Puma’s new running shoes offer hope for a brand desperate to win

In January, Puma launched a grassroots marketing campaign to turbocharge its return to the sport of running. The 77-year-old German shoemaker put out a call on social media for people signed up to compete in this spring’s Boston and London marathons, with the only requirement being a record of finishing marathons in about three hours or less. It picked 100 participants in each race and supplied them with its “Fast-R Nitro Elite 3” sneakers, which at that point were still a tightly held corporate secret. With thousands of runners headed to Boston for the annual marathon on Monday, Puma is banking on its army of amateur ambassadors finishing just behind the professionals. That would serve as a splashy debut for the new $300 shoe, which the company is using to regain ground in a sport it long ago helped popularize. A grassroots ambush strategy “It’s a little bit of an ambush,” says Erin Longin, general manager for Puma’s running division. “I hope people are like, ‘Wow, what is that shoe everybody’s wearing?’” Running shoes are among the hottest selling items in footwear, according to data from market researcher Circana, with the U.S. market alone growing 6% last year to $7.4 billion. By focusing on bouncy, plushly cushioned models — an approach partly innovated by Nike — new brands like On and Deckers Outdoor’s Hoka have seized market share, alongside re-energized incumbents like Brooks, New Balance and Asics. Puma, meanwhile, is racing to catch up. The company only reentered the hardcore running space in 2021. Since then, it’s struggled on the fashion side of the business, one reason why the stock has plunged 82% from its peak. Earlier this month, CEO Arne Freundt left the company after just two years over disagreements with the supervisory board. The race to win back runners’ hearts Puma was once a pioneer in the running world. In 1964, Ethiopian Abebe Bikila defended his Olympic marathon gold in a pair of the brand’s Osaka shoes. In the 1980s, American long-distance legend Bill Rodgers served as director of Puma’s “Running Institute” and raced in its Fast Riders. But after repeated changes in ownership and a pivot to “sports lifestyle” products that emphasized socks, sweatpants and underwear, the company fell into obscurity with serious runners. That started to change in 2018, when then-CEO Bjoern Gulden began plotting a return to running after overhauling the company’s football and basketball lines. The goal was not to imitate Nike and other competitors for a quick revenue boost, but to develop a unique line of products that would build long-term credibility, Romain Girard, Puma’s head of innovation, said in a recent interview at the company headquarters near Nuremberg. The new models certainly needed to resonate with serious athletes. But longer term, Puma wanted to tap into the ballooning market of people snapping up comfy running shoes for day-to-day wear — an opportunity that incumbents like Nike and Adidas had missed. The nitro revolution A prerequisite for that was developing a new foam. After experimenting with various materials and chemistries, Puma landed on a version injected with nitrogen gas for added bounce. To demonstrate how the technology has improved over the years, Girard dropped small metal balls onto different types of Puma foam soles, watching them ricochet higher and higher as the models progressed. In February 2021, Puma launched its new line, releasing five styles that all featured the Nitro foam. Four years on, the shoes have garnered plenty of praise, but that hasn’t been enough to revitalize the brand. Last summer, U.S. running-store chain Fleet Feet published a report with data from its nearly 300 locations which showed that Hoka, Brooks and On had become the most popular brands. Puma didn’t even make the top 10. Today, Puma is still only available in 20 Fleet Feet locations across the U.S., though it’s performing well in many of those. “They have a very good running platform in Nitro, which is better than a lot of the other things on the market,” said Piral Dadhania, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London. “They just haven’t been doing a good enough job of commercializing it.” When Adidas veteran Arthur Hoeld takes over as Puma’s next CEO in July, that will likely be at the top of his list. While there is no consensus among analysts on how Hoeld might want to tweak the company’s overall strategy, pretty much everyone agrees that the Nitro franchise is one area where Puma could gain traction among consumers willing to drop huge sums of money on sneakers. “Nitro is a nice premium offering for them and the shoes look really good in that space,” John Kernan, an analyst at TD Securities in New York, said in an interview. “But it’s going to take time to scale because the competitive environment is pretty tough.” Supershoe arms race heats up That’s where guerilla marketing strategies like the Boston Marathon campaign come in. Supershoes like the Fast-R 3 are the culmination of years of research and design efforts — and a way for brands to generate buzz and boost prices. In 2023, Adidas debuted a featherweight, $500 racing shoe. Last fall, On released a $330 model produced largely by a synthetic-spraying robot. Puma’s new model comes with a marketing blitz of its own, including promises from experts that the shoes can slash minutes from people’s marathon times. In Boston and London, Puma hopes to win over hardcore runners — and many more customers — with the spectacle of its athletes leading the way, cheered on by thousands of fans. And, of course, it hopes to give its sponsored marathoners a better chance to win. Since joining Puma in 2022, Patrick Tiernan has stayed competitive with rivals clad in, say, shoes from his old sponsor, Nike. Now, the 30-year-old Australian Olympian believes that the Fast-R 3 just may increase the efficiency of his stride enough to give him an edge. “This is definitely the first time I’ve thought: ‘These shoes might actually be better than what these other guys are wearing,’” he said in an interview. By Tim Loh

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Puma’s new running shoes offer hope for a brand desperate to win