In April 2020, at 8pm on most weeknights, Fanny Ho sat at a desk in her guest room toggling between her laptop, her sewing machine and the prototype of the nursing sports bra she was stitching together and testing on herself. The world had plunged into an anxious paralysis, but she and her Nike teammates were charging ahead on an urgent need: give mothers the ultimate support system. Specifically, create a sports bra that would allow them to do the movement they wanted while accommodating a wearable breast pump, all without compromising performance or comfort.
"When you're going through something like Covid, you pivot to what you believe will make the most impact", says Ho, Senior Manager in Design Innovation. Like so many people, Ho was getting through the pandemic by trading parenting shifts with her husband; she'd work for a couple of hours, switch into mum mode, go back to work, then hop back online after dinner and bedtime. "Dividing my day like that, I found myself asking, what project can I tackle that could help support people like me?"
Ho knew from personal experience that, for active mothers who breastfed and pumped and wanted a sports bra that could accommodate both, the market had little to offer. What's more, motherhood can often force a significant drop-off in sport and pumping can create a huge challenge; mothers often have to sit still for hours a day. While the maternity space is saturated with nursing bras, Ho and the Nike team found that the few performance nursing bras out there were either too stretchy and didn't offer support or were too structured and couldn't accommodate the volume of a hands-free breast pump or the hourly fluctuations of a nursing mother's breasts. "We spoke to countless women who said they were always having to compromise between comfort and support, and nothing out there could give them both", she says.
Faced with a clear gap and need, Ho did what passionate women, passionate mothers and passionate Nike employees do—move as quickly as possible towards a solution.
"When you're going through something like Covid, you pivot to what you think will make the most impact".
Aside from the world shutting down, Ho faced another major challenge—she'd never designed a bra before.
"I've been a footwear designer for 17 years, and this was uncharted territory for me. I had to find my fellow Nike passion partners in the apparel space, and there was a lot of learning on the go", she says. "But that also made it exciting and invigorating. Being that consumer myself, I had intuition on what we needed to do".
When Ho had her son seven years ago, she breastfed and pumped for 15 months and says she experienced first-hand that being attached to a wall "literally sucks". After she came back from maternity leave, she pivoted all of her work to focus on women's innovation, and the Nike (M) Swoosh bra was born.
Ho and her project team talked to both elite athletes and everyday mums about the features they wanted in a performance nursing bra. "I think a really powerful insight was realising that both have the same needs. Elite athletes are not immune to the challenges of balancing motherhood and sport".
One of those challenges: wearing a traditional nursing bra compromises a mother's ability to move, especially if she's pumping, and the force of movement and the weight of a wearable pump can be too much for a typical bra's nursing clips. "If she's doing a lunge, that little piece of plastic on the strap is going to snap", says Ho. The team knew straight away that they had to reimagine the nursing bra's hardware design, and they collaborated with Nike engineering partners to create something better.
The Nike (M) Swoosh bra's patented hardware—the two pieces that attach together on the bra strap—is specifically engineered to support the weight of wearable breast pumps plus the forces of any movement. The hardware unclips for quick access to nursing, and the webbing strap on the front of the bra can be pulled to easily adjust the volume of the cups. If you want to loosen the straps, you simply lift the base of the hardware, similar to loosening the shoulder straps of a backpack. This plus the bra's adjustable back strap to accommodate an expanding ribcage ensures the piece fits throughout pregnancy and beyond.
This innovative, entrepreneurial spirit wasn't unique to Ho and the team. In parallel, Nike's footwear innovation team was tackling its own project to better support mums: the Nike Reina EasyOn. This first-of-its-kind pregnancy and postnatal shoe can be slipped on hands-free and has a proprietary adjustable sockliner that creates more room in the forefoot for swelling feet. Like the (M) Swoosh bra, the Nike Reina was a passion project for Nike employees.
"I've been a PLM for more than 10 years, and this is the most meaningful project I've ever been a part of because it's so personal", says Brenden McAleese, Expert Product Line Manager, Global Footwear. "We started it literally the day after I got back from paternity leave with my daughter. My wife wear-tested the prototypes throughout the entirety of her second pregnancy, and it was great to get that real-time feedback and recognise how impactful the shoe was to the closest person in my life—and how that could transcend to any mother on that journey".
McAleese adds that now, with a 1-year-old and 2-and-a-half-year-old, his wife still wears the Nike Reina. "I got a text from her a couple of days ago saying, 'These shoes are a game changer', simply because she can slip her shoes on while carrying a kid in one arm and getting the other kid out the door".
Nike Reina EasyOn Shoe
To validate that the Nike (M) Swoosh bra gave mums all the benefits they needed, Ho and her team brought both elite and everyday athletes into the Nike Sport Research Lab—the epicentre of scientific research at the brand—to put the prototype through its paces. Its biggest challenge, however, was nearly 3,000 miles away on the streets of New York City.
There, in the 2021 New York City Marathon, Nike seeded an everyday runner and mother with a prototype of the Nike (M) Swoosh bra, which she used to pump with during the run (three times!). "We wanted her to push the limits of our prototype and prove it was for performance, not just the ability to change a nappy and pump", says Ho. "Our mission was to support her to do the impossible and inspire other mothers to continue to chase their dreams".
For Nike, creating products like the Nike (M) Swoosh bra, the Nike Reina EasyOn and the Nike Swoosh 1, the brand's most innovative early walking shoe (which Ho also helped design), is about offering a holistic system of support for parents. That support starts at home, with Nike employees.
To make it easier for new mothers to return to the workforce and sport, the Nike innovation and employee benefits teams partnered to include more wearable pumps to choose from in the company's benefits package. And starting next month, Nike will double its parental leave benefit for all United States-based employees—offering 16 weeks of paid leave for all full- and part-time employees, from corporate to retail, to bond with their new child after birth, adoption or foster placement.
"We just knew, from all the women that we talked to—they needed this yesterday".
Ho wishes she'd had this kind of support when she was pregnant. And it was that feeling that drove her and an enterprise-wide group of tenacious Nike teams to bring the Nike (M) Swoosh bra to market as quickly as possible.
"I have never worked harder on a project", she says. "We just knew, from all the women that we talked to—they needed this yesterday".
The result is more than a next-level performance nursing bra, Ho adds. It's the feeling of empowerment.
"With this bra, we want to empower women to say, 'Here I am—I'm pumping, I'm moving, I'm proud to be a mum, I'm proud to be an athlete and I can be both at the same time'".