Abe Chavez is the fashion manager at buzzy New York-based luxury boutique ESSX, where his responsibilities include managing the store’s relationships with high-profile celebrity clientele like basketball star Jaylen Brown and American football player CeeDee Lamb. But earlier this week, Chavez was tasked with a different role altogether: leading a run club through Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Everyone from regular consumers to influencers to local fashion cool kids and Brooklyn-raised rapper Theophilus London joined in what was the culmination of a three-day takeover of the store by running sneaker label Hoka ahead of Sunday’s New York City Marathon. For those who didn’t fancy being put through their paces but still wanted to try out some shoes, ESSX co-founder Laura Baker led a group on a cultural walking tour of the neighbourhood.

A year or two ago, a luxury boutique participating in such an activation may have raised eyebrows — but not anymore. Fashion has been going all in on running culture for the past year. It’s now typical for brands to celebrate milestones like flagship store openings with run clubs, while networking at fashion weeks between buyers, press and creatives, which traditionally happened over loud music in bars and clubs, now often starts bright and early with a run.

For brands, marathons offer the perfect chance to market special-edition gear to product-crazy members of the running community, while getting their clothing and footwear in front of others who may not have come across them yet. At the New York City Marathon — one of the world’s big six — this obsession is more evident than ever. The swarm of brand activity from product collaborations to pop-ups to sponsored fitness events in the lead-up to the race has resembled that of a fashion week rather than preparation for the 26.2-mile slog through the city’s five boroughs.

Bandit, a New York-based fashion-forward running label, released a 17-piece collection of running gear and sneakers in collaboration with Asics and will host activations like cheer zones and a pre-race warm-up run from a SoHo pop-up. Minted New York, a running-centric clothing and jewellery brand, is hosting its own pop-up and announced a limited edition Speed 4 sneaker and apparel collaboration with Saucony. New Balance is sponsoring a team of high-profile personalities for the race in partnership with rapper Action Bronson to promote the release of their FuelCell Rebel v4 and M10 Minimus sneakers.

And for the first time, the marathon has an official beauty partner. L’Oréal-owned cosmetics label Maybelline will have a dedicated cheer zone, make-up booth and branded running team staffed by actress Claire Holt, TV personality Tayshia Adams, model Haley Kalil and make-up artist Karen Sarahi Gonzalez.

“These events are full of people and influencers wearing all the expensive, exclusive gear, many of whom have no intention of running the race at all but are drawn in by the product,” said Tayler Wilson, a writer and brand consultant who has run eight marathons since 2020. “The race is now almost the least important part.”

For brands looking to engage with marathoners, it’s not enough to just turn up with some sneakers to sell, however. Superficial cash grabs are likely to send them running.

Come for the Run, Stay for the Merch

There are, of course, still plenty of participants who show up to running events primarily to run. But big moments like marathons are increasingly frequented by consumers who come expecting to show off often expensive products that signify their place in a community, according to Yazmin Johnson, a London-based stylist and runner who participated in the New York City Marathon last year.

“It may as well be Paris Fashion Week,” Johnson said, adding that New York is the most popular of all the world’s major marathons for many runners, giving brands extra incentive to go bigger on activations.

Tied to this week’s marathon, On has a packed schedule of daily displays of its new LightSpray manufacturing technology, along with its own organised group runs and other events. It also took the moment to release a batch of its Cloudboom Strike LightSpray sneakers in ultra-limited quantities at its On Labs location in Manhattan.

It’s not only runners who covet running apparel or footwear either. The growing popularity of performance running and running-inspired footwear has turbocharged growth for newcomer brands like On and Hoka, and reinvigorated the appeal of older technical players like New Balance, Asics and Salomon. Nike’s bright pink AlphaFlys running sneakers now double as fashion items. Adidas collaborator Pharrell Williams appeared in a pair of the brand’s newly launched Pro Evo 1 racing shoes for his turn as torchbearer at the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony this summer.

Earlier this week, Adidas chief executive Bjørn Gulden told investors the brand was caught off guard when 200 pairs of its new $500 long-distance racing sneaker sold out in an hour at a drop at last month’s Beijing Marathon. The brand plans to continue building heat for the shoe ahead of a wider rollout next year through releases around key marathons, the next being Shanghai. It will also release a special edition of the shoe designed by Pharrell Williams this week in New York ahead of the race.

ESSX’s Baker said witnessing young fashion consumers in her store wearing limited-edition Hoka collabs is what prompted the shop to pick up the brand’s performance footwear — its first major sneaker assortment — including the Bondi 8 and Mach 6 LA silhouettes.

“These are the fashion kids pushing trends forward, and they’re equally obsessed with fitness [and] run clubs as they are with their clothing,” Baker said.

The running community, however, is similar to the streetwear community, according to Wilson: Consumers aren’t afraid to call out or boycott brands which they feel are simply jumping on the trend in a way that doesn’t feel authentic.

Keeping It Real

For big races like New York, even the more established brands like Hoka partner with local businesses to better access the consumer groups they’re targeting. Working with ESSX, one of the city’s hottest new multi-brand retailers, was designed to get in front of its “strong community of tastemakers,” said Ian Hill, Hoka’s director of US marketing.

The partnership allowed Hoka to directly engage with young fashion-forward consumers who blend performance gear with high fashion or streetwear pieces, but may not necessarily pull up to shop in a Hoka store itself, said Baker.

Baker believes running will be a long-term inspiration for brands, rather than a passing trend, thanks to its avid community and how deeply involved runners are in product — especially during marathon season.

“When you look around New York [at this time of year], the whole city is like a lookbook,” she said.

Wilson, the marathoner and brand consultant, pointed out that even for casual runs some people will show up in hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise, from their shorts to their sunglasses to their sneakers.

“I remember when I first started running with a group four years ago, I’d turn up in a pair of trainers my mum gave me and would be wearing random bits of old sports gear,” Johnson said. “But it’s a different game now.”

Of all the collections KidSuper founder Colm Dillane has designed, the one he’s been most anxious about is his new collaboration releasing Friday with the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets.

It’s the inaugural showing by the Nets’ new in-house label Bero, which launched earlier this year. Not only does it mark one of the clearest examples to date of the growing affinity between sport and fashion, but for Dillane, who teased the tie up in January at his Autumn/Winter 2024 Paris Fashion Week show, it’s highly personal: The Nets are his local team and play not far from where he went to high school.

