Jamie Chen
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Bo Sripharphan, Strategic Account Executive, Nike, St. Louis (38.6° N, 90.1° W)

Bo Sripharphan is a strategic account executive at Nike. He graduated from Rice University in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in sport management and statistics. I had the pleasure of interviewing Bo, who is currently based in Saint Louis, Missouri, over the phone while I was across the country in Houston. In the interview, we discussed his journey to Nike and the various positions (planning analyst, retail planner, and now strategic account executive) he has held over the past five years. Our discussion revealed how a lack of “optimal” mainstream options can actually make way for more personalized opportunities.

Like many students, Bo “bounced around” during college—“from BIOE to ECON, MATH ECON to managerial studies”—before finally settling on a major (statistics) and then picking up another (sport management) toward the end of college. Going into junior year and during the crucial internship recruiting season, he “was pretty focused on doing something in consulting or finance.” However, the results were not as he had hoped. In April, while it seemed that “everyone else had their internships lined up,” he was still “trying to figure out what to do with [his] summer.” I think it is interesting that the feeling that “everyone else” has better plans and better resumes (and better experience) than us—our relative sense of inferiority—seems to be a common (and hence contradictory) phenomenon amongst many people coming from competitive backgrounds and competitive universities.

For Bo, the turn of events was a text “out of the blue” from one of his professors in the sport management department asking if he wanted to work for Nike over the summer. He jumped at the opportunity, working at the Nike office in Katy (a suburb of Houston) after his junior year. As Bo put it, this “opened doors that [he] never knew existed.” He had “never dreamed of” being able to, or even trying to, work for Nike. As a kid in middle school, all the way through the first few years of college, Bo used Nike’s online customization tool to design custom shoes knowing he could not afford to buy them. Bo loved sports growing up, and all the athletes he idolized were Nike athletes, so he naturally “had a very strong affinity for Nike.” Looking back, it seems like a perfect fit, but immersed in the heavy fog of “top” career options such as consulting and finance, Bo “never put the pieces together until the opportunity kind of dropped into [his] lap” when all the other options fell through. Bo reflected that he never had a strong passion-driven desire to go into consulting or finance; on the contrary, he feels “very privileged” to have a job where he genuinely likes what he does. Nonetheless, for young people, personal passion can sometimes be overshadowed by external influence when choosing their careers.

For figuring out what you want to do and choosing a career, Bo recommended just thinking of “things that you like” and making a list, then extending the list to companies you would want to work for. Bo explains that doing similar exercises and looking at your preferred lifestyle allows you to think about how you could potentially build a career out of what you are passionate about.

When asked about the most important or most utilized skills to succeed in his current position as a strategic account executive, Bo answered immediately and with certainty—communication. He highlighted the importance of nonverbal communication and the ability to “properly word emails,” something we often overlook, but an extremely crucial skill that minimizes misinterpretation and maximizes efficiency. Bo added that the ability to maintain relationships is absolutely crucial, especially when transitioning to a more technical entry-level role to an executive or more managerial role where one has to deal with a lot more people. Unlike the quantitative and analytics background many of us with technical degrees may come from, Bo put it plainly that “at the end of the day, the numbers might say one thing, but you have to still be able to convince somebody to follow suit with your plan.” Good communication leads to strong relationships and greater trust that then allow for necessary risk-taking.

In addition to soft skills, Bo also highlighted the importance of a strong analytical ability—not just picking out the right trends, but “properly [expressing] those trends” such that it “drives action.” Bo gave an example that “instead of just telling them what the weather’s going to be, I’m going to tell them…they need to pack an umbrella and a jacket for the day.” Being able to adapt yourself and your message to fit different situations with different people requires continued practice, and those crucial skills can be developed throughout one’s college career through participation and leadership in clubs and events.

For many of us in similar situations, where there seem to be a limited set of natural or expected career paths, given our backgrounds and our perceived realities, my discussion with Bo offers a few key takeaways—

1. Our “only paths” are never the only paths
2. “perfect” journeys are extremely rare—the “standard” way in expectation is rarely the standard (or most common) way in reality
3. sometimes, it’s just a “text out of the blue,” from the right person at the right time, that might just lead to the right opportunity.

Highlights from the interview:

What does being a planning analyst or a retail planner really entail?

