Industry Insider: Nike Sportswear’s Marcus Smith

words by Nick DePaula
words & interview by Nick DePaula & Steve Mullholand
images by Steve Mullholand

We’re happy to bring you our Industry Insider series, which was originally in last year’s Issue 26 and featured the stories and journeys of sixteen professionals in the footwear industry. By following each person all the way from their childhood to their current position today, we were able to capture the work, passion and effort that they’ve put in towards their career and lifelong goals.  Each piece is simply a must-read. You can be sure to see brand new Industry Insider interviews throughout the year, featuring even more designers, developers and every position in between.  For now, we’ll start off with a man who has fused his love for sports and footwear and currently is in charge of the latest retro footwear you’re seeing at your local sneaker boutique.

Name: Marcus Smith
Company: Nike
Title: Nike Global Urban Sportswear Product Line Manager

Marcus Smith has the job that all sneakerheads want. Did you pick up any Retro Penny IIs this year? Thank Marcus. Excited about the Penny ½ Cent that dropped last spring? Marcus had a big hand in that, too. It wasn’t an easy road to his current title as Urban Sportswear PLM for the global business sector, but in his role at Nike, Smith decides what models to bring back for each season of their Retro business, and he also works with Urban Sportswear Design Director Marc Dolce to create fresh, new products like the aforementioned ½ Cent. (Did I mention he has a fun job?)

While it might seem like every day is filled with simply coloring up models or deciding that the Total Max Uptempo is next on the list for the retro treatment, Smith also must balance dealing with regions from the U.S. (New York/L.A.), Asia-Pacific, Europe and Mexico to make sure they have the right sneakers for their market. But, Smith played college football and basketball while earning his business degree at Miami University in Ohio, so he certainly learned the importance of time management. As he talked with Sole Collector, he emphasized that it’s more important to do something you love, if even for less money, than to take on a job you’re not passionate about.

Steve Mullholand: Can you talk about your educational background?
Marcus Smith: I grew up with a single parent on the south side of Chicago, just growing up going to a public school in the inner city. I think my opportunity to change my life was when our house got broken into, and my mom moved us to the suburbs. We moved to Bolingbrook, Ill., and things just changed for me in life. My outlook on school, sports and the people around me changed. Bolingbrook was a mixed hood/suburb that taught me a lot about the do’s and don’ts of life.

I got a football scholarship to Miami of Ohio. I played football there, and I also got lucky to play basketball. I played one year with Wally Szczerbiak. It was a fun time to be in the MAC, when you were playing against guys like Randy Moss and Chad Pennington in football and Earl Boykins and Bonzi Wells in basketball. It had to be the best time in my life outside of my time with Nike.

It’s funny, I studied business, and only because I didn’t want to take a foreign language. [laughs] I told Senora Rosa my senior year of high school, “That was it! No more Spanish.” [laughs] But really, I wish I had that foreign language today! Boomerang was my favorite movie, and Eddie Murphy’s character was named Marcus in the movie, [where he plays the role of a marketing executive] and I just saw the power that he had. It was sexy and very cool to me. I was 16 going to the movie theatre to see that movie, and for me it was the first time I had seen a character named Marcus in a movie. It was a moment that really did change my life. People always laugh when I tell that story, but [in] my initial interview for most of my jobs I’ve told that story when people ask me why I wanted to be in business marketing.

When I was at school at Miami of Ohio, I realized that I didn’t have a NFL or basketball career in my future. There were a lot of people telling me that I should change my major and that I would never work in the field of my degree. With a college degree, you can really become whatever you want, and there’re people who study education and become finance guys and people who study finance that become marketing guys. It was true, but to me the business degree was really important, so I continued to study business marketing. [After I got out of] school, I worked for Black & Decker in their marketing field, and looking back, it was my training ground for an introduction to Nike, but I didn’t understand that then.

After I left Black & Decker, I worked for G&K – which was a uniform company – riding on a truck, delivering uniforms. I’d never do that again! [laughs] … But then, I will never forget it either. For some reason, I had moved back to Chicago and was working for G&K. It was the Fourth of July in 2002, and my grandmother had died, and I knew then that the lord wanted me to be there for her final days. I never wanted to move back home, but here I was working on a uniform truck from about 5:30 a.m. to about 6:00 p.m. at night delivering uniforms, and I was thinking to myself, “I didn’t go to college to freaking deliver uniforms all day.” I was just coming home every day looking for a job or something else to do that I was excited about, and I knew that if you don’t have a passion for what you do, you’re not going to be successful in what you do.

A family friend of ours, Mrs. Law, had told me, “You should work for Nike.” And of course I was like, “Oh really?” [laughs] She thought it was that simple! But it’s funny, because the people you know sometimes can really help. A guy [Dana Noel of Nike Sports Marketing] I knew from high school that lived down the street was working for Nike at their Chicago office, so I took him my resume. Little did I know those presenting and sales skills from Black & Decker prepared me for my interview with Nike. Within Black & Decker, we had to learn how to spec tools, and I learned how to get technical with product. Just like sneakers! When I got a call for a Nike interview, everything I had learned in the past had prepared me for this panel interview with Nike.

