Read full article here There isn’t a lot of demand for Nike Inc. fencing shoes at Dick’s Sporting Goods or rowing footwear at the Sports Authority. Weightlifting and shooting won’t ever become big enough to have their own brand category at Nike. So the Washington County-based athletic footwear behemoth has essentially outsourced its footwear for those sports, and their comparatively tiny markets, to Eddie Brown. A 15-year veteran of Nike’s Olympic sports business, Brown last month launched Athlete Performance Solutions LLC to market, distribute and sell Nike’s footwear for sailing, rowing, fencing, weightlifting, boxing and shooting sports. Though headquartered in Texas, Brown maintains a home in the Portland area. The company’s only other full-time employee lives in the city, so it’s never far from the Nike mothership in Washington County. Brown’s goal is to extend the brand to a relatively obscure yet devoted class of Olympic athletes in sports where Nike remains mostly a bit player. “I can help bring Nike into these sport communities in a respectful way so we can earn a presence in the sport,” said Brown. Brown didn’t provide revenue forecasts for his new venture. Though athletic footwear research firms don’t track the size of the smaller Olympic sports, analysts say their share of the athletic footwear market is miniscule. Matt Powell, a footwear analyst with Charlotte, N.C.-based research firm SportsOneSource, estimates that retail sales of baseball, football and soccer footwear for use in high-level competition is less than $1 billion. “You could imagine how tiny fencing would be in comparison,” Powell said. Yet the benefit to Nike isn’t necessarily revenue growth. The company’s foundation is built upon product innovation, and stretching itself into low-revenue sports categories is more about solidifying and extending the company’s brand and reputation. “They want to be represented in these niche sports because it carries the brand to every corner of the world of sport, but it’s not necessarily economically feasible to focus on it,” Powell said. The target markets for these sports exist within weightlifting centers, rowing clubs or fencing gyms, rather than the typical broad-reaching consumer channels that Nike attracts through its core product categories. “The businesses are small and they require a lot of attention,” Powell said. “It distracts Nike away from the bigger issues.” That’s where Brown comes in. While at Nike, Brown worked directly with Olympic athletes and federations, signing them to product deals and working in concert to develop performance products for Olympic Games dating back to the 1996 summer games in Atlanta. But it wasn’t until the 2008 Beijing Olympics that Nike’s Olympic sports footwear started grabbing serious attention. The company for the first time introduced new innovations in footwear for Olympic sports like equestrian and fencing, instantly generating demand. Consider fencing, a sport in which chief competitor Adidas has dominated.