“Sometimes these sports and fashion collabs really aren’t great,” he told The Business of Fashion. “I was trying to make product that I think people would actually want to wear outside of the arena and make pieces that felt like Brooklyn.”

The collection includes letterman jackets, bombers and accessories like bucket hats. It also allowed Dillane to work with new materials like leather. The accompanying campaign features fellow Brooklyn locals like Nets centre Nic Claxton and his teammate Jalen Wilson, as well as borough president Antonio Reynoso.

The Nets are one of many sports organisations putting increasing time and resources into making clothing that goes beyond basic low-quality merch in a bid to drive cultural clout and also boost retail sales. At London Fashion Week in June, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium hosted the runway show of menswear brand Labrum London — who also designed the team’s away kit for this season — with players like Declan Rice modelling the collection on the pitchside catwalk. This week, Rhude founder Rhuigi Villaseñor was named chief brand officer of Italian football team Como, in a role that will encompass transforming the brand’s approach to fashion and creative partnerships, hospitality and fan experience.

Dillane has been at the forefront of fashion’s recent convergence with sports. He designed the 2023/24 season jerseys for English football team Barnsley FC and will soon release a collection with all-time football great Ronaldinho, who starred in his January runway show.

With his Nets collaboration, he said he felt encouraged after getting the all-important buy-in from the team’s players, many of whom — like Claxton, who wore a leather jacket from the collection in a pre-game tunnel walk last season — were clamouring to get their hands on pieces ahead of this week’s general release.

For Claxton, it was important the team partnered with a designer who understood Brooklyn’s style codes.

“This collection really reflects the energy of Brooklyn and the new style that’s driving things forward right now,” he said.

In October 2022, Adidas found itself staring down an unprecedented crisis when it terminated its Yeezy sneaker partnership, a highly profitable business segment which at the time accounted for as much as 8 percent of the brand’s annual sales.

The collaboration with Ye — the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, whose increasingly inflammatory public statements prompted the split — had been Adidas’ answer to Nike’s deep roster of hyped sneakers like Jordans and buoyed it amid other challenges, like the closure of its Russian stores after the Ukraine invasion. The decision to shut down its Yeezy business not only left a nearly $2 billion hole in the company’s balance sheet, it also meant Adidas had lost the main product line connecting it to sneaker culture more broadly.

But just two years later, Adidas was thriving. In October 2024, the company raised its forecasts for the third time in the year, projecting approximately 10 percent growth in revenues and profits of €1.2 billion ($1.31 billion). It had won back the confidence of investors, too, with its share price having more than doubled since it announced the end of its Yeezy business.

In interviews with The Business of Fashion at Adidas’ global headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, chief executive Bjørn Gulden and other members of Adidas leadership revealed the secrets and strategies behind the company’s unlikely comeback. They included making faster decisions, leveraging the power of athletes to market products and inspire consumers, and allowing internal teams freedom to focus on the quality of their output without fear of falling short of commercial objectives.

While the company had some tailwinds at its back, like resurging consumer interest in its Samba and terrace sneakers, it had to make the right moves to capitalise on its opportunities.

“Turning around a company has three components: It’s luck, it’s timing and it’s effort,” Gulden said. “I don’t know how much of each of these things contributed at any point in time, but it was obvious to me [from day one] we had good things bubbling that people hadn’t realised.”

Analysts and insiders attribute much of the turnaround to Gulden — a former pro footballer who had previously worked at Adidas in the 1990s, became chief executive of rival Puma in 2013 and ultimately took the top job at Adidas in January 2023. They cite his genuine love for sports and his approach to Adidas’ business, which varies starkly at moments from that of his predecessor.

“What Bjørn brings is essentially two things: his obsession about product and his completely different approach to wholesale partners [than the previous regime],” said Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC.

In this case study, BoF unpacks the steps Adidas took to change its trajectory, revive its brand and engineer one of the more remarkable turnarounds in recent fashion history.

Nike has a fresh-faced new hire starting Monday.

Elliott Hill begins his tenure as Nike’s new chief executive following last month’s announcement that his embattled predecessor, John Donahoe, would be departing after more than four years in the role.

News that Hill — a Nike lifer who began as an intern in 1988 before retiring in 2020 as head of commercial and marketing operations for Nike and Jordan Brand — would return and become CEO sparked a wave of jubilation among a number of current and past Nike employees. Former Nike historian Scott Reaves said on LinkedIn that a few people, himself included, shed actual tears of joy. Analysts who had begun speculating openly about Donahoe’s future welcomed the news as well.

But while Hill enters the job with a great deal of good will, he also faces an imposing challenge. Nike finds itself being outperformed by a resurgent Adidas and a host of smaller, specialised challengers like On and Hoka as it tries to wean itself off its over-reliance on a handful of retro styles and prove to shoppers and investors alike that it can still create exciting new products. Hill may have the buy-in of analysts, investors and the wider Nike community, but he now confronts the job of actually delivering on those expectations.

“Elliott Hill is the perfect candidate for the turnaround and beyond. He is extremely capable and well regarded,” said sneaker industry analyst Matt Powell. “But there are no quick fixes here.”

Hill will have to tackle several critical issues currently hamstringing Nike’s business. Here’s where he needs to start.

Set Expectations Low

Hill is in a position akin to the one Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden found himself in when he parachuted into the company’s top job in January 2023, following its decision to terminate its Yeezy business. Adidas was facing a crisis that it knew would take work — and time — to resolve. Like Gulden, Hill has one advantage in that he played no part in the last three years of Nike’s downturn and is untainted by those associations.

But at every opportunity Hill will also want to emphasise to investors that the brand is back at square one, curbing any expectations of a rapid turnaround and buying himself and his management team time to craft a strategy without the pressure of meeting immediate financial targets.

Nike has already started laying the groundwork. On a recent earnings call, chief financial officer Matthew Friend told investors the company was withdrawing its initial full-year guidance, which projected the brand was headed for its worst financial performance in 26 years, and would instead issue quarterly guidance for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in May 2025. Friend said it would give Hill the flexibility to reconnect with employees, evaluate current trends and strategies and devise a plan. Nike also postponed the Investor Day it had slated for November.

“[Setting low expectations] is also good for a company’s internal teams and regular employees, because they are empowered to do what’s right for the long term and not bound to quarterly targets where they need to rush and hit numbers that are good for the P&L but are not necessarily good for the long-term brand equity,” said Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC.

By giving conservative quarterly guidance, Nike can also help to build positive sentiment once it starts recording small wins under the turnaround plan, Rambourg added, citing Adidas’ approach to issuing low guidance before recording earnings beats in its last six quarters.