I had experience pitching product at Black & Decker, I had done presentations and I had been in a room in front of a lot of people before and talking about product and its benefits and features. Even on those days of being in the dumps or hating talking about a tool, what I still presented was three features and benefits of the tool and it’s the same thing with a shoe when I talk about the upper, midsole and outsole, except I enjoy it. [laughs] It relates, but it’s just a different product.

After the interview with Nike, I waited a few days to hear back from them, but in the meantime, Michelin Tires in South Carolina had offered me a job before Nike did. It was way more than Nike. [laughs] Way more money. What was I to do? I was living in my parents’ basement at the time, and my mom just kept telling me, “You should take the Michelin job, you should take that job.” … So, I got the call from Nike, and my mom was still really bagging on me about taking the Michelin job, and I was still working the job with the uniform company, and then Nike offered me the job, and right away I told Nike I would take it. She said, “Do you need to think about it?” I said, “Nope, I’m takin’ it!” Even though I took less money, I learned that I had a passion for Nike, and I knew I wanted to work in sports marketing, and this was my way to do it.

For my first job with Nike, I worked at the Chicago office. I was the Nike Urban Merchandiser; it’s like being an EKIN, but for apparel. I worked on footwear also, but merchandised apparel for all of our Nike accounts throughout the Midwest. Being in Chicago, I saw all of the stores grow, like PHLI, Leaders, St. Alfred’s and City Sports, and all of those really came to life. I remember when Leaders opened in Hyde Park, and it was just a tiny t-shirt store, but it always had a good vibe and Corie was in there and he was trying to get with Nike. It was literally smaller than a corner store. And when St. Alfred’s first started, I basically drove around with those guys to help them find a location for where they’re at today. For all of those stores, I’d do recap articles for internal use at Nike so they could see how the store looked and how this whole new sneaker business in Chicago was really growing.

Nick DePaula: Once you got in as the Midwest merchandiser, how’d you navigate and work your way up?
I spent three long years! [laughs] For me, I have faith, and so I believed the lord was taking me down the road and preparing me for different positions. When I was in Chicago, people would come from the Nike campus. I was asked to take them around the city to do focus groups or to view Chicago retail. My goal was to work them to death. I’d get up at 6:30 in the morning, pick them up at 7 and we’d be working ‘til 6. Then we’d go to dinner with them … and after dinner was done, we’d take them out and build those working relationships.

You see, I knew that I had to be able to take care of my merchandising job before I could start helping PLMs/sales members with their market travel visits to Chicago. That just didn’t happen overnight! Two years later, I soon understood that to get the job you want, you have to be a killer at the job you already have, or you can’t move up. If you’re not successful at the job you have, how are you going to get to the next spot if you can’t do what you’re supposed to be doing in your current position? If you listen and learn, it’s preparing you for the next step.

When the old Basketball PLMs would come out for market travel, like Archie McEachern and Trent Casper, it was always the same goal for me: I was gonna get you up early and you were going to go home late. [laughs] I was the hardest working man out on the field – that was my motto! Scott Rose, who was a merchant for the value channel; Yuron White, CFL of Nike Basketball, and Nancy Penman, who is now director for Jordan apparel, gave me the opportunity to move to campus, where I was the value channel SMU PLM and worked on Special Make Ups for about nine accounts.

So I worked with Shoe Carnival, Kohl’s, Mervyn’s, Shoe Department, JC Penny’s and all of those value accounts and they basically had so much money invested in one shoe under a certain price that they would buy their own color in shoes that were priced under $75. I really just built those relationships up with those guys, and what started to happen was that consumer couldn’t afford a higher priced shoe from Foot Locker or Foot Action, but they were still looking for something a little faster or something a little more skate. I had the opportunity to work on the first SB shoe that we hit at those stores called the Banger, and that was our first skate shoe adoption. I did those original colors and had success there, and then it just happened to be the right timing and the Urban PLM position had opened up and I was able to step into this role.

Luckily for me, I was at the right place at the right time. If you flip back, I was able to step into this role because the relationships with all of the Chicago accounts were already there from three years ago, and I understood the boutique landscape, the urban consumer and the marketplace. I had to pick up other regions like the South, L.A. and New York to help with my job. Making product I loved was the next step.

Steve: Can you talk about what you do on a daily basis?
At Nike we always call it the triad. You have Development, Marketing and Design, and my job is to always keep the processes flowing. I work with Design to come up with concepts and plan the business for each of our four seasons, while also working with Design to figure out what retro models to release. I also work with Chris Snyder to decide what materials we’re going to add and Shaneika Warden on what colors we want to use to help create stories. Then it comes back to Barbara Stegmaier and her Development team, which is a great team that can always come up with a solution or development idea first.

