A Week Of Two Halves For JD Sports

UK’s largest sportswear retailer JD Sports Fashion has announced it is Nike’s first European retail partner for its Connected Partnership loyalty programme.

The programme is designed to enhance the shopping experience of customers through access to an additional range of Nike member-exclusive products and experiences.

By linking their membership accounts, JD and Nike customers can unlock an instant reward bonus, curated collections, and earlier access to select products. In future, connected members will also have the opportunity to benefit from exclusive experiences and services.

“Connected partnerships allow us to know and serve Nike members across the marketplace, however, wherever and whenever they shop Nike. We aim to serve JD members with compelling connected member benefits and distinctive experiences.” explained Carl Grebert, Vice President and General Manager EMEA of Nike.

JD Sports is an international omni-channel retailer with approximately 3,400 stores across 35 territories, including a strong presence across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

Régis Schultz, CEO of JD Sports, said: “This partnership amplifies the combined strength of the Nike and JD brands with our shared consumers, by leaning into their behaviour and journeys and creating new, richer and more engaging experiences. It provides further opportunity to inspire the emerging generation of aspirational consumers, who can continue to feel confident that they are being offered the very best of Nike products when shopping at JD.”

Earlier this week the retailer faced the findings from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on its price-rigging partnership with Elite Sports and Rangers football team.

JD Sports has been fined £1.485 million with Elite Sports facing a fine of £459,000 and Rangers £225,000, totalling more than £2million.

The CMA stated that Elite Sports and JD Sports broke the law between September 2018 to July 2019 by fixing retail prices of Rangers-branded kits and other goods.

JD Sports confirmed it will not be appealing with a spokesperson stating:

“JD has taken a number of steps to strengthen its competition compliance programme and is committed to ensuring that this is embedded into its daily operations. No directors or senior management of JD were involved in the offending conduct, which took place in 2018-2019,”

JD Connected partnership is now live in the UK on the JD App, with expansion plans across key EMEA countries and stores.