On Everyone: The Runaway Success of a Pioneering Swiss Trainer Brand

Trainers were once something bound to their activity – be it running, basketball or tennis. But, 40-odd years on from their first connections to style through hip hop culture, that feels like very old news. These shoes can now signify everything from their wearer’s cultural cache (a pair of Wales Bonner Adidas), to their knowledge of rarities (Dior Air Jordans) to their place among the flat white classes of North London (Vejas). 

In 2025, the fusion of functional footwear with fashion’s semiotics is fully locked in, with the stripes of Adidas, the tick of Nike and the star of Converse a regular sight on any morning commute in cities around the world. If these familiar names have dominated over decades, a cluster of smaller brands like Asics, Salomon, Hoka and Saucony have made a land grab recently, leading with their connections to running or hiking, and then dipping their cushioned toes into more fashion-led territory. Out of this cohort, On Running is ahead. Its bestseller Cloud 6, with the signature ridged sole, is close to becoming a classic – and a case study in how to make a design that performs for runners (whether marathon or the couch-to-5K type) but also appeals way beyond that function. Over the course of the last month, I have spotted it everywhere: at bus stops, on tube escalators and in meetings. 

On is now worn by gymsharks, yoga obsessives, by kids in Liverpool, the Arsenal legend Thierry Henry hanging out with the ‘Invincibles’ and by the Ibiza Boss himself. Much like adidas’ three stripes and the Nike tick, there will likely be a point where it reaches critical mass, where we don’t even notice the logo that looks, depending on which way you encounter it, like a word or an abstract doodle of a person without a smiley face.

It was there on a September visit to Tokyo, a city with powerful cultural reach. I was visiting for the World Athletics Championships, as a guest of On. I notice the shoes on serious shoppers – the kind who already wear the brand – at the new store – a clean, modern and concrete heavy space – in Ginza, a shopping district, but also out and about, battered and worn or box fresh and bright white, on the sweltering streets.

It’s yet more on-the-ground evidence of how, in 15 short years, On has run away with running shoes. Their revenue is predicted to rise at least 31% this year, to $3.66bn.(By contrast, Hoka, another upstart in the trainer world, is doing well but not reaching those numbers – it had a 23.3% growth to $2.23bn).  If some of this success is thanks to designs that function well, it’s also down to On leaning into that very functionality as a way to become aspirational by association. In an era of run clubs and record marathon applications, it signals participation in the current fashionable pastimes, even if you don’t have Strava on your phone. 

The design – minimal branding, recognisable mostly by the sole – means it also channels a grown-up, discreet take on normcore. This is catnip for the wealthy – in London, the On count increases significantly around Bond Street, the place to spot luxury consumers in the wild, spending money. The fact that On originated in Switzerland no doubt helps with this positioning. Although up to £300 rather than tens of thousands of pounds,  the price tag is different, we could think of On as having some things in common with a Swiss-made watch – it signposts a sophisticated knowledge of design, and place amongs the understated elites.

On top of strong running foundations, smart collaborations have helped to cover all cultural bases: FKA Twigs and Zendaya on dance-studio worthy training gear, fashion brand Loewe on trainers and fellow Swiss Roger Federer (an investor in the brand) on tennis shoes mean the brand can appeal to, as a broad sweep, fashion obsessives, City types, people who subscribe to Resident Advisor and West Village girlies. Burna Boy, the most recent addition to the celebrity ranks, as part of its tennis category, might be a surprise but it is, as Daniel-Yaw Miller wrote in his SportsVerse newsletter, another way that On “does things a little differently from its competitors.” On knows the significance of  a pop star with a huge audience beyond those – Sarina Wiegman aside – who likely watch the US Open. It’s the kind of ‘why not?’ thinking that will help them cut through to yet another set of consumers.    

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The brand’s appeal and authenticity of On’s messaging is helped by the lore, the fact that Olivier Bernhard, the co-founder, is an ex-triathlete, and that the company started after Bernhard himself experimented with fusing a garden hose to the bottom of a pair of trainers in 2009, in a bid to make a shoe that gives a cushioned landing and firm push off, a combination that he felt was lacking in the shoes on the market. Eventually, and after a rejection from his own running sponsors Nike, that led to On – set up with friends Caspar Coppetti and David Allemann – and to the now unmistakable  CloudTec sole. 

While Nike still dwarfs On revenue-wise – even in rough spot, the American giant generated $46.3b in profit this year – itmight be looking at the upstart it once rejected. It’ll see comparisons for brand story alone. After all, On’s origins aren’t too far away from the genesis Nike’s own waffle trainer: A running design by co-founder Bill Bowerman that helped Nike take off, the shoe – as Nike stans know – was inspired by an actual waffle iron in his kitchen. 

