During Milan Fashion Week on February 24, the Women's Clothing Sideline of French designer Maison Margiela (Margiela Fashion House) MM6 Maison Margiela (hereinafter referred to as MM6) released the latest joint shoe on the runway, this time with salomon (Salomon) from France.
Founded in 1947, Salomon first debuted as a ski equipment brand and later became known among outdoor enthusiasts for its outstanding outdoor sneakers. In recent years, with joint cooperation with a number of avant-garde designer brands, Salomon has crossed the border into the trend circle, and has been favored by domestic and foreign celebrities including Ralph Lauren, Rihanna, Yusei Yuxian, Bai Jingting, Hyunya and so on.
"Salomon didn't appear in the fashion world until recently, it's just that we're bigger now." Jean-Philippe Lalonde, a trader at Salomon's sport lifestyle program, says it bluntly.
Above: MM6 × Salomon
On little red book, Salomon's about 30,000 grass posts are focused on its outdoor sneakers. In fact, in Salomon's more than 70 years of history, its footwear products have only developed for more than 20 years. The brand has only been known to the fashion industry for less than seven years.
By combing through several key periods in the history of Salomon's brand development, this article will analyze why Salomon will "go out of the circle" fashion with sneakers from the three dimensions of "opportunity, turning and breakthrough".
Opportunity
—— A pair of outdoor shoes that are "more in line with the urban aesthetic"
"It wasn't us who pushed Salomon into the fashion world, it was our customers." Jean-Philippe Lalonde said in an interview with sports trend platform SSwagger that his current role at Salomon is Fashion Program Manager.
Salomon's association with the fashion industry began in 2015, when Parisian fashion boutique The Broken Arm approached Salomon to collaborate on a pair of outdoor shoes that were more in line with the urban aesthetic. The two founders of The Broken Arm, who are outdoor enthusiasts and are intimately familiar with Salomon's shoes, explain the collaboration with Salomon this way: "At Salomon, what you see is pure and real, because the designers didn't try to confuse people with visual design first. ”
The shoe, called Salomon ×The Broken Arm Snowcross, is based on Salomon's professional snow training shoe Snowcross, which has not been overly changed, only replacing the sole with a rubber sole suitable for daily walking, adding turquoise and orange colors of reflective material to the upper.
上图：Salomon×The Broken Arm Snowcross
Although the collaboration with The Broken Arm had limited influence that year, the test was still a small success and allowed Salomon to see the potential to expand lifestyle products. German fashion trend website Highsnobiety reported at the time: "Salomon caught up with the functional wind era pioneered by Nike ACG and Acronym. ”
Note: Functional wind is a kind of dark color system, multi-pocket, drawstring, zipper design, focus on functionality, very futuristic and technological sense of clothing style. The Acronym brand founded by German designer Errolson Hugh in 1994 is a pioneer brand of functional wind, and in 2014, Errolson Hugh began to cooperate with Nike to restart Nike's outdoor regional ACG and bring functional wind into the public eye.
Trend media often use "functional wind" to describe Salomon, but according to the official description of the brand, more with the term "Urban Outdoor", the brand introduced: "Salomon's sports lifestyle series (Sportstyle), on the one hand, inspired by the high-performance shoes in the brand's archives, on the other hand, try to distance itself from the urban fashion community. ”
——The former director of Archaeopteryx joined in, opening up a lifestyle branch line
Lalonde was invited to join Salomon in 2016 as Lifestyle Footwear Program Manager. Lalonde is from Arc'teryx, which also belongs to the Amalfon Group, where he is responsible for The Veilance, the brand's urban functional feeder.
Lalonde first defined a lifestyle feeder under the name "Advanced", featuring more everyday casual sneakers, which differed from Salomon's past professional footwear products. Since then, he has established a high-end branch line "S/LAB", focusing on science and technology and experimentation.
Salomon Advanced and S/LAB are two important feeders that have helped get the brand's fashion process on track, and many of the blockbuster shoes since then have come from here, such as the Salomon S/Lab XT-6 (Farfetch, which is priced at $639) and recently, which has been highly talked about on social media (the official website is priced at $230).
