Why Running On Clouds Wasn’t a Castle in The Sky

On was founded in 2010 by David Allemann, Caspar Coppetti and Olivier Bernhard in Zurich. Their plan is to conquer the running world with a new shoe, based on a special outsole patent called «Cloudtec».

They got told that trying to establish a running shoe company out of Zurich, Switzerland, is nuts and that the market is totally saturated. This is no obstacle for Thilo Alex Brunner to accept an invitation to a design pitch about the product design of the first On shoe. He won it. So the people who had never produced a running shoe chose the only designer in the pitch who had never designed a running shoe.

What could possibly go wrong?

Fast forward to 2019: On has been the fastest growing shoe company in the world for several consecutive years.

Thilo tells why inspiration does not fall from heaven but is hard work, why people at On are constantly asked to disrupt themselves in their work and why eventually running on clouds did not remain a castle in the sky.