Inside SNKRS: How a group of Nike employees went ‘unconventional’ to build a chart-topping app that would transform sneaker culture

There’s an internal philosophy that guides innovation at Nike. To make something unique, you have to think outside the “berm,” what employees have nicknamed the perimeter of Nike’s 286-acre campus in Beaverton, Oregon.

When it came to SNKRS, the brand’s app for high-heat footwear releases, going beyond the berm was more than just a mindset. Whether loved or despised, SNKRS has become an indisputable star of Nike’s digital profile since its official launch on February 11, 2015. 

In fiscal year 2019, revenue from SNKRS accounted for $750 million, or 20%, of Nike’s overall digital business. In a call with investors, on June 27, 2019, Nike CEO Mark Parker praised the explosive growth of the app, calling it “an incredible asset” that was growing faster than any other digital channel for the brand.

The launch of the SNKRS ultimately represented a conscious decision by Nike to invest in its digital and direct-to-consumer capabilities. But getting leadership on board was different story. It was up to a small team of creatives and designers to bring the idea of a sneakers app to life, and to persuade Nike leadership to invest in the project.

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“We did go unconventional,” said Vik Singh, one of the people who worked on the early iteration of the app.

Singh, along with a small group of contractors and Nike employees, created SNKRS between March and June 2013, out of a rented space in San Francisco, hundreds of miles from the Nike campus. This kind of innovation, while not unheard of for projects at Nike, defined SNKRS from day one.

Today, many see the SNKRS app as another channel for disappointment in the world of modern-day sneakers. On the surface, it’s another way to get — or, in many cases, fail to get — the latest kicks. It has also become a cultural icon, a symbol of the heat and increasing competitiveness of the footwear industry.

But according to five former employees who worked on the app, SNKRS was destined for more than hype. The story of the app, as told to Business Insider by the people who brought it to life, started with a genuine collective passion for kicks and the culture that surrounds them.

Nike declined to comment for this story. 

An idea is born

In 2012 SNKRS was a concept, a proverbial “bullet on a slide,” as Singh recalled. The atmosphere was ripe for innovation. “Direct-to-consumer” and “digital” were buzzwords at Nike and beyond as they still are today. At the same time, sneakers were getting hotter.

Nike already had running and training club apps. Some top leaders knew a sneaker-exclusive app was the next step for the company. According to Trevor Edwards, Nike’s president from 2013 until 2018 and a key figure involved in the inception of SNKRS, such an app could render in-person lines and lottery-style drops — common pain points for sneakerheads— a thing of the past. It could also provide crucial insights into the wants of the digital consumer.

“This was a very effective strategy to figure out how to serve them better,” Edwards said.

But SNKRS was still only an idea in 2013. There was no official budget or designated team for the program. An assortment of Nike employees from digital, commerce, marketing, and other categories were brought to work on the app as a side project.

“That was extra credit,” Singh recalled of his early days with SNKRS. He was asked to work on the app in addition to his official role as a digital brand director for Nike sportswear near the end of 2012. “That was like moonlighting.”

Evan Steinberg, who reported to Singh at the time, moonlighted on the project while working as Nike’s digital brand manager for mobile apps and digital commerce. Jesse Stollak was the VP, of digital marketing and innovation at the time. He oversaw Singh and the SNKRS project while heading up Nike’s digital brand strategy.

With Steinberg, Singh, and Stollak starting to make the app a reality, getting off the berm was the essential next step. 

‘Project Valiant’

Singh, who describes himself as one of the founders of SNKRS, brought on two independent contractors who would become key players leading the design of the app: Darian Edwards and Daniel Hall.

Between March and June 2013, the pair, along with a developer and a handful of junior designers, prototyped and designed what would become the SNKRS app out of a rented coworking space in San Francisco called Shared SF, at 739 Bryant St. Singh and Steinberg stayed in Beaverton but were in contact with the team in San Francisco daily and were responsible for providing updates to Stollak.