The XT-6 was supposedly originally a hiking shoe that was to be discontinued and mold destroyed, but Lalonde saved it after taking office and transformed it with a more stylish color scheme to make the S/Lab XT-6. Lalonde once said in an interview with Voguebusiness: "It makes sense to supplement urban clothing with technical sneakers. ”
Asked what he thinks of consumers' obsession with the "outdoors", Lalonde said: "We found that fashion-oriented shoes do not meet consumers' needs for comfort or protection. By changing the appearance of shoes, it can well cater to the preferences of urban consumers. People need a new product that is both stylish and suitable for outdoor sports. ”
——Break the "outdoor" boundary with the spirit of a startup
When Salomon first introduced footwear products in the early 1990s, it mainly focused on professional outdoor running shoes and hiking shoes. It is said that the acquisition of Salomon by German sportswear giant Adidas (Adidas) was precisely its sneaker hard-sole technology in order to compete with Nike's cushion technology.
As Lalonde puts it, Salomon used to be a "brand focused on outdoor products with a conservative design style." Therefore, "breaking the boundaries of focusing on the outdoors" became a major challenge for him and his team.
When Lalonde first arrived at Salomon's studio in Annecy, France, everything started from scratch, with only two members on his team, Ryan and Maëlle. "We work in a small team, the startup department within a big company. We want to bring a steady stream of ideas and concepts to the market. ”
"Ryan is our shoe designer and he turned my imagination into reality. Maëlle plays a key role in the supply chain, communicating between Salomon's Annecy site and the Asian plant, and she is also the organizer of the team. ”
Salmon's management is very open and open to new things, which helps the company quickly "push boundaries."
"They understood from the beginning that this wasn't something that could happen overnight: fortunately, we had plenty of time to do the right thing," Lalonde says. Slowly and firmly, we laid the right foundation and established contact with the right distributors. Some stylists became interested in our projects, and our work began to appear in various publications. ”
Turning
——Joint cooperation will push the brand to a new height
Inspired by streetwear, Salomon realized that brand collaboration was an effective way to increase awareness and began to push ahead with the fashion industry.
After the collaboration with The Broken Arm first emerged, in 2016, German dark pioneer designer Boris Bidjan Saberi took the initiative to find Salomon to develop a co-branded series, which allowed Salomon's reputation to continue to expand.
In 2018, Salomon debuted at Paris Fashion Week with 11 by Boris Bidjan Saberi's co-branded shoes, an important turning point, winning around 40 orders for the brand and pushing existing retailers to expand their collaborations with the brand. Canadian fashion e-commerce company Ssense has been working with Salomon since 2016, and the number of styles introduced after 2018 has tripled.
上图：Salomon × 11 by Boris Bidjan Saberi
In 2020 and 2021, Comme des Garçons, a brand of Japanese design master Rei Kawakubo, and Salomon created a number of co-branded shoe collections in a row, taking Salomon to new fashion heights.
Salomon and MM6 were unveiled at Milan Fashion Week in February this year as an outdoor running shoe. (MM6's previous blockbuster co-branding in the outdoor field included round jackets and travel bags in collaboration with The North Face, which were sold out after the release.) The joint signature continues MM6's signature deconstructionist approach, highlighted by its high heel, vibrant color scheme and retractable socks. MM6 said in a press release that it hopes that through this collaboration, Salomon's function-oriented shoes that adapt to mountain roads will naturally be brought to the streets of the city.
Salomon's other co-brand targets include: British fashion brand Palace, Japanese fashion brand And Wander, Takahiromiyashita The soloist (Miyashita Takahiro), FUMITO GANRYU (Maruko Literati), Japanese buyer BEAMS, French sports function brand Satisfy, American fashion eyewear manufacturer DistrictVision, American tooling brand Carhartt WIP and so on Co-located retailers include Tokyo-based boutique GR8 and Rei Kawakubo's dover Street Market.
上图:Like Boys × Solomon
Fashion becomes the brand's inspiration library
Guillaume Meyzenq, vice president of salomon's footwear business, has said that the cooperation between brands is not to paste the logo of one brand on another product, but to collide with each other and inject new vitality, "one plus one equals three".
According to Meyzenq, partners often come to Salomon's studio in Annecy in person to work hand-in-hand with designers in Salomon's footwear division. This, he says, is key to keeping the Salomon footwear project alive.
"If our designers had spent a few days working on creative projects with Boris Bidjan Saberi, they would have been more motivated to come back to their desks to develop functional products."
Lalonde added that Boris Bidjan Saberi has given Salomon a lot of inspiration, and his design ideas have penetrated Salomon's main product line and influenced speedcross, one of the most popular shoes. At present, the cooperation between Boris Bidjan Saberi and Salomon has become normalized.