Innovate, Innovate, Innovate

One of Hill’s top priorities must be proving that Nike hasn’t lost its ability to create exciting products in both the performance and lifestyle categories. It won’t be easy. Considering how much Nike speaks about “innovation” in press releases and on earnings calls, there has been little evidence of it over the past few years.

The company has instead become known for churning out retro basketball sneakers like the Jordan 1, Air Force 1 and Dunk in endless iterations that diminished their cachet and left consumers fatigued. Now, as it tries to rein in distribution and clean up the marketplace, sales are taking a hit.

“Naively, management didn’t understand that pulling back [on Jordan 1s, Dunks and Air Force 1s] would mean the brand would do a lot less business,” said Powell. “A lack of new and fresh products has also slowed recovery.”

In key performance categories like running, the brand has increasingly been outflanked by competitors when it comes to bringing through and marketing new technology. On used the Paris Olympics this summer as the perfect stage to show off its new LightSpray “spray-on” manufacturing technique which allows for the creation of ultralight one-piece uppers for its latest racing shoes, while Adidas’ $500 Pro Evo 1 supershoes (worn by marathon silver medalist Tigist Assefa and Pharrell Williams for his opening ceremony duties) got valuable airtime too. By contrast, Nike had little new product to point to.

It’s a long road ahead. Analysts at Bernstein have said Nike’s stagnant innovation pipeline is unlikely to show signs of revival until the first half of 2026, at the earliest.

Get Sneakerheads Back on Side

Winning back the attention of sneakerheads is a two-fold issue. Part one, already in motion, is removing oversaturated styles from the marketplace.

Part two, which has proved more elusive for Nike, is coming up with new styles and marketing new technologies which get people talking again.

Models such as the casual Air Max Dn and the Pegasus 41 running shoe have not sold as well as Nike had probably hoped since releasing earlier this year, especially in the key North America market, BMO analyst Simeon Siegel said in a research note earlier this month. The lesson to be taken from these launches — both billed as new and futuristic innovations — is that consumers can’t be fooled into thinking something is fresh and exciting just because Nike markets it as such. In reality, both shoes were mere iterations of Nike features which have existed for years, or in the case of the Dn’s updated “Air” technology — decades.

Hill, unlike his predecessor, has time on his side. But he needs to show that Nike at least has effective and genuinely new ideas on the way — or even old ones that it can give a fresh spin. Key to Adidas’ recent comeback has been the way it has reinvigorated the Samba. It’s debatable whether Nike has any archival silhouettes it can scale to the same level of popularity as those it’s now pulling back on, however, increasing the pressure on Nike to come up with novel ideas.

One positive note is that Hill will be able to rely on veteran sneaker designer Frank Cooker — known for his work on some of Jordan Brand’s most hyped sneaker collabs and special projects — who announced his comeback in September after leaving the Swoosh in 2018.

Keep Retailers Happy

Nike’s radical DTC pivot over the past several years alienated some of retail partners and shrank its coverage of the marketplace, creating openings for competitors to fill the gaps left on store shelves. Hill will need to continue the work started under Donahoe of rebuilding Nike’s wholesale partnerships and getting Nike back in front of customers wherever they want to shop. Meanwhile, the return of Nike veteran Tom Peddie (who, like Hill, retired in 2020) as vice president of marketplace partners was met positively by retailers in July. On the eve of Hill’s arrival as CEO, Peddie was promoted into the role of vice president, general manager of Nike’s North America business.

But again, it won’t be a simple task. On this month’s earnings call, CFO Friend admitted orders from retailers for spring 2025 were flat compared to last year, calling them “a little lighter than we had planned.” Lukewarm interest from retailers could be a sign of both a lack of exciting products in Nike’s innovation pipeline and also the continuing struggle to recapture the space it abandoned in retailers’ stores.

Nike’s weakened standpoint when it comes to wholesale is not only a problem for its balance sheet, experts say.

“These aren’t just sales channels — they’re cultural touchpoints that influence trends and communities,” said Howard Yu, professor of management and innovation at IMD Business School. “Elliott must rebuild those relationships.”

It’s been a while since shoppers have been able to get their hands on fashion designed by shape-shifting creative director Samuel Ross, the Virgil Abloh protégé who founded and then exited the pioneering British luxury streetwear label A-Cold-Wall.

That’s about to change.

After selling his stake in A-Cold-Wall to long-time partner Tomorrow Ltd in February, Ross took a step back from fashion, predominantly working on artistic projects and consulting for Apple’s headphones brand Beats, before returning to the fold with SR_A, a new high-end menswear line, which quietly launched in September with a made-to-order model.

Now, Ross has inked a multi-year partnership with Zara, joining the likes of Stefano Pilati, who launched a collaboration with the Spanish fast fashion giant last month. The deal will widen access to Ross’ vision with bi-annual menswear collections under the label “SR_A Engineered by Zara.”

The offer will feature “functional, refined garments” that reflect the “maturity” of the menswear market since Ross launched A-Cold-Wall in 2015. “I think we’ve seen a maturity from the audience from the time when there was this high focus on luxury streetwear five or so years ago,” said Ross.

A-Cold-Wall made a name for itself with a high-end streetwear offer infused with commentary on the British class system. As luxury’s fixation with streetwear soared in the late 2010s, it became a fixture at luxury retailers and issued coveted collaborations with the likes of Nike, Dr. Martens and Timberland. But as the trend cycle moved on, the once-hot brand lost heat.

The “SR_A Engineered by Zara” rollout will start early next year with “fashion installations and artistic performances across key cultural cities,” said Ross. “We’re not talking about a short-term cycle where we’re trying to push out a lot of product very quickly. This is a mature offering, which will build gradually each year and is reflective of the intelligence of our audience.”

To say Angel Reese was busy on her 22nd birthday would be an understatement.

That morning in May, at home in Chicago, the young basketball star practised with her team, the Sky, in preparation for her highly anticipated rookie season in the WNBA, North America’s top professional women’s basketball league. In the evening, she would fly by private jet to New York and attend her first Met Gala, wearing a custom look by 16Arlington: a turquoise sequined dress with a deep neckline and feathery mini-skirt.

The next day, the 6-foot-3 forward was already back in Chicago for the Sky’s pre-season game against the New York Liberty. Critics attacked Reese for her turn at the Met Gala, accusing her of not being focused. Reese answered them with a tough offensive game that included 13 points and five rebounds, helping Chicago to a blowout victory over New York.

