Samuel Wenger: I joined On because I saw a Swiss business on a mission to go global and turn an established market upside down – disrupting an industry with entrenched players from a market where no one expected it. The founders of On, Olivier Bernhard, David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti, knew that for their Swiss business to succeed globally, On needed to expand beyond its small domestic market very quickly.

On has a can-do attitude focused on winning, rooted in the confidence that we have in our innovation. All our products are engineered in Switzerland, with our in-house research and development teams working across the innovation, engineering, design, and development of our products.

Just like the Cloudtec soles of our shoes, our business runs on innovation, enabled by Swiss engineering. Our products and technical trademarks, from “Cloud”, “Cloudsurfer”, “Cloudswift” and CloudTec®, to our design and technical patents, are integral to our focus on premium performance. When Cloudtec® was developed, it was the only running technology that created soft cushioning without sacrificing forward propulsion.

But the team at On knew that superior technology was not enough on its own. So, we combined it with a unique design aesthetic to create a differentiated silhouette, look and feel across our products. It’s this combination of technology and design that has led to a standout product, loved by athletes and consumers around the world.

Cloudtec® is worn by some of the world’s top athletes, but the comfort, light weight and versatility of our shoes mean they’re also great for people who are coming back from injuries or looking for the ultimate shoe to help them explore a new city. By focusing on performance, we’ve built a product line that’s giving people the performance they need, every day.

Samuel Wenger: Athletes have always been central to our performance brand and are an important differentiator in a hyper-competitive global market. Olivier Bernhard, one of our founders, was a world-title winning tri- and duathlete and developed On’s technology to counter Achilles tendon problems that he experienced towards the end of his career.

On athletes have been a driving force behind our brand from the outset: Belgian triathlete Frederick Van Lierde won the Ironman World Championship in 2013 in one of our earliest products; Swiss triathlete Nicola Spirig won gold at the London Olympics in 2012 and Silver in Rio 2016 wearing On; and Kenyan distance runner Hellen Obiri won back-to-back Boston Marathons in our shoes in 2023 and 2024, prior to winning a bronze medal in her first Olympic marathon in Paris.

Elsewhere at Paris 2024, Swiss triathlete Julie Derron claimed a thrilling silver medal on the banks of the Seine. On also had the privilege of working with the Swiss Olympic Team to develop their athletic apparel for the ultimate sporting stage.

We work very closely with our athletes to guide ongoing product development, drawing on their feedback to trial and test our products. Our partnership with athletes led us to create our Athlete 360 programme, where we support our athletes beyond a simple sponsorship, by providing help with mental and physical preparation, financial planning and so much more.

Digital and social media have been crucial channels for telling our athlete stories, and, in turn, for athletes to promote On to their own audiences, to share tips and offer advice, building on the community feel around our brand. We’ve also created event series across the globe, including our 5k run crew ‘Squad Races’ and our annual ‘Run Your Local Mountain’ events. We’ve invited thousands of active runners across the globe to join and experience our community by testing and discovering On products.

Samuel Wenger: Right from the very beginning, On has focused on finding people who have what we call the “explorer spirit”, that entrepreneurial spark that makes them want to help us take on the big guys and shake up the largest single sports market in the world.

When you have a group that’s so intrinsically motivated, the IPO was simply a stepping stone. It enabled us to bring in more capital, so we could do more and move faster.

We still hire with that same mentality and look for people who share our vision of what we want to build and what we’re going after. Our culture is at our foundation, and it’s something we work very hard to protect; while we have scaled internationally, growth that can often lead to a dilution of culture, we have designed a process for sharing our core values with new joiners which takes place in Switzerland. On’s ‘explorer spirit’ defines our way of doing things and is deeply ingrained in how we all think and operate.

Samuel Wenger: All of us were originally industry outsiders, but one thing that we understood was the power of network and leveraging the help of others. When setting the strategy for the next two, three, four years, we focus on the pathway to getting where we want to go, and then assess who we can bring on board to help us get there.

That applies at all levels across the value chain, from suppliers and vendors to investors. When Hillhouse invested in 2019, we understood that going global quickly was the route to scaling On successfully. We looked for investors who would help us to scale globally to reach our goals.

Samuel Wenger: We observe a growing awareness of sustainability considerations and a willingness to prioritise these considerations across all age groups, albeit these dynamics are more pronounced among the younger generations. Younger consumers are much more environmentally conscious.

At On, we believe that at some point there will be no choice but to be sustainable. Today, brands have three choices: they can ignore sustainability; they can make it their core value proposition; or they can integrate it into what they do. I believe sustainability will become fundamental to doing business: those that ignore it will no longer be commercially competitive; those that make it their value proposition will have no differentiation; and those that make it part of their business will win.

You can see this approach in the way we do things at On – our technology and focus on performance remains our differentiator, but we take it upon ourselves to show what’s possible in making the best-performing product more sustainable or even circular.

Learn more about Hillhouse’s other portfolio companies here.