Lalonde said: "Despite early skepticism about fashion's relationship with Salomon, it has proven that fashion has become our inspiration library. The joint collaboration is a big part of the story, he said, as an example: "And Wander's interest in reflective materials has helped broaden our tool library, and Palace has broken down the boundaries of our use of prints." ”
breakthrough
Protecting the brand's DNA, rather than "reinventing" the brand
The fashion collaboration opened up new markets for Salomon, influencing other divisions of the company beyond the trend feeder, including the product design process, overall brand image, and more. But Salomon realizes that "trying to change is also the biggest risk" and that fashion is always looking for the next goal and doesn't have to cater too much to this volatile market in order to retain the base customer base.
Guillaume Meyzenq says, "I want to protect the DNA of design, which is the capital of our brand. Stay true to your creative process – this will take your brand a long way forward. He encourages collaborative collaborations to improve the sense of design, but only if it doesn't come at the expense of the brand DNA of excellence in functionality.
Lalonde also said: "The advantage of Salomon is that we are not trying to reinvent ourselves: it is already part of our DNA, it is real, we are not trying to create something that is completely inconsistent with Salomon." ”
Salomon's star shoe, Speedcross, is widely praised for its stunning grip, and the shoe is constantly innovating, and has now launched its fifth generation. Philippe Besnard, Salomon's design director for sneaker technology and innovation, said the key challenge in launching the fifth generation was how to make the new Speedcross "more like Speedcross."
Philippe Besnard showcased his work process on Salomon's website, summarizing 10 design principles, such as saying, "A designer's job is to determine what can't be changed and which new elements can be introduced." "In the development process, we need to start thinking about design very early, but only if we first identify what the consumer needs." "Only by understanding the deep needs of consumers, only by understanding the key demands and expectations can you be creative and provide solutions that hit people's hearts."
Shifting business focus: from "professional sports" to "sports lifestyle"
In May 2021, Salomon announced an internal restructuring plan to accelerate business diversification. These include "accelerated expansion in market segments with high growth potential," such as hiking and outdoor sports; and acceleration of "market segments with good future prospects," such as running and casual wear.
In support of this goal, Salomon will cut 82 manufacturing jobs out of 738 at the Annecy plant in France and add 59 new jobs at the Annecy Design Centre, 11 of which will go to the apparel research and development department.
Salomon management revealed in an interview with AFP in 2021 that alpine skiing products account for less than a quarter of the company's revenue due to the expansion of non-skiing business. Lalonde introduced in a 2020 interview with voguebusiness that Advanced is its business unit with the most potential for growth.
According to Salomon's official website, at present, its categories are divided into men's wear, women's wear, children's wear, professional sports, sports lifestyle categories, covering cross-country running, road running, hiking/mountaineering, skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing; sports lifestyle category is Advanced-based trend sneakers.
Asked about future plans, Lalonde said: "The urbanization of outdoor shoes is not short-lived, it will have a timeless identity. Like the basketball shoe craze of previous years, that was a big event in the fashion industry. Then there are the racing running shoes. Now, outdoor shoes and trail running shoes are also opening up their own niche in the market. I see a very good outlook on this kind of shoe. ”
About Salomon Salomon:
Founded in the French Alps in 1947 by the family of the same name, Salomon started with ski fixers. In 1966 Salomon's self-developed ski straps appeared at the Olympic Games. After that, the brand business gradually expanded to other outdoor sports such as cross-country, running, mountaineering, hiking and so on.
In 1997, German sporting goods giant Adidas acquired Salomon for $1.35 billion and founded Adidas-Salomon AG.
In 2005, Adidas sold the entire Salomon business unit to Amer Sports, a high-end Finnish sporting goods company, which includes five brands including Salomon and Arc'Teryx. According to an official press release from Adidas at the time, the entire Salomon business unit was valued at €485 million based on data from the end of 2004. At Adidas, Salomon's core business remains dominated by winter and summer sports, further strengthening its position in the field.
After joining the Amalfon Group in 2005, Salomon ushered in the opportunity to "fashion". In March 2019, Salomon joined the Anta Group in China with Amer fin, allowing him to penetrate deeper into the Chinese market. In December last year, ANTA Group released a new ten-year strategy, aiming at Amalfn Group to achieve five "1 billion euro development plans" by 2025, including making Salomon a single brand of "1 billion euros".
Since 2020, Salomon has opened four new stores in China, located in Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Shenzhen and Xi'an. At present, Salomon also has 31 shopping mall direct counters, 10 franchise stores in China, and serves Chinese consumers through the Amalfin Ski Service Center.