Running shoe brand Asics Corp. and its work with contemporary streetwear brand Kith NYC found plenty of buyers last week, outside Asics’ traditional base of hard-core runners.
About half of a new collection between Asics and Kith, named The Palette, was sold out as of last week.
The Black Friday drop, totaling 30 stock-keeping units, reflected the 30 colorways used most often by Kith applied to Asics’ well-known Gel Lyte-3 running shoe.
Three-hundred pairs of shoes were produced per colorway, retailing for $180 and sold exclusively through Kith stores and its online site.
“I worked backwards from it being the 30th anniversary of a very special silhouette this year,” Kith founder Ronnie Fieg told his social media followers ahead of the collection’s launch. “It had to be 30 shoes. There was no other way for me to celebrate my history with the Gel-Lyte 3.”
Collaborations such as the one with Fieg, a buzzy name in fashion, score big points for the Asics brand outside of the core athlete demographic. It also adds buzz in a year that left a lot to be desired among brands such as Asics and other marketers with the cancellation of the Olympic games in Tokyo due to the pandemic.
The running shoe company began this year with what it coined its ‘Vision2030’ growth plan. The key components of the strategy include product innovation such as smart shoe technology for more personalized shoes tailored to individual wearers’ feet; sports facilities; and greater use of technology and data, such as sensors, for consumers playing a sport or in other areas of their lives.
Asics originally planned for sales of $7.2 billion by the end of this calendar year, a target created in 2015. That’s since been revised to $4.8 billion, with the company citing shifts in consumer trends and its retail distribution.
The company in October named Richard Sullivan president and COO of Asics North America, a move effective as of last month. Sullivan previously served as executive vice president of the region in the Boston office. A spokesman for Asics declined to say where Sullivan will be based.