As with Nike, On doubles down on its functionality message by working with actual athletes. 63 On-sponsored athletes appeared at the World Athletics Championships, up from 30 at the Olympics last year. They included the US’ Bella Whittaker and Jamaica’s Dejanea Oakley, who scored gold and silver medals in the 4 x 400m relays. The brand now works with 260 athletes, mostly runners. Their feedback feeds into the designs – a running vest has strategically placed ventilation cut-outs, for example, or a cropped top comes with extra elastic that allows breathability.

And then there’s the much-heralded Cloudboom Strike LS, – a design that has the potential to take the brand up a gear, and one of the reasons I am in Tokyo. A feather-light sock-like shoe made with LightSpray technology, Hellen Obiri ran the Boston Marathon last year wearing the shoes and won with a time of 2:22:37. Talk to anyone in the On team and the feeling is this is a shoe to revolutionise running, that its the next step in so-called carbon-plated Super Shoes like Nike’s Vaporfly, which caused ripples in the running world in 2017 when it was shown to make the wearer 3-4% faster. A year on from Obiri’s win and at least six athletes wore the Cloudboom Strike LS in Tokyo – including Robert Farken who came sixth in the men’s 1500 metres, and Laura Lungo with was 11th in the women’s marathon. 

The On team were in Tokyo to showcase this jewel in the brand’s crown. On Labs, an immaculate, slightly space age spot in Shibuya (think the Shoreditch of Tokyo), is set up with talks and workshops on everything from meditation to calligraphy. The LightSpray demonstration is the main event, however. A robot arm sprays polymer filament onto a shoe mould for three minutes in a slightly mesmerising manner, creating the sock-like design. Attendees can also try the shoes on – as I do. While, as On admits, they are tricky to get on your feet (a very kind photogenic employee helps me, with considerable effort), it’s worth it. Even as someone who limits their running to ‘for buses’, my feet feel supported and ready to go, like I could line up alongside Julien Alfred and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden.

The potential of LightSpray clearly comes from the design – one that not only helps runners run, thanks to the fact that it is made from two component parts – the soles sourced from Vietnam or China, and the upper made by those robots, currently in Switzerland. Again, the lore will help. The idea dates back to 2018 when design student Johannes Voelchert demonstrated an invention he made to create objects out of the kind of string that kids’ toys make spiderwebs with at Halloween. Bernhard came across it at Milan Design Week and saw its potential to make shoes. Making contact after Milan, Voelchert was soon at the On HQ in Zurich. Several hundred prototypes later, the Cloudboom Strike LS got its first outing on Obiri. 

While it has so far only been reproduced in limited drops for around $300, there are plans to escalate the production – with a new factory with 30 robots being set up to produce the Cloudboom Strike LS in quantities which would see it sold in stores year-round. Pablo Erat, the steely director of LightSpray who wears statement glasses, knows the market is ready: “it’s clear that consumers…are embracing the novelty of such a technology, something that finally takes it to to a new level after the first Super Shoes were introduced some 10 years back,” he said at the Shibuya event. According to the Wall Street Journal, at the end of 2024 tens of thousands of people had registered to buy a pair of the Cloudboom Strike LS. 

While Erat emphasises LightSpray is patented, there’s no doubt it’s on competitors’ radars, too. “I wouldn’t be surprised if other players in the industry are starting to think in similar ways,” he said. “I could very much imagine that we are trailblazers here.” As self-assured as this may sound, it’s a pretty safe bet that those working in trainer design around the world are deconstructing the Cloudboom Strike LS in labs as we speak. 

Voelchert, an excitable twentysomething, is also well aware of the potential. Also in Shibuya, he says it’s great to see people taking videos of the LightSpray technology, as at On Labs, but “what’s really satisfying is if you see someone who bought the shoe, and uses it as an everyday shoe.”

That’s because, even if he loves working with the athletes who provide a petri dish to test ideas, he knows it’s actually not these rarities that will push the Cloudboom Strike LS to the next level. “The customer will decide whether it becomes a one time innovation, or whether it becomes a style or a trend or a classic,” he says. “By creating something, the last thing you should have in mind is a classic. If you do, it’s probably not going to work.” Inventive and innovative but always rooted in what actually works, he could be talking about On itself. When you think about it like that, it’s no wonder it’s going places.

Lauren Cochrane is Senior Fashion Writer at The Guardian and contributes to publications including The Face, ELLE, Service95, Konfekt and Mr Porter. Based in London, she writes about everything from catwalk shows to footballers’ style and the linguistics of Love Island. She is author of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Classics, and the football and fashion newsletter, Style of Play.

All photography courtesy of On.