What Comes After Adidas’ Samba?

What goes up should come down, even the Adidas Samba.

The sneaker was a megahit with girls in 2024, serving to to gas a turnaround at Adidas and usher in an even bigger development of low-profile silhouettes. Though girls are simply 40 p.c of StockX’s clients, they drove up Adidas’ gross sales on the resale platform by 50 p.c in 2024 as they purchased up Sambas and different low-profile “terrace” fashions like Gazelles.

As we speak, it might be previous its pinnacle. Knowledge from Google Developments reveals search curiosity for the Samba over the previous 12 months peaked within the US in August 2024 and globally in November.

However even when the shoe is cooling off, the ladies’s sneaker market isn’t. Sneakers have stepped over different girls’s footwear classes throughout a second when girls’s sports activities such because the WNBA have exploded in recognition and post-pandemic traits have positioned extra emphasis on comfort-dressing. Within the US, gross sales of ladies’s sneakers totaled over $17 billion in 2024, up 9 p.c from 2023 and 14 p.c since 2022, based on the patron monitoring service Circana.

“It’s undoubtedly the largest space at this level, after we have a look at the efficiency piece and the approach to life piece collectively,” mentioned Beth Goldstein, Circana’s government director and business analyst for footwear and equipment.

Whereas main sportswear manufacturers have been criticised previously for not paying sufficient consideration to girls, the class’s development has them not solely transferring in lockstep with girls’s sneaker traits, with many seeking to mimic the success of Sambas with their very own low-profile silhouettes, but additionally deepening their efforts to succeed in feminine sneaker customers.

Nike introduced a brand new model in partnership with Kim Kardashian’s Skims in February and put the highlight on girls’s sports activities for its first Tremendous Bowl advert in many years. On launched long-term model partnerships with musician FKA Twigs and actor Zendaya in 2024.

Collaborations inside this house have additionally more and more seemed in direction of rising girls designers, akin to Cecilie Bahnsen, to create boundary-pushing designs that transcend simply slapping an indie designer’s title on a retro type.

Nailing down what works when courting girls’s sneaker patrons might be difficult, nevertheless. Lois Sakany, a director of retail analysis at OTR International and co-founder of the ladies’s sneaker weblog Snobette, mentioned manufacturers can’t assume that what’s widespread in sneakers at giant will resonate with their feminine shoppers, and {that a} lady’s sneaker finances appears to be like very totally different than a person’s as a result of girls usually refresh appears to be like usually whereas additionally dedicating extra revenue in direction of magnificence merchandise.

“Ladies clients are powerful,” Sakany mentioned. “They spend some huge cash, however they spend it extensively and know the panorama in a approach that I feel quite a lot of guys don’t.”

One Measurement Doesn’t Match All

Manufacturers must be cautious of returning to a one-size-fits-all method akin to the broad “shrink it and pink it” perspective of the previous. Ladies are searching for merchandise that match their lives and calls for, moderately than having to regulate their expectations. Usually they’re in search of versatility, although precisely what which means can differ by buyer.

Shelby Weaver, co-founder of the Toronto-based girls’s sneaker boutique and artistic company Makeway, mentioned a part of the explanation low-profile sneakers stay in such excessive demand is that they are often styled with a variety of pant kinds. It permits one good pair of sneakers to suit into quite a few outfits.

“There was a time the place ladies would stroll in and purchase 5 pairs of sneakers. Now they arrive in and concentrate on shopping for one,” mentioned Weaver.

Ladies additionally need merchandise that work for them particularly, which is why Makeway has a bodily retailer and never simply e-commerce, permitting girls to come back attempt on sneakers. Some kinds that work for one client received’t for one more. Abby Albino, who co-founded Makeway with Weaver, mentioned although she personally loves Nike Area Generals, simply because it’s a low-profile mannequin doesn’t imply it has caught on with girls en masse like Adidas Sambas or Puma Speedcats, for instance.

It doesn’t matter what type the shopper lands on, it should fulfill a number of wants. Meaning sneakers that may transition throughout a girl’s whole day, from working within the workplace to working errands or going out within the night, ideally offering consolation each step of the way in which.

Goldstein flagged one of these versatility as a driver behind the success of performance-running manufacturers akin to On and Hoka — principally the other of a low-profile shoe. Even labels identified for conventional girls’s footwear have been making an attempt to capitalise on consolation. Sam Edelman, as an example, launched its first performance-focused line of ladies’s sneakers in January.

A mixture of type and luxury is equally attracting customers to retro trainers. Foot Locker’s chief business officer, Franklin Bracken, referred to as out kinds like New Stability’s 1906 and Asics’ GT-2160 on the corporate’s earnings name final week. Sakany pointed to Nike’s P-6000 as nicely.

She highlighted Dries Van Noten’s suede sneakers as a well-liked alternative amongst designer footwear, although Goldstein famous designer sneakers have misplaced some cachet amongst girls not too long ago on account of tightening wallets and athletic manufacturers turning into bigger standing symbols.

Storytelling Past Ladies’s Sports activities

Past consolation and elegance, what’s key for patrons is advertising and marketing that may emotionally click on with them.

“Ladies are drawn to good storytelling and types that they will connect with via sneakers,” mentioned Weaver.

Granted that advertising and marketing round girls’s sports activities could appear to be probably the most simple and profitable path to participating with girls’s sneaker customers, Sakany believes that solely chatting with the ladies’s buyer via sport may very well be problematic on account of decrease charges of sports activities viewership amongst girls than males.

“You must be sure you’re chatting with her straight and never simply hoping that the halo from being part of this large sporting occasion goes to trickle right down to her,” she mentioned.

Exterior of efficiency merchandise, sneaker customers are searching for novel and numerous storytelling across the product. The explosive rise of Sambas was partly fueled by the silhouette being forefronted in Adidas’ collaborations with Grace Wales Bonner, a Black British designer whose designs are knowledgeable by her personal ethnic heritage. Her newest collaborations with Adidas final yr referenced all the pieces from Seventies New York Metropolis hip-hop to East African marathon runners.

“You’re going to see extra numerous tales that aren’t as apparent or mainstream moderately than the identical kinds of tales over and over,” mentioned Weaver.

When Weaver and Albino opened Makeway in 2020, women-focused sneaker boutiques akin to Maha in Amsterdam and Bare in Copenhagen had been open for many years in Europe. Makeway was one of many first to discover the idea in North America. Weaver and Albino consider they might not have been in a position to open the enterprise a decade in the past as a result of the funding in girls’s sneakers wasn’t obvious but.

However as we speak, they consider girls’s sneakers provide an analogous alternative to girls’s sports activities, the place there’s ample room for development on account of a historic lack of backing. Confidence throughout the class has additionally led to each the latest rise of start-up sneaker manufacturers designed for feminine athletes and extra considerate partnerships throughout the house.

As gross sales of ladies’s sneakers develop, nevertheless, so will competitors within the class, making it vital for manufacturers to hone their approaches.

“There’s simply much more curiosity now round girls’s sports activities,” mentioned Goldstein. “Nike and different manufacturers are attempting to make the most of that.”