NIKE buys Retail Predictive Analytics Firm Celect

In the US, athletic footwear and apparel designer and manufacturer NIKE has acquired retail predictive analytics firm Celect, in a bid to better understand shopper behavior. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2013, Boston-based Celect's cloud-based analytics uses customer choice modeling and machine learning to enable retailers to understand how an individual customer shopping in store or online chooses from an assortment of products. This provides proprietary insights that allow retailers to optimize inventory across an omni-channel environment through local demand predictions.

As part of the deal, Celect's team will be integrated into NIKE's Global Operations team, and its co-founders will continue as professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consulting NIKE on an ongoing basis.

Eric Sprunk (pictured), NIKE Chief Operating Officer, comments: 'With the acquisition of Celect, NIKE greatly accelerates our digital advantage by adding a platform developed by world-class data scientists. As demand for our product grows, we must be insight-driven, data optimized and hyper-focused on consumer behavior. This is how we serve consumers more personally at scale.'

Web sites: www.nike.com and www.celect.com .