e By You, its product personalisation and customisation service, and categories like basketball in the region.  “When you’re in a small store, there’s only so much you can do, particularly around those brand experiences and customer experiences,” said Stephen Younane, co-founder and CEO of Retail Prodigy Group (RPG), Nike’s main retail partner in Australia and New Zealand.  “We just think that larger stores enable us to bring to life the Nike brand more holistically.” A strong brand statement The Emporium Melbourne store is a good example of this. Located in a former Topshop, the store has an unusually long shopfront covered in a white-mesh facade and giant, illuminated swoosh symbol.  Matt Beaver, head of RPG Design, said the shopfront was one of the main reasons they chose the site.  “It makes a really strong brand statement at the entrance to Emporium off of Lonsdale Street,” Beaver said. Inside, the store design is based on Nike’s ‘modern sport’ concept, with timber floors and an open ceiling conveying the feeling of being in an old school gymnasium. But there’s also a lot of colour and movement, which is meant to appeal to female shoppers. According to Trevor Stitt, RPG’s group marketing manager, the previous store over-indexed on women’s footwear and apparel, and since Emporium’s foot traffic also skews female, it was a no-brainer to focus more on the female customer in the new location.  This can be seen in the bra personalisation service, where customers can receive a professional fitting and customise their bra with one of Nike’s heritage images or their own initials. The service is part of Nike By You, a personalisation concept that the brand introduced to Australia in its revamped Melbourne Central store last year.  Customers can customise their bras with images or their initials as part of Nike By You. Room for new categories and experiences A new kidswear section in the Emporium store also fits in with the focus on female consumers, who, if they have children, typically end up shopping for the whole family.  Nike’s Melbourne Central, in contrast, is targeted at a younger, more sportswear-focused shopper, with a whole floor dedicated to basketball and the brand’s iconic Air Jordan shoes. Instead of bra personalisation, the Nike By You counter at Melbourne Central offers customisation options for sneakers and t-shirts.  “[The] two stores complement each other and provide different services and bring the best of Nike, if you like, just over two locations,” Stitt said. Another element that is unique to the Emporium store is a centralised footwear section, where men’s and women’s shoes are displayed together in the middle of the store, rather than on separate walls, and a treadmill, where customers can test running shoes in action.  No other Nike store in Australia has a centralised footwear section, but as RPG continues to expand the size of Nike stores in ANZ, customers can expect to see features like this pop up around the country. “The benefit of investing in bigger stores is it enables us to bring these experiences to life,” Younane said. That includes the Nike By You concept. “As we open stores and expand stores, I think you will start to see more Nike By You [services] being offered,” he said. Longer dwell time, increased conversion Theoretically, bigger, more engaging stores also translate to longer dwell time and increased conversion. Another benefit is the ability to differentiate Nike stores from third-party retailers that sell its products, such as Rebel, which just opened a mammoth 2500sqm store in Parramatta.  “One of the views we have, and Nike shares it, is that the best Nike experience you can have is in a store. You can’t have that emotional connection online, and you can’t get the best Nike experience in a retailer selling Nike products,” Stitt said.  “Some of them do that very well, but the most unique and the purest and ideally the best Nike experience is going to be the Nike store.”