opponents of this rule contended that by treating nonbank providers like banks, it would wind up “chilling innovation in the market.”
In another setback for the CFPB, the House Financial Services Committee approved a resolution Wednesday disapproving of the “Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions” rule submitted by the CFPB. The resolution was passed by the committee by a vote of 30 to 19, the account of the committee’s Republicans said in a post on X.
After approval by the committee, the resolution (H.J. Res. 59) heads to the House floor. A matching resolution in the Senate (S.J. Res. 18) is awaiting a vote, Bloomberg Law reported Wednesday.
When announcing this final rule on Dec. 12, the CFPB said in a press release that it would update the federal regulation governing overdraft fees for financial institutions with more than $10 billion in assets, requiring them to cap their overdraft fee at $5, cap their fee at an amount that covers costs and losses, or “disclose the terms of their overdraft loan just like other loans.”
When opponents of the rule introduced Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions in the House and Senate in February, they said this rule capping overdraft fees would harm consumers by denying them choices and pushing them toward riskier financial products.