Back in 2016, hiking shoe specialist Salomon was set to destroy the molds for its XT-6 sneaker. The model had debuted four years earlier and was getting cycled out. But Jean-Philippe Lalonde, a special projects manager tasked with breaking the company into the fashion world, told the production department to pump the brakes. After Lalonde started playing around with the shoe on his computer, he realized its swoopy lines carried some potential. Two years later, it was back on shelves.
The next year, the XT-6 was GQ’s Sneaker of the Year, and the rest of the company’s catalogue was on its way to taking over the fashion world. Five years after that, Salomon parent Amer Sports is looking to raise as much as $1.8 billion in an initial public offering.
Money shower
Amer is also the parent company of Arc’teryx, whose shell jackets were the main character in a flood of TikToks where proud owners wore them in the shower to show off their water repellency, and Wilson, a maker of tennis rackets and the official game ball of the NBA.
The company lost more than $253 million in 2022 on some $3.6 billion in revenue, both figures larger than the year before, though it says in an offering document that it’s profitable on an operations level. Amer says its losses are mostly thanks to the cost of debt to expand operations, exacerbated by high interest rates, and it intends to use the IPO proceeds to pay off much of that bill.
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