Our Answer to NikeLab

JYUNI. Global capsule launch, 2017.
Global Category Marketing, ASICS

The Setup

By 2017 the premium sports-fashion tier belonged to someone else. NikeLab had defined what that space looked like: limited runs, elevated design, curated boutique distribution, price points nobody associated with athletic brands. ASICS had no answer. We had performance credibility and no permission at the top of the market. JYUNI was the pinnacle collection built to change that. A premium limited capsule grounded in the brand's Japanese heritage, named for the Japanese word for twelve, a reference to the structure of time and the constraints that come with it. Two drops. White in February. Black in June. It was the first premium apparel ASICS had ever launched, and it wasn't aimed at the runner we already had.

The Challange

Competing at that tier means competing on everything except the thing we were good at. Not cushioning, not gait analysis, not race data. Design, scarcity, distribution, and cultural credibility, against a competitor who had been building that muscle for years and had the budget to keep building it. The internal argument was harder than the external one. Convincing a performance organization that limited quantities and a $270 jacket were strategy and not risk took longer than building the campaign.

Three decisions carried it.

Sell scarcity, not volume. Limited quantities through curated boutiques instead of the sporting goods channel we knew. It cost us reach and bought us the only thing that mattered at that tier.

Lead with heritage, not technology. We couldn't out-design the competition on their terms. What we had that they didn't was a genuine Japanese origin story and the craftsmanship to back it. That's what earned attention from an audience that would have ignored a performance claim.

Go where the audience already was. A five-city launch series and a pop-up in SoHo, not a media buy.

What I Owned

Everything from go-to-market forward. I did not design the product, but I owned every decision about how it reached the world.

  • Global campaign strategy for the category and collection, with Green Room as lead creative agency

  • Positioning, messaging, and press kit across both drops

  • Digital execution across campaign site, .com, social, and email

  • Launch programming in five cities and the New York pop-up

  • Regional rollout and market alignment

  • Approvals across global marketing, apparel design, and regional teams

How It Landed

  • Sold through 50% of inventory in the first week.

  • Launched across Berlin, Tokyo, New York, London, and Shanghai, with a dedicated pop-up at 519 Broadway in New York.

  • Increased content exposure 50% through high-authority authors.

In the press:

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All product and lifestyle photography appears courtesy of the respective photographers and the ASICS Corporation.