PARIS — Gorpcore “doesn’t really exist anymore,” and new competitors piling into the trail running space are “chipping away at our competitive advantage” in the category, said Salomon’s chief executive, Guillaume Meyzenq.
Those challenges haven’t stopped the brand yet. Its popular XT-6 sneakers and other styles have become fashion favourites, driving growth for the brand and helping it top $1 billion in footwear revenues last year. In the first nine months of 2025, Salomon’s footwear sales rose by over 30 percent, according to owner Amer Sports.
Meyzenq sees further opportunity ahead as the brand keeps parlaying its credibility in trail running into bigger market segments — the fast-growing sport of running more generally, and sportstyle sneakers for casual wear, a market roughly three times bigger than that for running shoes, according to market intelligence firm Circana.
Salomon’s next move is to open its first Paris hub—a key step for the brand’s effort to expand internationally while growing in new categories, Meyzenq said. The multi-level, 1,500 square-metre space inaugurated Tuesday includes a showroom, event venue and offices that will allow the brand to employ 20 or so full-time employees in Paris, with an ambition to grow its team in the French capital to as many as 50 people mid-term.
While sales beyond Europe now account for half the business — compared to just 25 percent prior to Amer Sports’ 2019 acquisition by China’s Anta and Chip Wilson — the company has until now remained deeply anchored to its homebase in Annecy, a city of 130,000 people in the French Alps, where it employs over 800 people. “Our founding family’s vision was really focused on product innovation for mountain sports. We’ve continued to do all of our design, research and prototyping there,” Meyzenq said.
The new Paris office has become a necessity as the brand matures, allowing it to more easily host buyers and business partners from international markets, as well as tapping the city’s design talent. Salomon plans to name its first creative director next year—a major step in its evolution as a nascent lifestyle and fashion brand.
Founded as a skiing brand in 1947, Salomon grew into a world leader in trail running, with a market share approaching 20 percent. But it has built a global name beyond mountain sports in recent years as customers increasingly adopted its trail running sneakers for everyday footwear.
Its official intersection with fashion didn’t start until 2015, when Paris boutique The Broken Arm started collaborating with the brand on limited edition colourways that were a buzzy local success. The ranks of club kids, fashion staffers, bicycle commuters and art handlers—some of whom had already adopted the shoe as a sturdy companion to city life—began to swell. “Paris is the city that brought us into sportstyle,” Meyzenq said. Collaborations with Boris Bidjan Saberi, Palace and MM6 Maison Margiela followed.
Its current owner, Amer Sports, has been a leader in parlaying momentum from the “gorpcore” trend of edgy, urban shoppers wearing technical sports brands as fashion to grow a sizeable position as a lifestyle brand. Even if first adopters have pulled back on technical silhouettes—favouring loafers, boots and terrace sneakers to chunky sports shapes—Amer’s brands like Arcter’yx and Salomon are still riding the wave of surging brand awareness in the wake of the trend.
But the brand will need to start creating fashion demand more actively if it wants to keep up its winning streak.
It’s already hedged against fashion fatigue by following up its logo-heavy, chunky XT-4 and XT-6 shoes with the more streamlined XT- Whisper, which Meyzenq said customers see as a “less strident” option. Since 2024 the brand has commissioned special-edition colourways of the XT-Whisper from Sandy Liang, Kith, Beams and Aries.
But as Salomon grows, these tie-ups may no longer be enough to move the needle. “A good collab should contribute to our image, not our volumes,” Meyzenq said.
By beefing up its design functions, Meyzenq hopes to accelerate the brand’s sportstyle offer in-house. In the wake of peak gorpcore, the brand needs to inspire a wider audience in ways that still align with its sporty, off-beat message.
“Once you lose that initial cool factor, it’s hard to get it back, so now we see Salomon investing in becoming a lifestyle brand more generally,” said Florian Malfroy, co-founder of fashion consultancy Services Continu. Salomon now sponsors more mainstream music festivals like We Love Green in France, while courting French rappers as collaborators and influencers.
The critical question is how far the brand can widen its fashion audience without undermining its technical credibility.
While fashion collabs could appear as dilutive to the brand’s mountain sports focus, a bigger presence in the lifestyle category can actually create a virtuous circle, according to Circana analyst Beth Goldstein. “Credibility in performance leads to interest in brands’ lifestyle. But credibility in lifestyle can lead back to interest in performance, too, so long as a brand has legitimacy” Goldstein said.
Success in lifestyle footwear is simply a far bigger platform for making consumers aware of a brand. She points to recent momentum for running styles from Adidas, which is gaining renewed traction in sports following recent successes in terrace shoes like the Samba.
Meyzenq said Salomon’s running business is enjoying fresh momentum as the sport continues to grow on top of last year’s boom. The performance running category is set to end the year with sales up 9 percent in the US, according to Circana, with growth fuelled by both increased prices and volumes.
Rising interest in ultra-marathons is increasing the spotlight on trail shoes in particular — Salomon’s longtime stronghold. But along with that interest has come increased competition — with Hoka, On and multi-sports giants like Nike all trying to cash in.
The brand is countering that dynamic with a renewed push on the multi-surface running segment (also known as gravel), which it sees as a promising intersection between its reputation for ultra-hardy footwear and an increasingly urban audience. “Our competitive edge in trail is being chipped away at, but it’s just a fraction of the overall running market,” Meyzenq said.
Salomon is also ramping up its top-end “S/Lab” range, leaning into the increased intersection between wellness, sports and luxury. The brand fetches $250 for its S/Lab Ultra Glide shoe, featuring a sole with hollowed-out bubbles that massage the foot while running.
“In times when you have a lot of uncertainty, people are willing to invest more and more in their health,” Meyzenq said. “Innovation is pushing the psychological barriers for pricing too. There’s a lot of momentum now in the $200 to $300 range which barely existed a few years ago.”