Sales teams work with retailers…the Katy team actually manages all the Nike product and all the Nike-related things for Academy Sports and Outdoors. Academy has stores over most of the country, generally the south and southeast. And that team out there handles anything and everything related with Nike, whether it’s ordering product, shipping them inventory, marketing assets…So, as an analyst on that team, my job is to help Academy increase their revenue. Figure out what’s selling best… say the Texans go on a four-game win streak. So, people are going to go crazy for Houston Texans products, there’s going to be a lot of red sold just in general. People that don’t necessarily want a Texans shirt, but they want something they can wear to the game, they might go buy just a solid red t-shirt to go watch the game in. So, as we see those type of trends pick up, in response we make sure that we have enough red t-shirts, red shoes, red hands to send to Academy to make sure we can fulfill that demand. So that’s the role of an analyst and/or retail planner…to react and predict sales trends, and help Academy capitalize as best we can on that.

What are the most important skills or skills you find yourself utilizing the most to succeed in your position? 

Communication. First and foremost. Being able to properly word emails—there’s so much that nonverbal communication can help express when you’re having a conversation in person. But making sure that your emails are clear, and there’s little room for misinterpretation is very important. So you’re able to communicate things in an efficient manner.

And I think part of communication as well is also building relationships with the people that you work with. Whether it’s me building relationships with people on the Nike side, or building relationships with the retailers that I manage, what I’ve learned—which is in contrast to the analytics background that I have—is that at the end of the day, the numbers might say one thing, but you have to still be able to convince somebody to follow suit with your plan. There have certainly been situations where an objective that I have is I want to sell them more blue shoes. The numbers don’t say that blue shoes are good. In fact, the numbers say that they should not buy any more blue shoes. But, you know, I have future insight to what’s either developing trend or whatnot, so when the retailer comes back to me and says, “But, hey, look at all of our numbers. We have really bad history with blue shoes.” It’s a matter of having the relationship and having them trust me enough to take this risk. So, I think communication is the key piece of building strong relationships.

And after communication, I think it goes back to having strong analytical ability. To being able to look at large sets of data and pick out trends and then properly express those trends to the people that I work with in a manner that drives action versus reporting. Instead of just telling them what the weather’s going to be, I’m going to tell them…they need to pack an umbrella and a jacket for the day. That’s the way that I’ve approached analytics…That’s a much more actionable way to communicate and really fulfills the point of being in analysis and analytics that I’m doing. 

Can you give a brief example of the kind of projects you work on?

One that I’m working on right now is helping to create products for Nike. The business I work in, we typically work nine months in advance. So, right now, this is March, we are currently working on what October and December of 2020 look like, and what products we’re going to bring to the marketplace. And we’re just about to start working on January through March of 2021. Our job is to inherently predict what consumers are going to buy, what trends are going to be like.

One of the projects I’m working on right now is that I’m helping to develop a specific colorway of shoe, one that I believe—based on analytics and all the trends that we see going on in the marketplace—will be successful 9-12 months from now.

It’s certainly a lot of fun. You quickly learn that you lose a lot more than you win in this situation. Because as pervasive as analytics is, at the end of the day, we’re still a fashion business and fashion is pretty hard to predict.

What advice would you give students interested in following a similar career path?

It’s never too early to start. And I think that doing internships at school and really seeking out those opportunities and giving yourself the chance to explore while you’re in an environment like Rice is…I mean, it’s absolutely crucial. There’s certainly a balance to be had with the experience, but I think you can’t really take your eye off the ball. Otherwise, you might spend some time after graduation ends to make some exploration that you could have done in a maybe more efficient or easier manner at Rice. The biggest thing that you have to [do is to] go out there and seize those opportunities, [as] more often than not they’re not going to fall into your lap.

One of the things that I personally learned, especially with big name brands…the best way to do it, in my opinion, is to just get your foot in the door. Wherever that is, you may not start in the ideal position, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get there pretty quickly…Once you get into the company, there’s always more opportunity to grow and develop.

Is there anything I asked or didn’t ask that you wanted to mention, or any other trailing thoughts in general?

Working at Nike was something that never was on my radar. I think for anyone that is interested in following suit, there are so many different ways to get into the company, and I would encourage people to explore things that they either [are] interest[ed in] or just things that they’d never really considered careers in, because that’s certainly what happened in my case, because I never dreamed about having a career at Nike. And, you know, here I am. Five years later. You don’t know what’s available until you just go out and start working. 

That’s definitely some pretty good insight and advice for people like us still trying to figure out what to do.

Honestly, maybe make a list. One of me and my older roommates, we used to do this semi-often, just think of things that you like. So, one of his things was Spotify. He used Spotify all the time and loved it. He loved the yearly recaps and was like, “Okay, maybe Spotify is a company I’d want to work for.” So doing things like that and looking at your lifestyle in ways like what are you passionate about that you could potentially build a career out of.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.