The duality she exhibited in that 48 hours — fiercely competitive, unapologetically glamorous — is as concise an encapsulation of Reese as you get. The Baltimore native had played her final college game on April 1 before triumphantly declaring for the WNBA draft in a Vogue feature two days later. In July, just ahead of the WNBA’s mid-season break, she would travel to Paris as a guest of Pharrell Williams, Bernard Arnault and Anna Wintour to take part in a star-studded pre-Olympics event at Fondation Louis Vuitton.

When the league resumed in late August, Reese set a WNBA record as the fastest player ever to surpass 20 double-doubles (which in her case was double digits in points and rebounds in one game) in a season. Along the way, she fronted a campaign for Good American, inked deals with L’Oréal and Revolve and released her first collection with Reebok.

In the not-so-distant past, there was an expectation that rookie female athletes would keep their heads down, focus on honing their skills and leave the limelight to more seasoned pros. Reese is the antithesis of this view, and has laid down a new playbook for young women sports stars aiming to build their profiles — and grow their commercial value — far beyond their day jobs.

Her first whirlwind months as a pro are testament to her ability to juggle building her image outside the game of basketball while still dominating on the court, a balance she has maintained since shooting to fame after she led the Louisiana State University Tigers to their first-ever National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) championship in 2023 — a watershed moment for both her basketball career and her commercial endeavours.

“When I won the national championship, that’s when everything kind of went through the roof,” Reese told The Business of Fashion.

Her rise comes at a moment when athletes are increasingly becoming their own brands, at times even more influential and recognisable than the teams they play for or the companies which seek to endorse them. Fashion has become a critical component of how they brand themselves and show off their personalities, while their visibility and cultural clout make them great partners for fashion brands aiming to bolster their own images and reach new audiences.

Today, Reese is far and away the most-followed WNBA player on social media, with more than 8.2 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. Among her most-viewed TikToks is a pinned clip from 2021 showing off several off-court fashion looks mixed in with on-court highlights. It’s captioned “Get you a hooper that can do both.” Other videos take followers through pre-game outfits and handbag purchases, reflecting an off-court image that earned the nickname the “Bayou Barbie” at college.

At the same time, Reese is an aggressive player. Though a wrist injury ended her debut WNBA season just shy of the playoffs in September, she still comfortably recorded one of the most dominant rookie performances in the league’s history. And it’s this unique mix of personas — delivered in a direct, playful and unfiltered manner — that has made her one of the WNBA’s breakout stars

“I make sure my nails, hair, lashes and edges are done, and then I take it to the court,” Reese said. “That same girl must still be a competitor and a dog on court. I’m all about normalising that you can live both lives — you don’t have to just be an athlete.”

A Fashion All-Star

Reese, who grew up in Baltimore and enrolled at the University of Maryland before transferring to Louisiana State in 2022, arrived in the WNBA in April as part of a draft class of superstar rookies including Caitlin Clark — the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer — and Cameron Brink that helped usher in a new era for the league.

Until this season, growing hype around women’s basketball at the college level had failed to translate into WNBA viewership and commercial interest in the pros. But 2024 has seen unprecedented international media coverage, stadium attendance, TV viewership and merchandise sales, along with long-overdue attention on older star players in the league who had fought to grow the game for years.

The explosion of interest in the WNBA and Reese’s soaring profile are deeply intertwined, insiders say.

“Angel’s growth is so remarkable because not only has she matured and adapted to the league so quickly, but she’s simultaneously growing the sport, making it relevant to new audiences and also building her off-court businesses at the same time,” said Swin Cash, the WNBA legend and three-time champion, who currently serves as vice president of basketball operations for the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans.

What has set Reese apart, even from the other star rookies, is her natural ability to build and monetise her personal brand, seamlessly blending her interests in fashion, beauty and music with her athletic prowess. It began at LSU, where she developed the “Bayou Barbie” moniker, a reference to the school’s swampy location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the attention Reese lavishes on her lashes and nails (though she now goes as “Chi Barbie” after relocating to Chicago).

For Reese, fashion has offered a means of signposting her personality to prospective brand partners. In the WNBA, she has used the pre-game “tunnel walk” (where players arrive at the arena) as her own personal runway show, turning up to games in eye-catching outfits from brands like Balmain. It helped her land a deal with online retailer Revolve, whose stylists help source tunnel-walk looks from some of her favourite brands, like an Alexander Wang bodysuit paired with Chanel sneakers. For her red carpet moments — like her draft night and Met Gala appearances — she often works with stylist and Vogue fashion editor Naomi Elizée.

“Angel uses the tunnel walk as yet another channel to communicate this persona of hers that’s larger than basketball — she’s building out the Angel Reese brand,” said Velissa Vaughn, a PR and marketing specialist, former college basketball player and creator of WNBA Tunnel, an influential Instagram account that tracks players’ pre-game style.

Though Reese is a fan of luxury labels from Chanel to Miu Miu, she has, so far, largely worked with mass-market brands. But Vaughn said the calibre of labels that want to be associated with Reese is already somewhat remarkable for a female basketball player. For her to have been invited as a guest to Louis Vuitton’s Olympics event, despite not competing in the games herself, was telling. A lifelong admirer of the fashion industry, she dreams of one day walking in a runway show at Paris Fashion Week, ideally for her favourite brand: “I’m a Chanel girl, hands down, let me say that,” she said. Louis Vuitton is also high on her list.

Reese wants to design her own label one day. She’s getting a taste of the experience with Reebok, which last year announced her as the face of the brand’s newly re-launched basketball category, run by Shaquille O’Neal, Reese’s idol-turned-mentor and business partner on her new podcast venture, along with fellow NBA legend Allen Iverson. Both O’Neal and Reese made their name as college basketball standouts at Louisiana State University, and after meeting at an LSU football game, O’Neal, a former Reebok athlete himself, quickly identified her as a rising star. Reebok signed her to a deal in October 2023, and in August 2024, Reese released the first collection of clothing and sneakers that she helped to design.

“The women’s game is evolving rapidly, and Angel is right at the forefront of that transformation, and she deserves credit for that,” said O’Neal. “She’s showing fans — especially the young kids — that you don’t have to fit into a box or be just one thing. You can be anything you want to be.”

The Business of Angel Reese

Fashion holds greater importance to Reese than a simple hobby or a personal branding moment — it’s about building a business outside of her day job.

For female hoopers, building income beyond basketball is not just a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity, thanks to the relatively meagre pay afforded to professionals in the WNBA.

