HOKA: how two runners from the French Alps built a $2.2 billion brand by going against everything

In 2009, two former Salomon employees laced up their trail shoes, looked at the mountain slopes around Annecy, and asked a question nobody else in the running industry was asking: what if more cushioning actually made you faster?

That question became HOKA. And the answer, it turns out, was worth $2.2 billion.

The story of HOKA is one of the clearest examples in sport of what happens when a team ignores consensus and builds from a genuine performance problem rather than a market opportunity. It’s also a story that still shapes how the brand recruits today, because the people they hire are expected to carry that same contrarian, problem-first energy into everything they do.

Two runners, one problem, and a shoe nobody asked for

Nicolas Mermoud and Jean-Luc Diard were not product strategists. They were trail runners who wanted to get down steep mountain terrain faster without wrecking their joints. The shoes available to them in 2009 didn’t solve that problem, so they designed one that did.

Their first prototype featured an oversized midsole built on a principle borrowed from powder skis and oversized mountain bike wheels: more surface area, better absorption, less energy lost to impact. The concept was the polar opposite of where the market was heading. Vibram FiveFingers were selling out. Nike’s Free line was dominant. The industry had collectively decided that less shoe was the answer.

HOKA said more.

Early sales were almost entirely through grassroots channels in European trail running communities, driven by word of mouth from ultrarunners who found that the shoes genuinely reduced fatigue over long mountain efforts. The brand debuted its first prototypes at a trade show in France in late 2009. By 2010, Boulder Running Company in the US, one of the country’s most respected specialty retailers, had picked them up after its co-owner, world marathon champion Mark Plaatjes, tested a prototype and immediately understood what the founders had built.

The name, Hoka One One, pronounced “oh-nay oh-nay”, comes from Māori and means “fly over the earth.” It captured exactly what runners reported feeling when they first ran in them.

The acquisition that could have killed the brand, but didn’t

In 2012-2013, Deckers Brands, the parent company of UGG and Teva, acquired HOKA for approximately $1.1 million when the brand had just over $2 million in annual sales. It was a bet that looked speculative at the time.

The critical decision Deckers made was to leave HOKA’s identity intact. Rather than folding the brand into its distribution infrastructure and pushing volume through mass-market channels, Deckers kept HOKA on what is sometimes called a “pull model”, letting demand build organically through specialty retail and the running community, protecting the premium positioning that made the product credible to serious athletes.

That discipline paid off. HOKA grew from a niche trail running brand into a crossover lifestyle phenomenon without ever losing the performance credibility that started it all. By 2016, Team Trail HOKA became the first team to win the UTMB, the world’s most prestigious ultra-trail race, in both men’s and women’s categories. The brand had earned its place at the top of the sport before it ever appeared in fashion pages.

What the numbers actually tell you

The growth trajectory of HOKA over the past decade is not normal. In fiscal year 2024, the brand posted $1.8 billion in revenue, up 28% from the prior year, representing 42% of Deckers’ total portfolio. In fiscal 2025, that figure grew further to $2.2 billion, a 24% year-on-year increase, with international revenue expanding 39% and now accounting for 34% of global sales.

These are not the numbers of a brand riding a trend. They reflect sustained consumer demand across product categories, geographies, and use cases, from ultra-trail athletes to healthcare workers on their feet all day to fashion-forward buyers in cities.

The brand’s expansion from pure performance into lifestyle has been managed with the same deliberateness that defined its early years. Collaborations with Moncler and Engineered Garments brought HOKA into fashion conversations without diluting the product’s reputation. The result is one of the few sports brands that genuinely operates across performance, athleisure, and fashion simultaneously.

What working at HOKA actually looks like

HOKA’s origin story is not just context, it’s a cultural blueprint that shapes what the brand looks for when it hires. The founders built something by solving a real problem in a community they belonged to. That instinct, going deep into a specific user’s world before building for the mainstream, is still how the brand approaches product, marketing, and growth.

People who thrive at HOKA tend to share some common traits: they understand performance from the inside, they are comfortable with bold decisions that don’t have obvious precedent, and they can operate in an environment that is still scaling fast. International revenue nearly doubled its share of total sales in just a few years. New markets, new product categories, new distribution channels, the teams behind all of this are being built in real time.

The role mix reflects where the brand is in its growth. Commercial and retail profiles are in demand as HOKA expands its direct-to-consumer presence internationally. Brand and marketing roles are critical as the brand balances its performance roots with increasingly mainstream cultural reach. Product development remains the engine, the Annecy office, where it all began, continues to operate as a center of advanced product development.

Why HOKA on SPORTYJOB makes sense

HOKA does not need to explain what it does to the people who find it on SPORTYJOB. The platform’s audience already lives in the world the brand was built for: runners, outdoor enthusiasts, sports professionals, and active lifestyle talent who understand what it means to have a product that actually performs.

For a brand that grew from a trail running community and still measures itself against the toughest athletes in the world, that shared language matters. The people who join HOKA through Sportyjob are not discovering the brand for the first time, they are applying to be part of it.

Explore HOKA’s open roles on SPORTYJOB and see where you fit!

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