Salomon’s push beyond winter sports

Sports equipment and apparel brand Salomon is largely known around the world for its winter sports gear, and for good reason. The company, which has been around since 1947, contributed to the invention of seven Olympic sports, including ski cross, boardercross, snowboard halfpipe, and freestyle skiing, according to Global Chief Brand Officer Scott Mellin.

While winter sports remain core to the brand, Mellin wants its reputation to stretch further beyond the slopes and deeper into culture, much like how Jordan Brand is linked to basketball, or how Vans has come to represent surf and skate culture.

“We’re the icon of the mountain sport lifestyle,” Mellin told Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions. “The elevator pitch for Salomon is we’re the modern mountain sport lifestyle brand. The dream that we create—you can see this in all of our advertising, all of our communication—is that you can be part of the mountain sport lifestyle.”

Salomon’s history with the Olympics and the Winter Games means that that property is still a major part of the brand’s marketing strategy each year, and Salomon will serve as a premier partner of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games. But Mellin also has an eye on other sports like running, as well as partnerships outside of the sports space.

On the run

Running is a key vertical for the brand, and Salomon is leaning in beyond just making sneakers. Last fall, Salomon announced a line of shoes called Grvl, which are specifically designed for gravel running, which is something of a middle ground between road running and trail running, Mellin explained.

That effort to “see the next thing” in sports and develop products around those trends, like Salomon’s gravel running shoes, clothes, bags, belts, and bottles, ideally helps embed the brand in culture, he said.

“That triangle of white space, product innovation, and culture is really a secret sauce of Salomon,” Mellin said.

Salomon is also in the process of nominating trail running to be included in the Olympics for the first time in 2034, he said, which “would be good for the business” in general—“not just Solomon.” For now, the company has its own teams of trail and road runners, and it has also sponsored marathoner Matthias Kyburz, who competed in the men’s Olympic marathon event in Paris and was, according to Mellin, the first Salomon athlete to participate in the Summer Games.

Before 2034, though, Mellin is focused on Milano Cortina and the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA. The Milano Cortina sponsorship is locked in, and his team has already “identified the size of the commitment that we want to make” and selected which athletes to sponsor for LA28, he said.

Get your kicks

Despite Salomon’s reputation being tied primarily to winter sports, Mellin said that 80% of its sales can be attributed to shoes. And Salomon’s footwear lines aren’t just for intense sport: The brand also sells lifestyle sneakers, which gives it a natural path into the fashion and art worlds.

As Mellin works to build out Salomon’s associations with culture and sports, the brand is tying up with events outside of the Olympics, including Paris Fashion Week and Art Basel. At Paris Fashion Week, Salomon’s Sportstyle vertical was involved in several activations, including a collab with fashion label Sandy Liang.

Details of the Art Basel collab have yet to be officially announced, but Mellin told us it marks the brand’s first venture into the art space, which he expects will be a natural fit given that “there are so many runners in the art world.” Even the products in the Sportstyle line tie back to Salomon’s more practical athletic roots: Some of those shoes are Salomon trail-running sneakers from 10 years ago that younger people in Paris started wearing as a fashion statement, Mellin said.

“We’re pushing into lifestyle, and that side of the business is really growing, but it’s an authentic integration into urban culture,” he said.