The office space at 739 Bryant St. Daniel Hall

The project was dubbed “Valiant,” a hat tip to Nike’s founder Phil Knight, who famously conducted Nike’s first sales from the back of his Plymouth Valiant. SNKRS was aiming for a similarly intimate direct-to-consumer approach, albeit one suited for the digital age.

Project Valiant was still mostly a concept in early 2013. The prototype, proof of concept, was the key to get the people back home fully on board.

“We needed to go back and show them something real,” said Darian Edwards, who was responsible for the digital design of the app. “So we got that space and we got to work.”

From sketch to prototype

San Francisco in 2013 was a breeding ground for innovation. Uber and Lyft had only recently launched there. Slack, the office communication platform with over $1.4 billion in current total funding, would launch from the Golden Gate City in February 2014.

“It felt like you were living in the future,” Hall said. “It was a really cool time.”

Everyone had their own area of expertise to make up what Hall described as a “scrappy, fast team.” As a digital producer, Hall oversaw the prototype’s development and kept the project on time and within budget. Darian Edwards led product design and user experience.

Among their skill sets, one key factor united them all: a genuine passion for sneaker culture and community. That was what fueled their work.

“Everybody had the same goal in mind,” said Hall, who first met Singh in the early 2000s when they worked at a Nike store in Georgia. “We all had a common interest in sneakers and footwear.”

Edwards recalled sketching ideas for the app before he was even officially brought on to the team in San Francisco. When he was approached by Singh, he was wrapping up a project for Dropbox, unrelated to Nike. He, too, would initially moonlight SNKRS as a passion project.

A South Side Chicago native, Edwards had looked up to Michael Jordan and the Nike brand since childhood. Working on SNKRS was more than just an opportunity to put his product acumen to use. It was a way to channel his skills into something he genuinely loved.

“We were just so passionate, both about the brand and about these products,” Edwards said.

Designing the app

In his first sketches, Edwards was inspired by the feed-based interfaces of social-media apps like Facebook and Twitter.

“We all live in these feeds,” Edwards said, referring to his brainstorming process. “What if there is a sneaker feed?”

This initial feed was made up of individual images or “cards.” Once the user tapped on a card, they’d be offered additional images and editorial content related to the pair.

A whiteboard from 739 Bryant, with ideas for the original card design for SNKRS. Darian Edwards

“It’s almost like a portal — and you can unpack this deeper story when you tap in it,” Edwards said.

He called his initial sketch “Nike Pulse,” referring to the user’s ability to stay on top of the pulse of everything Nike, from products to content. 

Darian Edwards’ first sketch for SNKRS. Darian Edwards

This feed-based approach, much of which still characterizes the app, would integrate product and editorial storytelling, what Hall described as a hybrid model between a standard shopping experience and “big story moments.” 

During his time at 739 Bryant, Hall worked on experimental and basic product photography work for the app’s prototype, in addition to his other duties as digital producer.

Back to the berm

By June 2013 the team had a prototype. Now it was time to sell the concept back to Nike.

The bones of the app were in place, though there would still be another 17 months before the app would officially launch. 

Foundational features, like the app’s feed structure, would remain. Other concepts never made it past the idea generation. A community-building feature that would allow users to chat with other sneakerheads was cut before launch. Other complex animations were cut as well.

Edwards was hired to continue working at Nike as a design lead, during which he saw SNKRS through several iterations. Hall continued to work for Nike as an independent contractor focusing more deeply on photography for SNKRS via his production company, Where It’s Greater, which still works with Nike today. 

Sneaker porn Shooting the Nike Air Chromeposite sneaker was difficult given the reflective texture of the shoe. But with the right light, the result was striking. Daniel Hall/Where Its Greater

It was during this time that Hall took SNKRS’ photography to the next level. He helped codify a new set of six universal angles for shooting sneakers and experimented with light and editing.

Having attractive product images — what Hall and Edwards both described as sneaker porn — was top of mind.

“We were like, we need to level up how we romanticize sneakers, and then we have to figure out how we do that at scale,” Singh explained. That’s where Hall’s expertise came into the picture.

