Hands-on with Nike's $350 Bluetooth-enabled Adapt BB shoe with automated power-lacing, which will allow basketball players to change shoe tightness via an app
Nike's Adapt BB shoe has utility for pros, but is also a lens into a connected future — Why does the world need a self-lacing shoe?
Context & Ripple Effects
The Adapt BB is not a one-off gadget but the hardware end of a strategy Nike has been building for years: back in 2015 it was already pouring money into health tracking alongside Under Armour to forge direct data connections with customers and recommend products off exercise data. The self-lacing shoe gives that relationship a physical anchor — a $350 sneaker that stays tethered to Nike's app after purchase.
The competitive field is oddly open. Adidas closed its standalone digital sports unit in late 2017 to retreat behind Runtastic and its main app, while Google is approaching the same foot from the sensor side with Jacquard, an ML insole that reads a soccer player's footwork in real time. Nike's software stack keeps widening too, from the AR-based Nike Fit sizing app to the Celect acquisition for demand prediction.
First-order effects
- Basketball players gain mid-game adjustability — tightness changed from a phone rather than by stopping to re-tie — at a $350 price point that positions the shoe as a pro tool first, consumer product second.
- Every Adapt BB owner becomes a persistent telemetry source: fit preferences and usage now flow into the same customer-data apparatus Nike built its tracking investment around.
Second-order effects
- Adidas' 2017 withdrawal from proprietary wearable tech leaves the connected-footwear lane to Nike unless it responds through partnerships or its app ecosystem instead of building hardware in-house.
- Google's Jacquard insole shows the adjacent threat: if footwork analytics become a selling point, sensor makers can enter shoes as component suppliers, pressuring Nike to own more of the stack itself.
Third-order effects
- Footwear is drifting from a sold-once good toward a platform — a sensor plus an app plus a data feed — which changes what a sneaker company must be good at and makes the customer relationship continuous rather than transactional.
- If connected shoes normalize per-wearer data collection, expect fit, performance, and purchase recommendations to converge into one profile — the direction Nike Fit and Celect both point toward — with the attendant privacy questions that follow any always-connected product.
The trend: Athletic footwear is becoming a connected sensor platform where the ongoing data relationship with the wearer, not the shoe itself, is the product.