For example, Reese — the 7th overall pick in the WNBA draft — signed a four-year deal with the Chicago Sky worth $324,383, amounting to a salary of $73,500 in her rookie season, according to Spotrac, which tracks player contracts and salaries. It puts Reese’s rookie pay only marginally above the average annual wage for full-time work in Illinois, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. By contrast, Donovan Clingan, the 7th overall pick in the 2024 NBA draft, signed a four-year, $31-million contract with the Portland Trail Blazers.

To this day, many of the best and highest-paid WNBA players are forced to go overseas in the long off-season to supplement their wages. That, too, is something that has hampered the ability of players to properly market themselves and snag brand deals, because for more than half the year they are away from the key US market and out of the American media’s eye.

But Reese was among the first generation of college athletes to be able to make money from their name, image or likeness, colloquially known as NIL, after a change in the NCAA’s policy in 2021. Her social media presence had already given her a following far greater than the majority of WNBA players, allowing her to capitalise on interest from brands.

“I want to create generational wealth... Something Shaq taught me from day one was that you have to own things, you have to have so many different income streams beyond basketball because, eventually, basketball does stop.”

“Angel represents this new gen of female basketball players — they’re businesswomen. They’ve entered into so many opportunities that were not afforded to me or the women before me in college or in the WNBA,” said Cash, a number two draft pick in 2002.

By the time Reese left college, she was already generating millions of dollars from endorsement deals and campaign appearances with companies like Airbnb, Beats by Dre, Tampax and several others. Alongside fellow LSU student-athlete Olivia Dunne, Reese was tapped as a cover star for Sports Illustrated’s September 2023 “Money Issue,” which analysed why the college’s athletes were so dominant over “the new college sports economy.”

The following month saw the signing of her landmark Reebok deal, which will involve the creation of an Angel Reese signature sneaker — another element designed to cement her status as one of the WNBA’s hottest properties. (There are just three active WNBA players with signature sneakers on the market, compared to over 30 in the NBA.) Upon entering the league, Reese’s NIL valuation — the projected monetary value of her name, image and likeness — was $1.8 million, per On3, a news and data outlet focused on college and high-school sports.

“I want to create generational wealth,” Reese said. “Something Shaq taught me from day one was that you have to own things, you have to have so many different income streams beyond basketball because, eventually, basketball does stop,” she said. O’Neal has given her business advice since her college days, even down to setting up her own LLC through which to run her commercial affairs.

Reese has carried this business-minded approach through to her pro career. In May, she was announced as a founding investor in DC Power Football Club, which will compete in a new top-tier women’s soccer league in the US this year. She has also ramped up her brand deals, fronting the campaign for a new denim line at Kourtney Kardashian’s Good American label in May.

August was a particularly busy month: Reese launched a fashion collaboration with chocolate brand Reese’s, after fans had called on the parties to make the no-brainer partnership for years. She also announced a new podcast, “Unapologetically Angel,” in partnership with O’Neal’s Jersey Legend Productions.

Reese also knows her off-court endeavours will only be boosted by her on-court success, for which she has great ambitions.

“I came to Chicago to be a [WNBA] champion and that’s what I want to achieve — hopefully, by the end of my career, I’ll have an MVP award under my belt too,” she said.

The Uglier Side of Sports

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Overnight fame began a long stream of millions of dollars worth of sponsorships and brand deals, but it also put Reese in the crosshairs of the uglier side of sports fandom.

Since then, she has faced constant tirades of racist abuse, harsh media coverage pitting her against fellow rookie Caitlin Clark (despite playing in completely different positions) and online trolling relating to her looks, personality and playing style. Vaughn says she frequently has to remove incidents of racist abuse directed at Angel in the comments section of her WNBA Tunnel Instagram page.

“Being a Black woman in the spotlight, fighting not only to grow an entire sport but also against an underbelly of racism, that’s not an easy road. It’s not for the meek of heart,” Cash said.

In August, Reese became the first player in WNBA history to notch at least 20 rebounds — winning balls that bounce back after unsuccessful basket attempts — in three consecutive games. A week later she reached 405 rebounds for the season, a WNBA record. And still, people were on her back.

The author has shared a YouTube video.You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future.

One of the loudest gripes from Reese’s critics is that most of her rebounds come from her own missed shots. To debunk that theory, her team ran an analysis in August that showed even without the rebounds Reese wins off her own shots she still comfortably remains the WNBA’s top rebounder.

Though at times it can take a significant mental toll, Reese is undeterred.

“I’m kind of immune to it now,” she said.

She credits the support her family network and the resilience instilled in her growing up by her mother, who raised Reese and her younger brother as a single parent.

And it’s been a good year, after all.

She recently bought herself her dream car — an all-white Mercedes G-Wagon — and expects to become a property owner for the first time in the near future. Not bad for a 22-year-old recent college grad.

Above all else, Reese says her greatest motivator is growing women’s basketball and improving conditions for women in sports across the board.

“After my national championship game in 2022, I understood my purpose beyond basketball, beyond even fashion,” she said. “Just being able to be a Black woman in sports that has a huge platform and can use her voice in a positive light. That’s my role,” Reese said.

O’Neal believes the world has only seen a fraction of what Reese has to offer so far.

“She’s not only breaking records and pushing boundaries on the court, but also drawing in new fans and expanding the reach of women’s basketball,” he said. “And honestly, she’s just getting started.”

LVMH and Formula 1 on Wednesday announced a decade-long partnership to begin in 2025. As part of the deal, several LVMH brands including Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy and TAG Heuer will enjoy sponsorship opportunities across the sport.

LVMH has increasingly aligned its houses with the motorsport. Louis Vuitton has created the trophy case for the Monaco Grand Prix since 2021, Berluti sponsors French driver Pierre Gasly and Dior announced British racing driver and seven-time championship winner Lewis Hamilton as an ambassador in July. Since 2016, luxury watchmaker Tag Heuer has been the official timekeeper of the Red Bull Racing team.

The news comes as fashion increasingly looks to the world of sport for new marketing and sales opportunities. Formula 1 has also enjoyed booming cultural appeal in recent years, leading to interest from sports giants like Puma and streetwear brands.

LVMH and Formula 1 said details of the partnership will be announced early next year.

Stay tuned to BoF for updates on this developing story.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

PARIS — Paris is still abuzz in the afterglow of this summer’s Olympics. Just as the Games was a standard bearer for unity and representation, so too was another event that happened in Paris Saturday night: The BoF 500 Gala brought together designers, business people, image makers and content creators from across the industry.

