Simply 15 years in the past On was a brand new entrant in a sports activities shoe market crammed with a number of well-established rivals: Nike, Adidask, and Hoka. However the firm’s novel footwear—identifiable with their base that appears like a layer of hole pebbles—gained hearts as extra sports activities lovers found them.
Immediately, the Swiss firm reached a document excessive in gross sales, value over $700 million, throughout its third quarter of 2024 and is constant to rethink each side of how athletic footwear are made.
Historically, footwear are an elaborate stitchwork and a number of other hours of human labor. However, earlier this yr, On did one thing that might shake up age-old shoemaking tendencies. It debuted a shoe made in three minutes by spraying material materials onto a foot mould with the assistance of a robotic arm. Oh, and it doesn’t have laces, both.
Take a second to course of that.
On’s cofounder, David Allemann, credit the Zurich-based firm’s success and skill to attract folks in a market crammed with brand-loyal patrons to one thing comparatively easy.
“On is really this innovation brand that is about radical innovation where you have to go for crazy,” he informed Fortune in an interview held on the sidelines of the Enterprise of Style convention this week.
The start set the tone: Olivier Bernhard, one in every of On’s co-founders, first pitched his mates on a shoe with hosepipe items on the sole for extra cushioning, which impressed its CloudTec design.
About 4 years in the past, On encountered Johannes Voelchert, a scholar presenting a Halloween-esque sizzling glue spray that made pretend cobwebs to create new merchandise on the Milan Design Week.
“We said, hey, sounds crazy. Let’s do it,” Allemann mentioned. And so, On introduced Voelchert on board and gave him the time and funding to develop his concept and take a look at it at a bigger scale.
The product received a vote of confidence when Hellen Obiri, a Kenyan athlete, gained the Boston Marathon and Paris Olympics with On’s LightSpray shoe.
“We had a hunch [that] this is a very old industry in terms of how you manufacture footwear,” mentioned Allemann, including that footwear have been finally meant to ship efficiency. With a seamless exterior, On’s latest shoe can be a lot lighter.
“Everyone is also excited because it simplifies extremely all the manufacturing process, so you don’t have to ship parts around. You could eventually also do near-shoring. So, there is a lot of promise.”
The spray-on footwear at the moment are obtainable at some On shops, costing simply over $300 a pop. However they’re solely obtainable in restricted portions, creating a brand new hurdle for On earlier than it might actually declare the shoe a breakthrough.
Allemann mentioned that On has “a lot of work to scale” its new spray know-how, primarily as a result of fewer robotic arms can be found. How runners reply to and use the brand new shoe will inform On’s potential to construct on its innovation.
Selecting On
In line with Allemann, who labored at a furnishings design model and consulted earlier than founding On, folks gravitated to the Zurich-based model organically—with little intervention. Though headquartered in Switzerland, the corporate has had a worldwide mindset since day one, because it will get two-thirds of its enterprise from the U.S.
When the corporate received tennis legend Roger Federer to again On in 2019, it was after they observed him sporting On gear. The partnership flourished quickly as Federer invested an undisclosed quantity for a 3% stake within the firm.
Within the case of Obiri, who noticed current success with On’s newest innovation, the corporate gave her the footwear for coaching runs however then opted to run her races with it.
Signing On’s new model ambassador, Zendaya, was additionally serendipitous. She first chanced upon its sneakers whereas filming for “Challengers” and was hooked on them afterward.
“We’ve been a discovering brand from the start. So we didn’t have a lot of marketing money,” mentioned Allemann. “It’s been very much a word-of-mouth movement.”
Which may appear old-school, nevertheless it’s labored. There’s additionally been no dearth of collaborations, together with one which On launched with Loewe, an LVMH-owned high-fashion model.
