Nike, the king of brand collabs, is adding another notch to its belt with Beats. The sportswear giant and the Apple-owned audio brand are teaming up on a pair of Nike-branded earbuds that are more than meets the eye.
The limited-edition Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 Wireless earbuds, in Nike’s signature lime green “volt” color palette, signal the first co-branding on a pair of Beats, with the sports brand’s Swoosh on the right earbud and Beats’s logo on the left. But the core of the collaboration centers around sports performance optimization: the Powerbeats Pro 2’s built-in heart monitoring can sync with Nike’s Run Club and Fitness apps, so that the wearer can monitor their performance without the need for a separate health trackings device. Beats has tapped longtime brand ambassador LeBron James as the face of the earbuds campaign.
It’s the latest in a string of wearable tech teaming up with fashion and sports brands to make fitness trackings more accessible beyond the standard wristband. Whoop last week announced a partnership with designer Samuel Ross on a fashion line that can embed its fitness tracker into the clothing pieces, while Oakley has worked with Meta on its technical performancewear aspirations.
Rapidly advancing tech paired with our increasing wellness and longevity obsession mean the consumer appetite for health data trackings currently knows no bounds. At the same time, the luxury sportswear industry has surged to a valuation of $115 billion in recent years, and is forecast to reach $174 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. This growth is fueled by a demand for functional yet fashionable sportswear, which the industry is meeting via collabs that combine the latest sportswear innovations with the design and cultural clout of the most sought-after luxury labels.
The collab with Nike marks the first time Beats has partnered with a sportswear brand, after its recent string of fashion tie-ups, which includes Alo, A-Cold-Wall, Stüssy, Verdy, Sandy Liang, Paria Farzaneh and Kiko Kostadinov, as well as celebrities like Kim Kardashian and K-pop star Jennie. The earbuds’ adaptive noise canceling, 45-hour battery life, wrap-around earhooks, and sweat and water resistance are all designed with athlete and fitness-focused consumers in mind, in what Beats CMO Chris Thorne says symbolizes the beginning of the brand’s exploration of where audio tech, health trackings, and luxury sportswear can intersect.
“We’ve been talking with Nike for a long time and just really couldn’t figure out what the perfect way to collaborate was,” Thorne says. “But when we brought heart rate monitoring into a headphone for the first time a year ago, when we launched the Powerbeats Pro 2, suddenly we’re really in Nike’s world where you’re trackings the metrics and everything associated with top-level performance. That’s when we started getting serious and thought, ‘OK, now we have the perfect product to align both brands.’”
Ahead of the earbuds’ release on March 20, Replica Handbag Store Business speaks to Thorne about the converging worlds of tech and luxury sportswear, as well as what it takes to make a fashion-tech collaboration work.
Vogue: This is Beats’s first co-design with a sports brand. Why Nike?
It’s a company I’ve admired for a long time. I don’t think there are many brands that do what they do in terms of product for performance and sport, but also how they tie into culture. At Beats, we have Apple-quality products, combined with the defiance, self-expression, and connection with culture that the Beats brand has. I think with collabs, which are the thing everybody’s doing these days, the best ones have an actual connection between the two brands that aligns really well. Those are really hard to find. But I think Nike [x Beats] is one of the clearest examples of two brands that line up. I think you see how that comes to life in the talent that we work with — there’s so much overlap there. So that’s what made this one really special, especially with LeBron.
Vogue: What was behind the decision to market the earbuds as a ‘performance tool’, rather than focusing on the audio angle?
I don’t think it’s talked about enough how much sound and music contribute to performance. Everybody can relate to that feeling when ‘their song’ comes on, and how it makes them feel. People have studied how that feeling comes over your body and all of a sudden your performance level rises, and it’s so much a part of why people listen to music while they train. In addition, when you’re training, you also need to focus, which often involves blocking out what’s going on around you. An amazing pair of headphones or earbuds does that for you, so I think that’s what’s cool. If you turn on noise cancelation, it’s amazing how in your own world you are, whether you’re at the gym or on a run or whatever.
Vogue: The earbuds also have biometric integrations and heart rate monitoring. Is Beats exploring more health trackings components and features at the intersection of wearable tech and sport?
Yes, definitely. I think this is the coolest thing about being part of Apple; we have such great engineers, constantly looking for and testing the next technology. I view Beats like a high-performance company, so we’re always looking to help our customers get more of what they need. And I think that adding heart rate monitoring to these earbuds is an amazing start.