Fashion insiders filed into the opulent venue overlooking the Eiffel Tower throughout the crisp autumn evening to celebrate 100 new additions to the BoF 500 — the definitive index of the people shaping the global fashion industry.

Among the guests on the red carpet were designers Victoria Beckham and Phoebe Philo, reggaeton artist J Balvin and Gap’s new creative director Zac Posen, one of this year’s BoF 500 cover stars. It was clear for all to see, everyone came dressed to impress.

“There’s a lot of strong, bold fashion statements here tonight, it’s nice to see,” said Victoria Beckham.

Hari Nef, Jared Leto and Colman Domingo mounted the building’s marble stairs wearing completely new looks from his hotly anticipated revamp of Valentino under Alessandro Michele. Loewe ambassadors Greta Lee and Ayo Edebiri wore looks fresh off the runway from Jonathan Anderson’s Friday show. French Yseult wore a sculptural couture trench by Balenciaga.

The ballroom echoed with chatter throughout the night, as attendees mingled with friends and colleagues (former and current) and broke bread around a long feasting table adorned with fresh fruit.

As evening turned to night, BoF founder and chief executive Imran Amed took to the stage.

“A moment when we’re all united is so important when the world feels so divided,” Amed said, addressing the room.

He then introduced the evening’s performer, singer Wizkid, who has spotlighted the Afrobeats genre on a global stage. The Nigerian star — dressed in Chanel — performed his signature tracks “Ojuelegba” and “Essence,” which was the first ever Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.

Around 400 of the 500-plus guests counted among the industry pioneers from previous BoF 500 classes, who spoke of the significance of the gathering.

“Just knowing that you are part of history, that you have done a great service to the fashion industry, and that you’re recognised for it — what an honour,” said American model Ashley Graham.

Over DJ Aymen’s booming party soundtrack, new members expressed their joy — and in some instances, surprise — at their inclusion.

“It’s pretty amazing,” said Italian singer and Diesel ambassador Damiano David. “When I got the news I actually thought: ‘What? Me?’. I was surprised because I’m a singer, I did not expect that.,” said David. He said he was more surprised to be selected for BoF 500 than for his Eurovision win in 2021, as the frontman of his band Måneskin.

Zac Posen, appointed creative director of Gap in February, was similarly happy to receive the call. “I’ve actually never been to this event [before], I’ve never been part of The Business of Fashion… but some things are worth waiting for.”

The BoF 500 2024 is made possible by our partners Chase Sapphire Reserve, NEFT, Shop With Google, The Shangri-La Hotel and La Mode en Images.

HERZOGENAURACH, Germany — Adidas’ Samba has been perhaps the most popular sneaker on the market for the past year, winning fans from Kendall Jenner to former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and millions of customers in between.

But that wasn’t Adidas’ original plan.

When Bjørn Gulden took over as the German brand’s chief executive in January 2023, just as the Samba was starting to get hot, he learned Adidas wasn’t planning to ramp up production of the shoe until the second half of 2024.

“For whatever reason, no one wanted to scale it,” the cheerful 58-year-old Norwegian — whose Instagram bio reads “Life is Good!” — said in an interview at Adidas’ global headquarters this month. “It took five days [of being in the job] to say: ‘Hey, we’re scaling production’ and then to get the people that told me no to change their minds.”

At the time, the company needed a jolt. Gulden, who jumped to Adidas after nearly a decade as CEO of local rival Puma, parachuted in after the damaging loss of its Yeezy line a few months earlier. October marks two years since Adidas terminated its contract with Ye, formerly Kanye West — a deal which at the time accounted for as much as 8 percent of Adidas’ annual revenue — plunging the company into a dramatic PR and financial crisis that sent its share price to its lowest point in a decade and resulted in four profit warnings in less than a year.

It also had taken a hit with the closure of its Russia business — its largest market in terms of direct-to-consumer sales — after the invasion of Ukraine, while sales slowed in China, which before the pandemic had been Adidas’ fastest-growing market.

Thanks to the quick Samba pivot, which boosted production to millions of units by the end of last year, as well as the success of other “terrace” styles like the Gazelle and new silhouettes such as the Anthony Edwards 1 basketball sneaker, Gulden and Adidas have achieved a turnaround far quicker than anyone anticipated. In July, Adidas improved its full-year guidance for the second time this year, projecting revenue to grow at a high single-digit rate, compared to the initial mid single-digit growth rate forecast. Adidas also said it expects operating profit to reach €1 billion ($1.1 billion), up from an initial forecast of €700 million. Shares are up 20 percent this year, and up 130 percent since October 2022, when the Yeezy partnership collapsed.

Analysts and insiders attribute much of the turnaround to Gulden, citing his genuine love for sports and the brand’s athletes, his empowerment of Adidas’ creative teams by giving them more freedom to make decisions and his uncompromising, product-first approach.

“The key with Bjørn is his understanding around product — and that he’s been obsessed with product and footwear forever,” said Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC.

Next, Adidas has its eye on North America, the home turf of its biggest rival, Nike, whose current slump presents Adidas with its biggest opportunity in years to steal share in the critical market. Nike’s impending CEO change underscores its precarious footing, but also that Adidas may have a limited window to strike in North America before its rival engineers a turnaround of its own. Last year, Adidas opened a large office and “creation centre” in Los Angeles to bring a more local perspective to its US business and capitalise on its success in basketball.

In interviews with The Business of Fashion, Gulden and other top Adidas executives discussed how the brand has course-corrected in several areas, speeding up its decision-making, leveraging its sports connections and rebuilding wholesale relationships.

“Turning around a company has three components: It’s luck, it’s timing and it’s effort,” said Gulden. “I don’t know how much of each of these things contributed at any point in time, but it was obvious to me [from day one] we had good things bubbling that people hadn’t realised.”

Culture Change

The Samba exemplifies the cultural change Gulden has sought to usher in since his first week at Adidas. Quicker, more independent decision-making was high on his agenda, as he felt the brand had become too risk-averse and defensive, hampered by the advice of management consultants. (“I’m not a big fan of consultants,” said Gulden. His departing counterpart at Nike, by contrast, is the former CEO at consultancy Bain & Company.)

Examples of this new approach include the brand’s latest racing supershoe, the ultra-lightweight Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, which first appeared on the feet of Tigist Assefa, who broke the women’s marathon record in Berlin last September.