“They didn’t just want to repurpose the Nike photography that was being already used,” Hall explained. “They wanted to capture it their own way. They wanted to have their own design language.”

Hall pioneered a new method for sneaker photography at Nike that informed how pairs would be shot across all the company’s digital platforms.

Hall’s premium product photography for SNKRS at Nike after the project was greenlighted. Daniel Hall/Where It’s Greater

For example, while footwear-industry standards dictate that the right shoe is the one displayed in product images online, Hall used the left shoe when he shot for SNKRS. This was done to ensure that Nike’s iconic swoosh would not appear backwards in the images, as had previously been the case on Nike.com.

 “The art direction for photography, the playbook that Dan put together for how we capture photos and content, the interface guidelines, and all of that became the Nike digital creative foundation,” Darian Edwards said. “Everything that you see right now — from visual, UI, systems, architecture, platform — all started with SNKRS.”

An early prototype of the SNKRS. Darian Edwards A slide from a Project Valiant presentation deck to Nike leadership on December 20, 2013. Darian Edwards

Other people at Nike came on to the project. Dennis Todisco, who joined Nike in early 2014, was also asked to offer insights for the app, in addition to his official role as the global digital marketing lead for sportswear.

“I was brought in because I have that insight between fashion, streetwear, sneakers,” he said.  Todisco founded and runs Outfit Grid, an Instagram community for streetwear and style enthusiasts with 775,000 followers. “They were looking for somebody who kind of sat in that intersection of digital marketing and living within that space.”

Like others who had touched SNKRS, Todisco did his project on the side.

Nike’s filing with Apple before the release of the SNKRS app. Darian Edwards

SNKRS officially launched during the NBA All-Star Weekend 2015. To this day, Singh, Hall, and Darian Edwards cannot recall how or when the app got its official name.

The origin of the app’s “You Got ‘Em!” screen, which pops up upon a user’s successful check-out, is also unclear. Singh said he implemented the phrase after hearing it used during games with his local Futsal team in Portland. Edwards recalls coming up with “Got ‘Em!” as a way to perfectly capture the feeling of copping a pair.

Sebastian Speier, who worked as a global design director for the SNKRS app after its launch, believes the screen was influenced by a vintage Nike poster that hung in the New York studio he worked in that featured the words “Smoke ‘Em.”

A mock-up of the original concept for the “Got ‘Em!” screen in a presentation deck to leadership before the app launched. Darian Edwards

A year and a half after SNKRS launched, Nike announced an acquisition of tech startup Virgin Mega and the opening of a New York digital studio, s23NYC, meant to refine Nike’s mobile experiences, SNKRS included.

“It was really a nice transition,” said Singh, who had moved on from his work on digital and SNKRS to a new role in Nike ID. “A handing of the baton from the existing experience over to them. They took what we had built and then created from there.”

A hype-generator

In terms of goals, the SNKRS of today deviates from the vision of its founders. To critics, the channel is just another way to promote a lopsided system of supply and demand endemic within sneaker culture. 

“The app today is more oriented around hype and just selling, thereby missing the opportunity to surprise and delight the consumer with new services,” Trevor Edwards said. He said he sees SNKRS as having mostly “delivered against its objectives.”

Virgin Mega founder and CEO Ron Faris, now SNKRS’ general manager, has intimated similar objectives since taking the helm of the project.

“We drop something in the piranha tank and see how fast the piranhas swarm around it,” he told TechCrunch in 2017.

Perhaps thanks to industry competition and the hype-based approach of Faris, Project Valiant’s initial goal has been lost in translation.

But people do win on SNKRS. This truth, like the legend of the Holy Grail, is what drives people to come back for more after every unsuccessful attempt. Because while the chance to win might be slight, it is still possible.

“I get an adrenaline rush when I hit a sneaker and when I’m able to check out,” Todisco said. “When you see the ‘Got ‘Em!’ it’s one of the best feelings.”