What do Pierre-André Senizergues and the Michelin Man have in common?
More than their roots in France.
Senizergues is the French-American immigrant who founded and runs Lake Forest-based Sole Technology Inc., which makes and markets five brands and has an estimated $120 million in annual revenue.
The Michelin Man—actually named Bibendum—is the puffed-up creation who has served for more than 100 years as the marketing symbol of Clermont-Ferrand-based rubber and tire maker Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin.
A more obvious common thread: Sole Technology and Michelin also both make products that count on rubber to hit the pavement and provide traction, shock absorption and stability.
That explains why Sole Technology’s Etnies brand has struck a deal with Michelin to develop what the two companies are billing as “the most durable skateboard shoe on the market.”
Etnies’ Marana OG model, scheduled to debut in July, will feature Michelin Technical Sole, with material and a design that draw on the rubber company’s rally racing tire. The new outsole—the part of the shoe that makes contact with the ground—aims to increase the shoe’s durability well past its current lifespan of about 23 days of hard-core skating—an average logged by Etnies team rider Chris Joslin.
“Michelin has provided us almost a magic ingredient that we would never be able to find without them—like a super rubber,” said James Appleby, vice president of global sales for Sole Technology.
The Marana shoe launched in 2013, and “it has been our most durable product, outlasting majority of skate footwear for the last three years,” Appleby said. “But what we were finding from a lot of our professional team riders was that the upper (part of the shoe) were actually outlasting the outsoles, which is kind of unheard of.”
The team at Etnies took it upon itself—the brand’s “loyal fan base was not complaining at all about the product,” Appleby said—to reduce the effects of the “constant abuse” skaters put their shoes through. They contacted Michelin, a mainstay of industry in France, with a market value of about $20 billion.
Michelin—like other major rubber and tire companies—is no stranger to shoe manufacturing. It has licensed its shoe sole business to JV International Srl in Como, Italy—a joint venture with China-based Jihua Group Corp. Ltd. that produces and sells technical and clothing fabrics and products made of leather, rubber and their derivatives. Michelin provided soles for Under Armor’s all-terrain shoes, and also for the Hi-Tec, Dickies, TCX, Ride and Magnum brands. Its partnership with Etnies is its first foray into the skateboarding realm.
“They’ve helped us find the optimal tire tread and the (rubber) compound that has the most durability, the most grip and flexibility that matches the needs of performance footwear for skateboarding,” Appleby said, adding that Etnies does not have the manufacturing capabilities, expertise and access to materials to develop a similar product on its own.
“It’s not our thing,” he said. “We made the outsole mold and the design, and Michelin then uses that mold to produce the outsole in their factory. Then they’re shipped to our footwear factory, where they’re assembled with the rest of the product. It’s like Michelin sending tires to a car manufacturer—they just ship the parts (that Etnies purchased) … We have an exclusive agreement with them on skate footwear that they will be our partner on the Marana and maybe future projects if it makes sense with the Etnies collection.”
Michelin isn’t the only rubber company to partner with shoemakers. Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has long supplied various components and materials to numerous brands, and more recently launched a line of athletic shoes of its own.
Not all shoemakers, meanwhile, rely on rubber companies.
Skate apparel and footwear retailer Vans Inc. in Cypress, which ended last year with about $2.2 billion in revenue, does not deal with outside vendors for outsoles, instead using “a proprietary vulcanization method” to make its outsoles, according to the company.
The Etnies deal, in any case, opens doors to “a new young and dynamic market with enormous growth potential for Michelin,” said Filippo Sartor, partnership development manager at licensee JV International.
“The commitment and synergistic collaboration between the two teams—from the designers, R&D and each single person involved in the project—resulted in a three-times more durable sole without compromising the performance of the shoe.”
The Marana OG is made in China and features both the Etnies and Michelin logos. The price of the shoe, which retails for about $75, will remain the same.
“Marana is a product where we have a lot of consumers that once they’ve tried it, they won’t skate anything else and they end up buying the next shoe after the next shoe … We didn’t want to affect that consumer base, so we made it so that the price remains the same globally,” he said. “So they get the benefit of a better shoe—almost like a thank you to those who made it one of our best skate shoes ever.”
Sole Technology also manufactures action sports footwear and apparel under éS, Emerica, Altamont and ThirtyTwo brands.