“We saw it performing well in all the tests. Instead of waiting a year from now to continue testing, we gave it to 50 elite runners across Africa who loved the shoe, so we just launched it right away — and we’ve won every marathon since,” Gulden said. (Each of the last five major world marathons has been won by an Adidas athlete either in the men’s or women’s competitions, since the introduction of the shoe).

Gulden, who previously worked for Adidas in the 1990s as senior vice president of apparel and accessories, has shown a keen understanding of the marketplace from a product perspective. In the Samba, he saw an opportunity to exploit a gap. The shoe — a low-profile football sneaker with suede accents — offered a fresh alternative to the chunky, retro basketball styles like Nike’s Air Force 1 that had dominated for years. Successful collaborations with designers like Grace Wales Bonner and Gucci helped boost its cultural credibility while serving as a way for Adidas to introduce new colour combinations unlike anything on store shelves.

It was just the right item to make up for the shortfall from the loss of what Rambourg described as the “super profitable, high margin” sales of Yeezy sneakers. “The gross margin on [terrace sneakers] is likely super high because there’s no specific technology, it’s essentially a lifestyle product, it’s very easy to produce and they’re mostly sold at full price,” Rambourg said.

Under Gulden, Adidas’ designers, who under the previous regime were constantly reminded of commercial targets and given rigid objectives, have more creative licence and are challenged to break out of their routines. He’s insisted, for instance, that the product and design teams work with physical samples rather than using virtual scans — filling their section of the campus with 36,000 product sample units. Recently, the brand has begun teasing a futuristic-looking, fully 3D-printed sneaker, known for now as the “Climamog”, designed to adapt to the shape of a user’s foot that’s currently being tested among athletes and influencers ahead of a wider launch next year.

“You can’t overstate the value of the inspiration and newness that Adidas has brought to the market,” said Scott Cutler, CEO of resale platform StockX, which has seen rising sales for Adidas shoes. “It’s resonating especially at a time where the challenge in other brands has been oversaturation and a lack of innovation that people are growing tired of.”

Rebuilding Relationships

It wasn’t just internally that Gulden wanted to make changes.

“In the previous period [before Gulden’s arrival], we maybe lost our identity a little bit,” said Alasdhair Willis, Adidas’ chief creative officer, who joined the company in March 2022. “We realised we needed to re-focus again on the connection with our athletes because we’d slightly lost a little of that direct relationship — the brand’s founding principle was to serve the athlete.”

Just as Nike is a brand synonymous with basketball, Adidas’ three stripes have been intertwined with football (aka soccer) since the 1950s. But a pain point both among employees and the brand’s critics was that Adidas had lost its connection with the sports world and was becoming too much of a lifestyle brand.

Gulden, a former professional footballer who describes himself as a “sports romantic,” was at pains to put this right. He pushed Adidas to lean more heavily into football and leverage its unmatched roster of stars, including legends like Zinedine Zidane to rising talents like Jude Bellingham. The brand is featuring them more in campaigns, using them for the relaunch of its F50 and Predator football boots, bringing them in to meet retail partners and building collections around them — Bellingham even got his own signature logo this year.

“He’s really good at having athletes not just for marketing, or figures on a P&L, but as proper, long-term partnerships,” said Rambourg, who noted that for Gulden these aren’t just professional relationships. “He’s actually buddies with these people.”

Adidas is applying that sport-centric approach to reviving interest in long-running fashion partnerships. Stella McCartney designed kits for Arsenal Women FC last year, while Bellingham and Zidane featured in an arty Y-3 campaign earlier this year. At the Paris Olympics, American sprinter Noah Lyles won gold wearing Y-3 Adidas spikes.

Gulden’s tenure hasn’t been without missteps. In July, Adidas pulled commercials featuring Bella Hadid for its SL72 sneaker, originally created to celebrate the 1972 Munich Olympics. But during those games 11 Israeli athletes were killed in a terrorist attack, and the involvement of Hadid, an outspoken critic of the Israeli government of Palestinian descent, drew widespread criticism online. Adidas ultimately apologised.

Basketball, North America and Beyond

The other revival Gulden has made a priority is Adidas’ relationships with retail partners. Like Nike, it had backed away from wholesale in recent years as it prioritised sales through its own channels. During his tenure at Puma, his wholesale-first approach saw him build close relationships with retailers that helped to increase sales as Nike and Adidas were vacating store space.

Frank Bracken, chief commercial officer at Foot Locker, said the way Adidas trusted the retailer for its expertise in basketball and the North American market during the launch of its AE 1 sneaker recalled the partnership approach Gulden was known for in his Puma days.

“Of course, it’s their product, their athlete, but Adidas leaned on us, listened to us and had their product development and marketing teams work hand-in-hand with our teams to get that launch right,” Bracken said.

North America and basketball will be central to Adidas’ strategy as it looks to extend its winning streak. The new Los Angeles office is meant to give Adidas a better launching pad for its work on both while it gets ready for major US sporting events such as the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 LA Olympics. The company is still in the process of rebuilding its foothold in the market after the loss of its Yeezy products, the last of which will be sold by the end of this year.

“The LA office is an opportunity for us to directly tap into that melting pot of sports, culture and entertainment,” said Torben Schumacher, senior vice president and global general manager of Adidas originals, basketball and partnerships, who relocated after almost 20 years at Adidas headquarters in Germany to lead the Los Angeles expansion. “It really becomes a launchpad for the Adidas business we are building in North America.”

It’s a move Adidas is mirroring in China — where sales grew nine percent year-over-year in the last quarter after years of decline — and Latin America. It also marks another departure from the brand’s approach under Gulden’s predecessor, Kasper Rørsted, who had centralised much of the decision-making in Germany.

According to Gulden, the goal is to give its local offices more freedom on creating products, setting go-to-market timelines and tapping into local supply chains to be more agile as it chases its ambitions.

They don’t include taking silver while Nike gets the gold.

“First of all, you have to have a lot of respect for what Nike has achieved,” Gulden said. “But we have to ask ourselves: Is there any reason that Nike or any other brand should be bigger than us in the next 10 years? I can’t find any rational answer to say so.”

For the past four years, 31-year-old Sonam Shah has been part of an after-work running club in London, frequented by a mixture of city workers and creative types.

Shah was never one of the group’s “cool kids,” not seeing the appeal of buying $300 supershoes from Nike or Adidas or wearing a technical hydration vest for a casual 5k run around a park. But around a year ago, her cultural cachet took off when someone asked her what tech she uses to track her fitness.

