An Inside Look At The Nike Company Store

I was back in Oregon for Christmas visiting my family, and while I was there I decided that while in the heartland of Nike country (my dad's office is literally next door to the Nike World Headquarters) I should check out their product line. In high school I always ran in Nike, but in the year's since I've moved around to other brands and as such I didn't really know what their shoes are like now.

My friend Heather works there, so she got me into the Company Store:

This is where the employees and their friends and families (which is basically everyone in Portland) shop, and as such everything is half price. Everything, no sales, no coupons, just an across the board price cut. Not only that the selection was really spectacular; to prep I had spent a lot of time online checking out their catalog and I saw a lot of shoes in this store that I hadn't run into on the site.

But being the week after Christmas it was a complete madhouse: hordes of New Year's resolutioners trying to find the perfect gear and almost as many young, fit employees decked from head to toe with Swooshes trying desperately to keep things in order.

But in all of this chaos I was looking for just one shoe: the Nike Flyknit Free. The Free is Nike's concession to the minimalist movement, but what really attracted my attention was this new fabric called Flyknit: the upper is actually knit out of this tough, fibrous, stretchy material so it has no seams and a fit like a rugged sock:

I found a sparsely populated corner to do some strides and they felt great. I don't know how well they will handle full-time running but they were so different I had to give them a try.

This place is a little more stripped down than their normal store fronts, but the checkout line did have this great cartoon of Pre:

I will say this for the company, their marketing department is killer because everything Nike looks hip and sleek and mean. Speaking of style check out my Christmas beard:

Overall it was a blast. If you are ever in Beaverton, OR and know someone who works there definitely check it out.