When Deckers acquired HOKA in 2012, it described the transaction as immaterial to its financial statements.
Fourteen years later, HOKA generates $2.587 billion of annual revenue and accounts for 47% of Deckers sales.
The brand has already completed the difficult journey from a shoe built for ultrarunners into one of the largest names in performance footwear. The question now is what happens when a disruptive brand becomes a very large business.
Growth is continuing, but HOKA is entering a different phase. Deckers is spending heavily to expand internationally, open stores, build its direct business, develop new product franchises and push further into lifestyle. At the same time, the running market around HOKA has become much more competitive, and many of the ideas that once made the brand look radically different are now common across the category.
The opportunity is still enormous. So is the execution challenge.
Deckers believes HOKA can keep growing at a low double digit rate through the end of the decade. Getting there will require the company to find a much larger business beyond the growth model that brought it this far.
The first HOKA story was about proving the product.
The second is about whether Deckers can turn HOKA into a much larger global brand without losing the economics and credibility that made it special.
365247 Sports gets inside the business of HOKA and what HOKA’s next stage of growth actually looks like….