Rescue Mission: How Reverse Logistics Can Save Millions of Shoes

Ever wonder what happens to the shoes you send back?

For millions of pairs of Nikes, all roads lead to Nike Rebound, a sprawling reverse logistics facility in Lebanon, Indiana.

"Rebound is where we process all Nike returns in North America, so it's a big place", says Valerie Nash, inbound operations manager.

She's not joking. The three-storey facility is 1.1 million square feet (that's roughly 20 American football fields) and receives thousands of returns a day—some from at-home athletes like you, some from our many retailer partners who sell Nike products. Some pairs are well-worn and muddy, others might have just been the wrong size. No matter who, what or why, it all lands at Rebound.

Shuttling in and organising that number of returns is just part of the reverse logistics process. The next step is deciding what to do with it all.

Never-been-worn products in mint condition, with no visible signs of wear, go straight back into stock for online purchases or deliveries to stores.

But those shoes you ran in before deciding to return them? Well, they're a bit dirty from the road. Rebound team members might try giving them a quick clean during inspection, but sometimes that's not enough to restore the shoes to mint condition.

In the past, all slightly worn shoes like this were shredded as part of Nike Grind, our shoe recycling programme that started back in 1992 and supplies raw material for sport court surfaces, tech accessories, carpet padding and more. While some worn-down shoes deemed no longer functional still meet this end, the Rebound team knew that tons of almost-perfect pairs just needed a little extra love.

Enter Nike Refurbished, a programme that rescues shoes that might otherwise be discarded—more than 225,000 pairs of them to date—and puts them back on the shelf of Nike stores at a reduced price.

If a quick wipe down during initial inspection doesn't cut it, Rebound team members place products in bins that zoom around on miles of conveyor belts to the warehouse within a warehouse that is the Refurbishment headquarters.

There, a team of trained technicians greet the slightly worn shoes and work in perfect harmony to process them.

"Every shoe is unique", says Fabian Garcia, sustainability process manager. "So we use a variety of tools to get it as close to its original state as possible".

Each workstation is stocked with wipes, brushes, stain remover, disinfectant spray and even an assortment of picks that dislodge pesky pebbles stuck in the soles. Technicians wield those tools to scrub, buff and spray returned shoes until they're fresh enough to join someone's collection.

Once they've finished, technicians pass shoes to their teammates who sort, box and dispatch them to stores.

Anthony Clark, outbound operations manager, puts it in perspective. "Have you ever seen a 50-foot lorry driving down the motorway?" he asks. "One of those can hold around 5,000 boxes of shoes. That's about how many pairs this team will refurbish and reintroduce to people every day".

Articulated lorries filled with refurbished shoes head to select Nike stores across the US. There, you can find them in the "Nike Refurbished" shoe boxes marked as either "like new", "gently worn" or "cosmetically flawed".

That goal may not be too far off. "At the beginning of 2021, we launched the programme in three stores", says Fabian. "One year later, we're sending refurbished shoes to 30 stores. We're now expanding our capacity so we can process even more of the unstockable units across our North America supply chain".

Just think, your next return could be part of the millions of units the Rebound team hopes to process this year—and somebody's new favourite pair.

For more: Visit Nike.com/Sustainability to follow each step in our journey and discover new ways we can Move to Zero carbon and zero waste together.