Influx

Airwalk, founded in 1986 had been one of the success stories of the late 1980s and early 1990s. A younger Tony Hawk and Jason Lee even used to ride for them. However, after the incredible burst of initial success, Airwalk later became the poster child for how not to market shoes to the skate community. In a famously documented case, Airwalk went mass and alienated its core target and its base, the independent skate store.

Airwalk is trying to make a comeback, in fact, they have been trying since 2001, when the company was purchased by an investment fund. However, late in 2003, the investment company ran into trouble, working capital ran short and collections were cancelled.

The company reformed and as a solution, started selling licenses. BBC International, the company behind Everlast, signed a three-year deal to manage the footwear brand.

The company is now back with new product, new advertising and a new positioning based around lifestyle. According to Bruce Pettet, president and CEO of Englewood, Colo. -based Collective Licensing International, owner of the Airwalk brand. “Skate is a part of our heritage and we will always have skate product — that’s important to us. But we really feel strongly that focusing on us as a lifestyle brand and focusing on the combination of authenticity and style is what is important to Airwalk.”

Using the talents of celebrity fashion photographer, Michael Muller, Airwalk are looking at skate purely through a fashion lens. The look is provocative, being style and fashion driven, rather than sport and reality driven. It uses models, incredible lighting and harks back to the style of the original advertising. It’s certainly different for the category.

muller’s portfolio

airwalk’s new site

Skateboarding is now obviously mass. Retailer PacSun and ESPN’s X-Games succeeded in bringing skate/surf culture to the masses. Airwalk is banking on being able to ride on the fashion wave for retro and skate and there are a ton of retail accounts that will be interested in them for that reason.

The challenge for Airwalk in building a brand for the long-term will be the consumer. It remains to be seen if they are happy to accept a skate shoe brand that perpetuates the blatant fashionization of the category. This bucks the trend of most skate shoe brands that have built credibility through core athletes, teams and product design and allow the masses to pick on the brand on the brand’s terms. Airwalk seems like a blatant fast play for the mass market, and it might well succeed if the products are right.

At least, Airwalk seems to be consistent with the lifestyle story; even the handful of sponsored athletes are multi-faceted; model and surfer, skater and musician, as if to illustrate the point. It also seems to understand the irrelevance of history for its target, making only subtle reference to the past, rather than being tempted to give an overt history lesson.

We might well be looking at 2005, as the year Airwalk returned unabashedly to the mass market, this time without the fear of alienating anyone.