From Alpine Trails To City Streets, Salomon Is In It For The Long Run

Ask anyone born before the 1990s about Salomon, and they’ll likely think of skiing. Founded in the French Alps, the brand became a pioneer in winter sports equipment, starting with its first toe piece for ski bindings in the 1950s followed by the SX90 and SNS Nordic ski boots. In just a few years, Salomon had established itself as a reference in alpine performance.

Today, less than 10% of its sales come from skiing. The brand is now better known for trail running, hiking, and increasingly, urban wear. The XT-6 shoe has become one of Salomon’s emblematic products — worn as much by individuals pacing through city streets than those running on mountain trails. Guiding this evolution is Scott Mellin, who joined as Chief Brand Officer in 2023 with a clear mission: to transform and grow Salomon’s global influence, without losing sight of its roots.

“Invented In The Mountains, Reinvented In Paris”

Since evolving from its skiing heritage, Salomon anchored itself in trail running. Its focus remains to engineer the best solutions for athletes, guided by innovation and performance. Yet the XT-6, XT-4, and XT Whisper — all designed over a decade ago for trail runners — have now also become the favorite footwear of city dwellers, celebrities, and designers.

Mellin explains how it all started: “Someone from the Broken Arm [a concept store based in Paris] called me and said: ‘All of these kids in Paris are wearing their dad’s old XT-6s. It’s becoming a fashion trend, and I was thinking that if you recreate them, we’ll bring them into the store,’ and that is how it started.” The brand saw an opportunity and adapted, without changing lanes or compromising its reason for being.

“This wasn’t Salomon making fashion a strategy. It was kids adopting our styles for urban culture,” he says, emphasizing a spontaneous integration into the fashion space. “Since then, that’s essentially been the formula: we take historic styles that were built for the UTMB [Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, a mountain ultramarathon race] or trail running races around the world and we revisit them. We don’t change the technology. We don’t change anything. They’re still trail running shoes that have been slightly revisited for culture”.

Given the size of the lifestyle market, the temptation to pivot more intentionally toward fashion would be understandable. “The running footwear industry is $27 billion globally, while the market for fashion footwear is more than $100 billion, so it’ very easy for a brand to want to go for a bigger addressable market,” explains Mellin. Many competitors have done so over the years, often losing sight of their heritage and hurting their reputation.

Instead, Mellin’s focus is on authenticity. Since his arrival, the company has embraced its lifestyle appeal, leading to a structural divide between performance and sportstyle, without one side ever dominating the other. “Our brand strategy is always 50/50: we equally fund our performance and sportstyle marketing. The cadence of communication is equal so that we don’t become asymmetric to one side of the business or the other,” he tells us. This balance has strengthened brand equity across two very different worlds that may, however, not be so distinct.

When Performance Meets Culture: Creating Footwear For Hybrid Lifestyles

Embracing this evolution led Salomon to realize customers don’t fit a single box. Avid hikers can spend as much time climbing mountains as they do exploring art galleries, the same way individuals choosing city life can also love the outdoors. The hybrid nature of today’s consumers was actually a white space Mellin and his team identified and decided to address, resulting in Salomon’s first gravel shoe. “We saw a white space opportunity between road and trail, which was to bring individuals from an urban environment into nature but not necessarily on a knife-edge ridge,” says Mellin. The idea was to design a shoe that resonated with people wanting to get out into nature in an accessible, less technical way.

Cristelle Robert, senior director of performance soft goods, echoes the opportunity they identified: “We needed a solution for the city and gravel became our gateway because it is hybrid, diverse, and answers a consumer need looking for something unique that fits how diverse their lifestyle is.”

Creating the gravel shoe didn’t just fill a market gap: it brought a new dimension to the company. “I was looking at this commercial opportunity through the lens of gravel, but I was also looking at gravel as a cultural reawakening of Salomon, and it worked extremely well,” Mellin admits. Through this approach, Salomon reignited the values of innovation and bravery the brand was founded upon. It elevated its commitment to sportsmanship and the outdoors into a cultural movement, both internally and externally. Employees became united by a sense of purpose and culture made possible through a clear vision, something many brands either fail to define or lose over time.

At the same time, Salomon embraced the cultural shift that turned running into a social connector. The trend accelerated in the past five years, with what was once an individual sport becoming a collective experience. Strava — the $2 billion fitness app turned social network — now connects 135 million runners and hikers, with run clubs representing nearly 40% of its global groups. Cafés and brands are launching their own running clubs to foster engagement, with members sharing a run and coffee while adopting the runner’s aesthetic as part of urban life. In this context, sports footwear found itself at the center of new venues, with the line between running and culture continuing to blur.

The Salomon customer embodies this duality. “The overlap between our performance and sportstyle consumer profile is 76%,” shares Mellin, highlighting just how well Salomon is speaking to different needs and occasions. “We understand that the consumer is fluid. And they will go back and forth, depending on what they need for the moment, whether it’s athletic pursuit or going to a fancy dinner.” In response, Salomon designs footwear for both forest climbs and city occasions with the same focus on comfort and technicality, a balance that might just explain the brand’s ongoing success.

The Road Ahead

When asked how Salomon will navigate continuous growth and competition, Mellin’s answer is clear: consistency. The brand’s positioning, product line, and visual expression remain the same across regions. Depending on location, certain stores lean more toward performance or sportstyle, but the overall universe is consistent.

“You have to maintain consistency: coupled with strong brand discipline, that’s how you create lasting impact,” reaffirms Mellin. So far, this strategy is working. Last year, Salomon reached $1 billion in sales — still a small share of the $180 billion global footwear market, but a clear sign of momentum and headroom to grow. The brand continues to expand significantly in Asia, open new stores globally, and launch collaborations with designers like MM6 Maison Margiela, while pursuing innovation with new footwear expected in 2026.

Through it all, sportsmanship remains the driving force of the brand. Next year, Salomon will serve as a premium sponsor of the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, providing outfits for all volunteers. The partnership nods to its alpine origins and reaffirms the values that defined the brand from the start: sports performance, family spirit, and authenticity.

As Salomon looks ahead, its challenge won’t be to reinvent itself again, but to maintain this level of consistency across the worlds it now inhabits, from mountaintops to city pavements. For Scott Mellin, the ambition is clear: to safeguard this pursuit of excellence while becoming a top-five footwear brand.

“I hope that twenty years from now, people think of Salomon as their favorite footwear brand.” A wish that may not be so far off.