People might wonder things like, “How are you able to laser an Air bag?” But, if you just ask the factory, you never know what you’ll be able to do. So, I’m the middleman between the team of Design and Development and then Sales and Brand Marketing. The other portion of my job is to work with the sales force from each region, the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Americas – which includes Mexico and Canada – to make sure that they have the right product to fit their business needs in their region.

We also have to be really creative when we decide to bring out a new product, and then I have to listen very well and decide where our consumer is going so that we can fit their needs and bring out a product that they’re demanding, like the Air Pippen or the Eggplant Foamposite. I even have to listen when people say, “Hey, you guys should’ve done the outsole in clear and not solid on the Black/Cactus Foamposite.” So I’ll take that and then definitely do clear the next time around. [laughs] The hardest part is trying to talk to people and get an idea for what people want but having to sort out how that will translate to running a global business of what people around the world will want.

What about the work ethic that you have to have to get into a job here?
It’s not a 9-to-5 job by any means, but do you want it to be a 9-to-5 job? That’s the question I ask people, because what you put in the job is what you get out! So, no, it’s not at all a 9- to-5 job for me. You have to be able to manage yourself, and I always go back to my core values of being in athletics and being on time, being able to preplan, not working at the last minute, being able to work with your teammates and being able to manage different personalities. It’s the same thing no matter where you’re working. You have to be on time, know how to talk to people on different levels, be presentable and you have to learn how to listen is the biggest thing. …

For someone that is in high school right now, what do you think would be a good tool to
have or a degree to look to?
I really believe marketing is a great degree to have because management is awesome, economics and finance are great, but you become well-rounded in business and marketing. If I had to change anything, I would have added some Apple Mac design work to my background.

When I graduated college in 2002, the cell phone was just becoming popular, and two years later I’m doing a focus group with kids in Chicago and they couldn’t imagine being without their cell phone. In 2002, people weren’t even using email still. When I went to college, they gave me my college email address, and I was like, “What’s that for?” [laughs] Today’s generation automatically has a leg up and kids are working on computers at the age of six or seven. The technology side is very important. I think that business marketing degree gave me a really well-rounded balance in understanding economics, understanding business structure and understanding people while still being creative. I love to still create things and do new products and work with Marc Dolce, and the great thing about Marc is I might come up with a concept and he can put it on paper, and together we make a great team and can come up with something like the ½ Cent or the Hoop Structure. He has the skills to put it on paper from the computer side, and that’s something that I would love to add to my degree and skill set. The one thing that you can’t discount is the importance of education and doing something that you are passionate about.

Nick: What kind of advice would you give to people seeking out internships or mentors
to learn from?
People need to realize that you’re not always going to get what you want first, or you’re not going to be where you want to be at first, but you have to use opportunities to your advantage and use things as a stepping stone and not be afraid to take that job that is going to pay you less money. I took a job with Nike that was a lot less money because it wasn’t about the money, it’s about wanting to be with a certain brand and being excited about what you do. A lot of people have to realize that the lord may be putting you in a situation that is preparing you for something else down the road.

Just evaluate yourself and ask yourself how you can prepare yourself so that if the bell rings, you’re ready to play in the game. That’s the biggest key is the preparation of school – being knocked down, being able to get back up and still having the focus and passion to be successful. This industry is not easy to get into, but once you’re in, you’ll start to know a lot of people, and it comes down to: What can you do to make yourself be noticed by leaders in the industry to advance? The important thing is to learn from the past, focus on your future and listen. Learn from others along the way and always stay humble – that’s my secret to success!

Tags: industry, industry insider, industry interviews, marcus smith, nike, nike sportswear

5 Responses to “Industry Insider: Nike Sportswear’s Marcus Smith”

1. Joshua says:

   December 4, 2009 at 4:42 pm

   Marcus I’m a shoe desinger.Theirs not a company that I work for or a company that I’m the CEO/Co-Founder of but;I just have one question…where do I start?…anything helps..thank you for time.

   Reply
2. tmonki94 says:

   December 4, 2009 at 5:50 pm

   Im only a sophomore in high school but I already know my lifes dream is to be in a position like yours. Your story is very insperational. I’ve always wondered what degrees or courese I would look into when I go to collegem and now I know! Keep up the good work. Hopefully one day well work to gether.

   Reply
3. BrianPDX says:

   December 5, 2009 at 3:41 am

   Marcus Smith is one of the MOST awesome dudes I know.

   Reply
4. Phil Acton says:

   December 9, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   Marcus

   What a great article. Seeing what you have accomplished makes me very proud that I was able to coach you in high school and to have you as a friend. Good luck always.

   Coach

   Reply
5. Kailan says:

   December 16, 2009 at 11:44 pm

   Marcus

   This is the article which changed my life! Please SC do a follow up on this one. after this article I will work at Nike, I am determined to do so.

   Thank you Marcus

   Kailan from Australia

   Reply