Just 15 years ago On was a new entrant into a sports shoe market filled with several well-established competitors: Nike, Adidas, and Hoka. But the company’s new shoes — recognizable by their base that looks like a layer of hollow pebbles — won hearts as sports enthusiasts discovered them.
Today, the Swiss company has reached record sales of more than $700 million during its third quarter of 2024 and continues to rethink every aspect of how athletic shoes are made.
Traditionally, shoes are an elaborate tailoring and many hours of human labor. But, earlier this year, On did something that might shake up old sneaker trends. He pioneered a shoe made in three minutes by spraying fabric material onto a foot mold with the help of a robotic arm. Oh, and it doesn’t even have laces.
Take a moment to process this.
On’s cofounder, David Alleman, credits the Zurich-based company’s success to its ability to attract people to something relatively simple in a market full of brand-loyal shoppers.
“It’s really an innovation brand that’s about radical innovation where you have to be crazy,” he said. good luck In an interview held on the sidelines of the Business of Fashion conference this week.
The beginning set the tone: Oliver Bernhardt, one of Wool’s co-founders, first put his friends on a shoe with hosepipe pieces for more cushioning, which inspired his CloudTec design. .
About four years ago, I met Johannes Wollchert, a student at Milan Design Week, who was offering a Halloween-esque hot glue spray that made fake webs to create new products at Milan Design Week.
“We said, hey, sounds crazy. Let’s do it,” Elliman said. And so, Ann brought Voelchert on board and gave him the time and investment to develop his idea and test it at scale.
The product received a vote of confidence when Hellen Obiri, a Kenyan athlete, won the Boston Marathon and the Paris Olympics wearing On’s LightSpray shoes.
“We had an idea. [that] It’s a very old industry in terms of how you make shoes,” Elliman said, adding that shoes were ultimately about providing performance. With a non-smooth exterior, On’s latest shoe is also very light. is
“Everybody’s excited because it makes the whole manufacturing process super easy, so you don’t have to ship parts. You can finally do the near-edge. So, there’s a lot of promise.”
Spray-on shoes are now available at some ON stores, priced at just over $300. But they’re only available in limited quantities, creating a new hurdle for On before it can truly call the shoe a breakthrough.
Alleman said ON has “a lot of work to do to scale” its new spray technology, mainly because fewer robotic arms are available. How runners respond to and use the new shoe will inform On’s ability to build on the innovation.
Selecting On
According to Alleman, who worked at the furniture design brand and consulted before founding ON, people took to the Zurich-based brand organically — with little intervention. Although headquartered in Switzerland, the company has had a global mindset from day one, as it gets two-thirds of its business from the US.
When the company backed tennis legend Roger Federer in 2019, it was when they spotted him wearing OnGear. The partnership soon blossomed when Federer invested an undisclosed sum for a 3% stake in the company.
In the case of Aubrey, who saw recent success with On’s latest innovation, the company gave him the shoes for a training run but then opted to run his own race with them.
Signon’s new brand ambassador, Zendaya, was also phenomenal. During the shooting of “Challengers”, he first chanced on her shoes and then fell on them.
“We’ve been an exploratory brand from the beginning. So we haven’t had a lot of marketing money,” Elliman said. “It’s been a very word-of-mouth movement.”
It may seem old school, but it works. There is no shortage of collaborations either, including one launched with LVMH-owned high fashion brand, Loewe.
