(Magazine) - From a small business selling outdoor ski equipment to a luxury shoe brand, Salomon has made a huge leap in its career with high-tech running shoes.

Founded in 1947 in Annecy, France – an Alpine lakeside town with canals and peach-hued palaces – Salomon was a technical leader selling ski equipment and then ski clothing and apparel, pivoting to footwear in the early 1990s.

With its rugged sneakers that people use for trail running, Salomon has always been built around function over fashion. But in the past five years, Salomon has been spotted on the feet of Kanye West and Rihanna, and has been praised by fashion blogs from Highsnobiety to Hypebeast for collaborations with brands ranging from Tokyo-based And Wander to London-based Palace Skateboards.

Despite being part of the Chinese-owned sportswear giant Amer, Salomon is as popular with stylists and sneakerheads as it is with Nordic skiers and Alpine trail runners. Salomon’s evolution has been a difficult journey, trying to meet the needs of a new audience while staying true to the brand’s core values.

History of formation

The Salomon story is really one of engineering and innovation, stretching back to before the Second World War, when François Salomon was making saw blades in a small workshop at home. After the war, when tourism started up again and skiers returned to the mountains, François saw his opportunity. But it was his son, Georges, who really got the business going. Georges came up with two game-changing ideas in the 1950s, when skiers were still using fixed leather straps as bindings, which often resulted in broken bones when their feet twisted with skis stuck. The first was the removable ‘Skade’ binding, which was attached to the toe of the boot; the second was a system he called ‘Le lift’, which allowed the bindings to release in the event of a hard impact.

In 1979, Salomon focused on ski boots with the SX91 - considered the most influential ski boot of all time. In the 1990s, Salomon began producing skis and Alpine hiking boots. François acquired American golf manufacturer TaylorMade, whose founder Gary Adams designed the world's first metal driver, for production.

Salomon was acquired by Adidas in 1997 and then sold to Chinese sportswear giant Amer Sports in 2005, when Adidas moved into ski equipment and clothing. At the time, Salomon was also famous for its shoes, worn by world-class trail runner Kilian Jornet Burgada, who has climbed Everest, the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc in the fastest time. More than 1 million pairs of the Speedcross shoes he wears are sold in Europe every year.

Step into the fashion world

Until 2015, Salomon and fashion were seemingly unrelated. But the story goes that one day a customer walked into The Broken Arm, an influential Parisian streetwear store, and asked for a pair of Salomon Snowcross boots, even though they were designed for snow, not street wear. That laid the groundwork for the Salomon-The Broken Arm collaboration. “It was a game-changer, but it was all very accidental,” says Salomon’s global brand expert, Alex van Oostrum.

A series of seemingly surprising collaborations followed, starting in early 2016 with German menswear designer Boris Bidjan Saberi, known for his use of technical materials, redesigning the iconic Speedcross 3 trail running shoe. With demand for lifestyle shoes on the rise, Jean-Philippe Lalonde joined Veilance, the fashion arm of Canadian outdoor brand Arc'teryx, that same year. His brief was to create a new sportswear style at Salomon that incorporated streetwear . Jean-Philippe then created shoes that largely kept the core designs, but added bolder lines. The Sportstyle team grew to 12 people, but remained a small part of Salomon's product portfolio, which still included a wide range of running, hiking, and skiing gear. But this lifestyle arm is the fastest growing part of the business, and according to Alex, this group has a huge impact on brand awareness.

(Salomon Speedcross 3)

In 2018, Salomon had a showroom at Paris Men's Fashion Week, marking the full entry of Salomon into the fashion world.

(Salomon enters the fashion industry)

And that is how Salomon gradually conquered fans in particular and the fashion world in general. It was a long journey full of surprises that perhaps even Salomon and his father did not expect.

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