Salomon is climbing to another level. In just a few weeks, the French sport apparel and equipment brand has opened an impressive Parisian flagship on the Champs-Élysées, and another statement store in the heart of the capital’s Marais district, on the corner of rue des Francs Bourgeois and rue Vieille du Temple. A retail boost that brings the number of Salomon’s Parisian stores to four, and signals the brand’s ongoing shift to a higher gear.

Following its NYSE listing earlier this year, Amer Sports, in which Chinese group Anta has held a majority stake since 2019, has powered up its retail growth, notably focusing on expanding the footprint of its Canadian brand Arc’teryx, as well as that of Salomon, which Amer Sports bought from Adidas in 2005. Salomon is thriving thanks to the ambitious plans drawn up by Jie Zheng, Amer Sports’s CEO, who has also been appointed the French brand’s CEO ad interim, following Franco Fogliato’s departure. Zheng’s plans for Salomon include upgrading its positioning, and its staff is busy transforming the brand’s product range and identity into that of a mountain sports specialist with an increasingly lifestyle feel.

In recent years, Annecy-based Salomon has become the footwear brand of choice for many urban consumers, and has developed a connection with the world of fashion, notably through the XT6 model. An evolution that became crystal clear a year and a half ago, when Rihanna sported the Cross Low shoes designed in collaboration with MM6 Maison Margiela during the Super Bowl’s half-time show.

“As an American, I knew Salomon as a specialist ski brand. Many savvy practitioners used it. But Salomon’s business structure has changed drastically,” said Scott Mellin, former global VP mountain sports at The North Face, who was named Salomon’s global chief brand officer in January 2023. “In the 90s, [Salomon] was 100% focused on skiing and snowboarding equipment. Nowadays, winter sports equipment accounts for 15% of our total revenue, apparel for 5%, and footwear for 80%,” he added. Salomon’s leading categories are trail and hiking shoes, but the brand is undergoing a profound transformation, after opening the Annecy Design Centre last year. 

“Skiing and snowboarding products are mountain-related businesses, dominated by specialised shops. Now we’re a footwear company first and foremost, so we’re able to control our customers’ experience. To do so, we had to ask ourselves what Salomon really is,” said Mellin. “When I joined nearly two years ago, we didn’t really have a mission statement, or a brand vision. We just had a strong winter sports heritage. I came on board with new, more sophisticated tools, as well as my operational experience with global brands. My first task was to define the brand’s purpose, its mission, its values, and who our consumers are. These same consumers told us that they are young, urban, and with an eye for cool brands. With Salomon, we’re creating a modern mountain sports and lifestyle brand, and we aren’t shy about our expertise. This is the future of mountain sports lifestyle. We’re having such success in the sportstyle arena because people want the mountain experience in their lives. Our fast-growing popularity with the fashion community is linked to our performance know-how. The opportunities we are enjoying via stores in the Marais and the Champs-Élysées [in Paris], and future stores in other major cities, are tied to our ability to bring mountain sports lifestyle to people,” said Mellin.

Expanding the apparel business is envisaged as a strong growth opportunity, but Salomon’s key objectives are linked to the footwear category where, for many years, the brand’s strong suit has been product and technology innovation.

“With technology innovation as our foundation, we are working on sustainability by experimenting on materials, by transitioning newly developed products like the Index [recyclable running shoes] to industrial-scale production, and finally by reviewing our manufacturing operations and bringing them closer to home, as we did last year by starting to produce the ASF 4.0 in the Ardèche region. We also seized the opportunity provided by the Olympics and the Champs-Élysées flagship’s opening to produce a limited edition of the S/Lab Phantasm,” said Guillaume Meyzenq, vice-president footwear.

Footwear “at the core of the sportstyle range”

How does performance-based product innovation feed the new Parisian flagship’s narrative, reaching the broadest possible audience by blending performance and sportstyle? “Authenticity is key,” said Mellin. “You need athletes and innovative products, like the S/Lab [range], to meet the expectations of the sport practitioner community. The Champs-Élysées store is strongly focused on our history and on S/Lab. We must tell our story. Studies have shown that Salomon’s brand awareness rate in Paris is 23%, but in the USA it’s 1%, so it’s very important to convey our DNA. Secondly, it’s extremely significant that shoes that led the performance range 10 years ago now constitute the core of the sportstyle range. This means that we must constantly do our best innovation-wise to develop new technologies and looks, and this will trickle into the sportstyle range in subsequent years,” added Mellin.

It took some time for this evolution to gain traction at Salomon. “The first signs came 10-15 years ago. We carried out several unsuccessful tests, but eventually we were contacted in 2016 by fashion players such as the Broken Arm concept store in Paris and designer Boris Bidjan Saberi. They had realised there was an emerging trend for outdoor activity-themed fashion, people wearing Salomon alongside couture clothes,” said Meyzenq. “We have evolved by staying true to ourselves, and connecting with the right communities. Designers have their point of view, they have taken our products and changed the concept, sometimes with different storylines. And the trend is growing fast, and is attractive because I think we’ve introduced a new perspective. Outdoor performance-inspired sneakers are becoming a genuine segment,” he added.

To strengthen its positioning, Salomon has recently signed up various ambassadors, a novel strategy for the brand as it aims to appeal to fashion and culture-related communities. Salomon has forged links with British singer-songwriter Ama Lou and Colombian-born US musician Feid, to specifically target the US market. However, in terms of brand positioning, the sportstyle approach must remain strongly linked to the performance component.

“We need to work on both aspects simultaneously. A mistake that some brands seem to have made in the past is to swing back and forth between the two, but if you move away from performance, customers will switch to other brands, and you’ll lose authenticity. Salomon’s strategy is [to focus on] both performance and sportstyle elements,” said Mellin. “In the next five to six years, I think the two categories could be worth the same [Salomon does not publish its financial results but it is the most influential brand in Amer Sports’s performance segment, which was worth $1.67 billion in 2023 – editor’s note]. It will depend on the overall value of the business. Our product categories’ potential in the performance market is about five times smaller than their potential in the lifestyle market. A 1% share in the lifestyle market could be equivalent to a 5% share in the performance market,” he added.

Salomon is therefore aiming to reassure its performance customers with new store concepts and campaigns, while also appealing to potentially new customers. “A complex balance to strike,” said Mellin, adding that Salomon’s brand territory “is not in the under €100 bracket. Our core market opportunities are in the €120 to €180 bracket. And I see, for example, that S/Lab [products] have the ability to rise higher, by leveraging innovation and technology. [S/Lab] is one of the lines with the highest market potential in the sport equipment landscape.”

The sky’s the limit? Amer Sports CEO Zheng was in Paris last week, attending various events staged by the group’s brands, but he did not express his views on this.