'Business Is Booming': How A'ja Wilson Built Her Signature Nike Deal
The WNBA MVP spoke to SportsVerse about designing her long-awaited shoe, keeping details secret from her parents, and why there's never been a better time for her to launch a signature collection.
Hi friends! Welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can't find anywhere else at the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture.
Today’s an exciting day because it marks SportsVerse’s first-ever athlete interview. Let’s get straight into it.
It’s been a wild and wonderful year for A’ja Wilson. She won the second Olympic gold medal of her career in Paris in August. She was the unanimous 2024 WNBA season MVP in September. Just last weekend, her no. 22 jersey was retired at the University of Southern California.
In May this year, she will become just the third active WNBA player with a signature sneaker deal from a major sportswear brand, joining fellow Nike athlete Sabrina Ionescu and Puma’s Breanna Stewart.
I sat down with Wilson ahead of the launch of her signature Nike collection, which includes both footwear and apparel. We spoke about the years-long process it took to yield her A’One shoe, its design quirks, the difficulty in keeping details secret even from her parents, and why—despite her eagerness to have done things sooner—there’s never been a better time to be launching a signature collection as a female athlete.
“Business is booming. I’m really appreciative to have a product we can put on the market now—it’s perfect timing for me,” Wilson told SportsVerse.
Stick around.
But first, here are three things I’m watching in sports culture this week.
Major League Soccer is the latest sports organisation to hire a creative director, poaching Roman King from the WNBA where he held the same role.
Hoka can’t stop growing. The sneaker brand recorded sales of $530.9 million in the three months ended December 2024, up 23 percent compared to the same period the year before. Now they’ve released their own take on New Balance’s loafer-sneaker.
Running culture is coming for hip-hop. First Central Cee, now Gunna. SportsVerse deep-dive loading.
Want more sports culture insights? Check out this must-read daily newsletter by OffBall.
A Waiting Game
Wilson’s A’One shoe was over two years in the making. Creating any kind of performance sports shoe is a painstaking, years-long process from concept to launch. For a signature sneaker, there’s an added layer of complexity in incorporating enough design quirks and personalisations to make it specific to the athlete.
“If you’d have asked me a couple years ago, I probably would have been like ‘no, we want it sooner’. But sometimes you gotta let time do the talking,” Wilson said, speaking of her years-long anticipation of the shoe.
Being awarded a signature deal is one of the biggest investments a brand can make in a star athlete, placing them among an elite class of sporting greats and cultural icons. Wilson also continues the legacy of Black female sports stars being awarded signature shoes, which began when Nike signed Sheryl Swoops in 1995. The Air Swoops sneakers made the WNBA legend the first female athlete to have a signature performance sneaker with the Swoosh.
There were many moments in the past 12 months when Wilson no doubt would have wished her shoe was ready sooner, to benefit from huge commercial exposure during some of the key milestones of her career, like winning gold at the Olympics or being the first player to score 1,000 points in a single WNBA season, or even for the start of Unrivaled in January.
Harder still as a competitive athlete, must have been seeing the chatter around a bumper signature deal for Caitlin Clark, or the success of her Team USA teammate Sabrina Ionescu’s signature sneaker line, a top-seller in the category for Nike which fast became a go-to choice for players across the WNBA and NBA.
But to quote the celebrated philosopher Central Cee, you can’t rush greatness.
Viewership and commercial interest in the WNBA, its athletes, and women’s basketball in general soared last year, as did Wilson’s personal standing, both on and off-court. Though she was already considered one of the greats in the basketball world, the platform she has now from which to market her signature line has grown ten-fold.
The collection will launch in May 2025, at the outset of the most anticipated WNBA season in history.
“I feel like this is the perfect timing [to release the A’One] when it comes to continuing to build my brand,” Wilson said. “It’s a special moment obviously because the shoe is dropping, but at the same time [because of the hype] surrounding the sport and league I’m playing in.”
Building the A’One
Part and parcel of releasing a signature sneaker is the big reveal. To build suspense and avoid leaks of any kind, details of A’ja’s upcoming collection were kept between her and a tight circle of Nike insiders.
“It’s definitely been a lot of secret-keeping. I'm keeping secrets from my own parents. It also makes it hard to work out in open spaces, so I’ve been working out by myself too so I can really spend time putting the shoe through the motions,” Wilson said. “But I think it adds a little more fun to the process.”
The shoe, a low-rise basketball sneaker, is layered with nods to Wilson’s life—just like the entire collection. Nike’s Ben Nethongkome led the design. There’s the recreation of all her tattoos on the inside of the tongue, designed to be seen each time she laces up to remind her of the guidance of her parents; there’s the handwritten A’ja monogram on the heel; and there’s the fact that the entire shoe is based around Wilson’s love for pearls—first nurtured by her grandmother—including the sole, and the layering midsole and upper technology designed to reflect the layered cross-section of a pearl.
There are also tributes to Wilson’s cultural impact on basketball. The standout piece of the apparel collection is her trademark “A’Symettric” legging: a full sleeve on the left leg and thigh length on the right—a practice she first began when transitioning from college to the WNBA—that is now emulated by players the world over, including the league’s younger stars like Angel Reese. Another detail I noticed was a hoodie complete with a satin hood lining born out of Wilson’s desire for in-built hair protection in the collection.
At a media briefing before the interview, Wilson shared a poignant video of the first time she saw the A’One, tears rolling down her face.
The biggest player in women’s basketball finally has her own shoe.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Until next time!
DYM
Great read. Loved reading A'ja's insights plus your breakdown. It's a super interesting time in women's sports and I'm glad that the spotlight is shining on so many talented athletes that just happen to be women!