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 tracking 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 tracking 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 tracking 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 tracking, 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 tracking 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, Vogue 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.