The device — a wrist-strap sensor from Whoop, a Boston-based wearable tech company — did not even track how far or how fast she ran, but rather how deeply she’d slept the night before, her stress levels and her cardiovascular capacity, aggregating those and thousands of other data points into digestible “scores” that told her how prepared she was for certain activities.

“It was like a switch had flicked,” she said. “All of a sudden it didn’t matter that I didn’t run a 5K in under 30 minutes … now all anybody wanted to speak about was their recovery score and heart rate variability.”

Running was historically one of the most stripped-down sports there was. It required no field, no teammates and no special equipment beyond gym clothes and a basic pair of running shoes. (Even those are optional: Mexico’s Tarahumara still do their miles in sandals.)

But today, even casual runners routinely outfit themselves in the latest technical apparel, footwear designed in a high-tech lab and any number of gadgets to track their health. These wearables themselves have evolved from the Fitbits of the 2010s used for daily step counts to products like Whoop and the Oura ring as awareness grows that factors like sleep, hormonal cycles and stress can have as much impact on your performance as the gear you wear.

Among the growing hoards of everyday athletes who frequent popular run clubs, run marathons or take part in high-performance competitions like Hyrox, these products have quickly become status symbols.

Shah said while people still compare what shoes they’re buying for the next race and what times they expect to achieve, the emphasis has shifted to discussing the data gleaned from their wearable tech. Almost every person who shows up wears either a Whoop or an Oura ring.

“Health and wellness is 100 percent the new status symbol,” said 24-year-old former footballer and fitness enthusiast Elliot Johnson, who recently completed an internship at Nike and is now training for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in New Zealand later this year. Johnson, who is also big advocate for wearable tech, uses both a Garmin smartwatch and an Oura ring, which give him data about his performance, wellness and recovery far beyond the level he had access to even as a youth footballer.

An Aspirational Product

Companies like Oura and Whoop have savvily marketed their products as indispensable items to people like elite athletes, celebrities and CEOs, cementing them as part of the daily routines of high-performing figures. Oura’s rings, for instance, have been used by Real Madrid, the England national football team and organisations such as the NBA, NASCAR and UFC. They’re also worn by figures like Kim Kardashian and Prince Harry.

Whoop’s wrist strap was seen on several Olympic athletes, including gold medalist Sha’Carri Richardson, while the company has also raised investment from Cristiano Ronaldo, who’d been a regular customer of the business for around two years before they had a commercial relationship, said founder and chief executive Will Ahmed.

“If you go back 10 years, this sort of technology was only reserved for the elite, who’d have to go to a lab and strap into these clunky devices,” said Dorothy Kilroy, Oura’s chief commercial officer.

Now, regular consumers can have access to the same level of health tracking. Whoop’s monthly membership costs around $30, while the initial outlay for an Oura costs between $299 and $549, depending on the style you choose, plus the $5.99 monthly fee to access the app and your data.

The devices are also relatively unobtrusive — they don’t look or feel like “gadgets”. Oura is a simple metal ring, while Whoops is a tiny monitor with no buttons or display screen that can be worn on several areas of the body.

“A lot of these [newer] innovations that started off reserved just for athletes are now trickling down,” said Joe Holder, Nike’s global master trainer and a GQ wellness columnist. “I don’t think some people expected it to proliferate this fast.”

The Modern Wellness Consumer

There is a competitive element to these products’ appeal that reflects the shifting ways in which people measure — and show off — their fitness. It’s long been a common practice to post stats from jogs or workouts on social media, showing off metrics like distance, speed or the amount of calories burned. But now it’s just as common to see people posting their sleep or recovery scores before heading to their run club meet up, Johnson said.

For the past few years, Julius Juul, a wellness enthusiast, ultramarathon runner and co-founder of Danish ready-to-wear brand Heliot Emil, has been working on 444, a members-only wellness education platform which allows users to track qualitative data — such as feelings of anxiety and how motivated a user felt during their day — to complement the insights they receive from wearable fitness tech. Once accepted, users pay $500 for a 5-piece collection of fitness and movement clothing. Juul said the uptake took him off guard. He has so far onboarded 44 users, after opening the platform in late July, and has 2,220 more on the waiting list.

“There’s more of an understanding that it’s not just one thing that makes you fit and healthy,” Juul said. “More than ever before people want to learn about the connection between things like sleep, nutrition and physical exertion and what their means for their holistic wellness. This is where technology comes in.”

Wearables companies are receiving a boost from this wider adoption by the fitness community. Ahmed said Whoop has seen considerable growth over the past two years. The company has expanded into 20 new markets in 2024 and gone from being predominately a US business to an international brand.

The real expansion opportunity, however, is spreading the adoption of the technology among the rest of the general population — including those who don’t play sports or work out.

“I think that in the long run, most human beings are going to be wearing a sensor of some kind on their bodies that tells them everything about their health,” Ahmed said.

Swiss sneaker giant On reported net sales of CHF 567.7 million ($654.4 million) in the three months ending June 2024, up 28 percent from the same period last year and setting a new record for revenue for the second straight quarter.

However, shares were down as much as 10 percent in pre-market trading Tuesday, after its quarterly gross margin of 59.9 percent narrowly missed Wall Street estimates of 60.1 percent, while its direct-to-consumer revenue and earnings per share also fell just shy of analyst expectations. The company’s shares are still up 47 percent since the beginning of the year.

On received a boost from its recent expansion into apparel and accessories, sales of which were up 63 percent and 24 percent year-on-year, respectively. The brand, which began as a running sneaker specialist, was also buoyed by its expansion across Asia — particularly in China and Japan — where it grew sales by 85 percent year-over-year in the second quarter.

On also reported healthy bottom-line growth, generating net income of CHF 30.8 million, nearly 10 times the CHF 3.3 million it earned in the second quarter of 2023.

On reaffirmed its guidance for full-year 2024, forecasting a gross margin of around 60 percent and record net sales of CHF 2.26 billion ($2.6 billion).

In March, the company launched its tennis apparel category, and the following month it announced a partnership with British singer FKA Twigs, who will oversee the design and marketing of the company’s new training apparel and footwear vertical. On also signed Zendaya as its latest ambassador in June — a move designed to grow the brand’s visibility in North America and promote its lifestyle apparel. The actress has already starred in several high-profile campaigns for the brand with ambassador and shareholder Roger Federer.

Learn more:

Swiss Sportswear Brand On Taps Zendaya as Latest Ambassador

The American actress will co-produce brand campaigns and collaborate on one-off collections as the label continues its expansion beyond the running category.