Nike included digital gift cards as the payment for eligible footwear trade-ins in a week-long retail experience announced for its SoHo store in New York.

The September 17 announcement scheduled Nike (Re)Play for September 23 to 29, bringing trade-in, repair, cleaning, vintage sales, recycling and donation into one location. Under Nike Trade-In, customers could exchange eligible Nike and Jordan Brand footwear for a Nike digital gift card. The company said the credit would depend on the product's style and original manufacturer's suggested retail price. [S01]

That mechanism gives the retailer's stored-value product a role in collecting used merchandise. The customer contributes an eligible pair of shoes and receives branded spending value, connecting a take-back interaction with a future purchase. Nike did not disclose credit rates, a minimum or maximum card value, or the number of customers expected to participate in the announcement.

Several routes for used products

The gift-card exchange was one part of the SoHo offer. Nike also described footwear cleaning while customers shopped, repair or personalisation of apparel and gear, and one-of-a-kind Creative Repair pieces. A vintage offer featured daily releases from a 500-piece running-apparel collection supplied by Tried and True Co. [S01]

The store experience also accepted unwanted or end-of-life Nike athletic footwear, apparel and gear for inspection, donation or recycling according to condition. The announcement did not say that every item accepted through those routes qualified for trade-in credit. It directed customers to a separate experience page for Nike Trade-In eligibility details.

Building on existing circular services

Nike presented (Re)Play as a combination of established and emerging services, building on Nike Refurbished and Nike Recycling + Donation. Its broader circular-services overview describes inspecting collected products before deciding whether they can be donated or recycled. Refurbished products follow another route, with returned footwear and apparel inspected and cleaned before resale. [S02]

The SoHo announcement therefore identifies a particular store experience, rather than establishing a nationwide introduction of the underlying services. Its gift-card component shows how a brand can attach a purchasing incentive to a product-recovery offer while keeping repair, donation and recycling as separate options.

The release sets out the proposed exchange and its valuation basis. It does not report the event's subsequent trade-in volumes, gift-card issuance or redemption results.