Skims wants to be the new Nike. Brand experts say that’s a pipe dream.

Timely versus timeless

On paper, Skims and Nike of the 1990s have commonalities.

“They both started as brands about innovation. They both have progressed and moved into a much more emotive lifestyle place that they are now,” Isabelle Aleksander, a senior brand strategist at JDO Global, said.

Both companies have also put athletes at the forefront of campaigns — Nike with Michael Jordan in the 1980s, then sporting heavyweights like Tiger Woods and Roger Federer in the 1990s.

Aleksander said Kardashian isn’t able to be a “North Star for the wider masses” that Nike’s buzzy star-powered campaigns and messages with Michael Jordan, Spike Lee, Andre Agassi, and Pete Sampras, delivered in the 1990s.

“I always think about Nike and irreverence,” she added, “That golden thread that comes through of ‘you are part of this, you are a collective, you’re a community, you’re a voice.'”

Anyone from a teenager in a struggling community, to a CEO was a Nike consumer in the 1990s, which Aleksander said is a type of branding “magic” that she doesn’t see Skims replicating.

“Ultimately, you’re buying into Kim,” she said.