Nike and Adidas are back in the running shoe race
On and Hoka seized their chance when the sportswear giants lost ground. Now Nike and Adidas are accelerating again – and the challengers are starting to slow.
Nike is fighting back in the running shoe market after losing ground to fast-growing challengers such as On and Hoka. (Photo: iStock)
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Strength and speed don’t always go together. In some industries, large companies can get complacent, leaving room for focused minnows to steal a march. So it has been in the market for running shoes, where brands such as On Holding and Hoka have made inroads versus Nike and Adidas. Now, the giants are regaining ground.
Nimbler brands snuck in when the titans of sportswear lost momentum. But Nike’s running business is improving. Its latest earnings marked the fifth successive quarter of double-digit sales growth in its running division. Having pulled away from selling shoes through third-party retailers, its wholesale business should return to growth of about 4 per cent by 2028, analysts polled by Visible Alpha reckon.
Adidas’s running shoe sales were up almost 30 per cent in the first quarter, year on year — and wearers include athlete Sabastian Sawe, the first person to complete a competitive marathon in under two hours. Puma’s running division has been growing even as the company’s footwear sales overall fell.
The newcomers, meanwhile, are losing speed. On Holding grew less than analysts had anticipated for the first time last quarter. Hoka’s same-store direct-to-consumer growth dropped to a more pedestrian 4.6 per cent last year. Piper Sandler analysts reckon second-quarter sales at privately held rival Brooks grew by only mid-single digits.
It is normal for start-ups with meteoric growth to slow eventually. But there are signs the incumbents may be starting to win back consumers. Across sporting goods, US shoppers increasingly prefer established sportswear brands, while the share that prefer challenger brands has fallen compared with last year, according to a consumer survey by RBC.
There can be a few winners: between 2018 and 2025, the global running market almost doubled. But its rate of expansion has slowed, from more than a tenth per year in 2022 to 8 per cent since, Deutsche Bank estimates. It may help On and Hoka that running shoes have the advantage of loyalty: once a runner finds a pair that works, they tend to stick with the brand. But the upstarts should beware: the giants of sportswear seem to have taken the competition in their stride.
This story originally appeared in The Financial Times © 2026
Source: Financial Times/bt
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