With the sports performance and heart rate monitoring, people just want more and more data on their performance, and metrics and numbers they can look at. I think the ability for your headphones to contribute to that data collectsion is such a cool thing. It’s really on trend with people’s health interests right now, and how they can always be doing better.
Vogue: It’s interesting how, in the past, tech brands were quite siloed into their ‘thing’, whether that was audioware or a watch or whatever. From a branding perspective, do you think tech brands should be positioning themselves across more areas in people’s lives?
Totally. I think if you go back to when Beats started, everything was 100% about sound and music. It was all about, OK, how do I make this music sound like the artist intended it, right? [Co-founder] Dr. Dre’s in the studio, and he knows how he wants us to sound. How do you replicate that for somebody with their headphones?
Sound is still the most important thing we’re doing in headphones. But it’s now so much more, because it’s also about how our headphones can contribute to your sports performance. I think it really has shifted over time, in terms of the things that matter to consumers.
Vogue: As you said, we’re in a period of increasing audioware collabs. And you also said that the concept of defiance and self-expression is a big part of Beats’s DNA. Would you say audioware is becoming a fashion status symbol?
Yes, I think audio performance is still number one. I think you need to have that before you can focus on the self-expression or the status behind it. Then, if you have that, I expect it to become more of an accessory in the future, in the same way as shoes or sneakers, or watch culture. And we can lean more into that for headphones, because it’s a way for people to express who they are and give signals about what matters to them, and that’s really powerful real estate.
With new products at Beats, we usually start by telling the product story, then over time, start to connect that with culture by working with ambassadors, custom products, and collaborations. So this is the first Powerbeats Pro 2 collab that we’ve done, and it’s a year on from launch.
While Nike is already a brand steeped in culture, the Powerbeats Pro 2 are also built on performance and there are no tricks. I think that was the alignment there. So to me, product performance always comes first. Then, I think about how that extends into allowing for that self-expression, that feeling of defiance, and tapping into both brands. I mean, look at the headphone color — that’s a powerful expression, which I think is amazing. But performance is behind all of it.
Vogue: How do you explore and decide on brand collaborations in the first place?
I keep a running list of brands that A: I’m super impressed by and just love what they stand for; and B: line up from a Beats brand perspective. It’s a pretty short list to be honest. I think it’s really fun to have conversations with those brands and talk about how we could do something together. But a lot of those discussions come to an end because we can’t figure out something really special. We’re not into just doing a collaboration for the sake of collaboration. I think one of the recent ones we did with Jennie from Blackpink, where we customized the product by adding bows and ribbons, that was something we’ve never done before, with an accessory on a headphone like that. And people went crazy for it — it really brought our product to life. It’s one of the most fun parts of this job, trying to figure out which brands really make sense from a product and storytelling perspective.
The other thing we’re trying to do is broaden who we’re speaking to, via these collabs. So in the same conversation, we’re speaking about Nike, a performance athletic company, Jennie from K-pop band Blackpink, and we could talk about our other collaboration with Minecraft, which was all about connecting with Gen Z and virtual products and gaming culture. All of these drops are scoping out how far we can extend through those communities, and connect them as a Beats customer.
Vogue: Have you had more challenging collaborations that haven’t resonated with the customer so much?
Yes, and to be honest, those are the ones that don’t get released. If something is released, it means we believe everything worked, and we were able to come out with something both brands were really proud of. A lot of our collabs get pretty far along in the process, and don’t always make it, because we don’t want to compromise there, or the other brand doesn’t want to compromise there. And we’re only picking brands that have really high standards, so when you have two brands that have super high standards, you are going to run into times where you just can’t get it across the line. And I think that’s OK, I think that’s a good thing. It makes the ones that do even more special.
Vogue: Will we ever see Beats move into other form factors, given the new focus on performance via biometrics with this Nike collab, and Apple’s wider innovation with wearables?
Beats is always looking at amazing technology, and our engineers explore anything that they think is interesting and innovative. We’re making amazing audio products and recently started in the accessories category, which I think has been really exciting, via cables that we’ve had fun marketing, and we’ve seen great results so will probably extend there. I think Beats can extend into a lot of areas.
Vogue: And can we expect more collabs in the sports tech and performancewear categories?
Definitely. I think what we’ve seen with Nike — and I think they feel this way, too — is the chemistry has been so strong on this first one and really worked, so I think there’s more our brands can do in the future. There’s some exciting stuff that we’ll be able to do with Beats and Nike going forward.
