To celebrate 25 years as an iconic and global youth lifestyle brand, Englewood's Airwalk has planned a season-long celebration filled with signature shoe reissues, events and digital initiatives to give consumers access to Airwalk's rich brand history.
Erika Sauerwein, Airwalk's Marketing Manager, joined Susie Wargin for the latest Sidebar to talk about the evolution of the company and why they are so popular.
Founded in 1986 at the request of Tony Hawk and named for a trick invented by Hawk, Airwalk was one of the first board sports brands, inspired by and made for skaters. Airwalk brought a skater's perspective to the design and development of the shoes, creating innovative solutions that offered comfort, durability and protection features to solve common issues skaters had at the time using regular sneakers. Twenty-five years later as the skateboarding market has grown into a huge and established business, Airwalk maintains a significant share of consumer loyalists with distribution in more than 100 countries across the globe.
Styles including the Enigma, the Reflex, the One, the Jim, the Prototype 540 and the Outland collection quickly became ubiquitous in the marketplace. Airwalk pushed the envelope in footwear design, engaging its athletes' point of view and consistently pushing boundaries in color, texture, technology and brand marketing. The brand took risks, balancing its spirit of irreverence with athlete input and highly functional product at a time when other brands played it safe.
As Airwalk grew and evolved it expanded its reach into other disciplines outside skateboarding, developing products tailor-made for BMX and snowboarding. In fact, Airwalk was the first board sports company to introduce a snowboard-specific boot and BMX-specific shoe to the market. Airwalk continued to grow its product offering to include active and casual footwear, apparel, outerwear, hardgoods (including snowboards and bindings) and accessories. And as a result, by the mid-1990s, Airwalk was considered the sixth most influential brand worldwide and the third hottest shoe brand on the market, behind only Nike and Reebok.
To celebrate the year's milestone, Airwalk is reintroducing a staple of special products throughout the year, all available exclusively at www.Airwalk.com/shop
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