Effective April 26, 2024, Dan Sheridan succeeded Jim Weber as CEO of Brooks Running. Sheridan had big shoes to fill when Weber took over as CEO in 2001, as Brooks was on the verge of bankruptcy. However, under Weber’s leadership, Brooks orchestrated a turnaround that has seen the brand become a leader in the run space, with sales reaching $1.3 billion in 2024.
So far, Sheridan is off to a strong start, with sales running up 9 percent in 2024, accelerating to a 15 percent jump in the first quarter. Here, Sheridan discusses Brooks’ recent momentum, entry into the lifestyle footwear category, the tariff playbook, as well as the health of the overall run industry.
How did your first year as Brooks’ CEO go? I am very fortunate as a new CEO. For one, I’m not new to the brand or the business. I will celebrate my 27th year at Brooks in August. New CEOs typically take over a brand that’s either a startup or a struggling business. What I stepped into was an incredibly well-run business—a brand that’s strengthening year-over-year, a product that’s leading the industry, and a strategy and business that are sound. And that comes from the foundation that Jim Weber built over a 20-plus-year career here, but it also came from a group of people that, I’m biased, but I think are the best in the industry.
We strike a balance between working hard and enjoying the journey. So, it’s been incredible. I know this business like the back of my hand, but I’m new to the role and discovering areas as a CEO that I’ve never had to do before. Those have been fun, too. It’s rooted in our strategy, which is having a maniacal focus on performance products and the people that use them as well as an execution strategy that’s a multi-channel strategy around the world because running is local. We excel in that local approach. And then a marketing engine that is authentic and real with the run community. I like to say we’re just getting started on this, and I think we’ve got a lot of growth ahead of us.
What opportunities do you see for Brooks? First off, this category is as hot as I’ve ever seen it. If you look at participation rates around the world, there are more people running and walking than ever. We’re seeing it in events. The London Marathon had close to a million people apply for registrations and only 56,000 finished.
Overall, race registrations are up. The trends are just incredible, and we sit right in the middle of that at Brooks. We’re the number one run brand here in the U.S. For the month of April, we became the number one brand in Germany, the first time the brand has led in any European country. This strategy is working, and there is more opportunity than ever as we look at the total addressable market worldwide.
Our next chapter involves expanding this brand to a wider audience, which is regionally driven. We’ve intense strategies in Europe, where we’re growing like crazy. We’ve been launching over the last two years in China as well. You’re going to see us expand from a region perspective. Also, we know that the runner is evolving, and they want to have more products from brands like Brooks.
We have an intense focus on our apparel business right now, and we’re building that out to be a bigger part of our business. We launched our lifestyle category in the last year, and we’re having a lot of success there. This strategy is one that, we think, we can compete with in every market that we do business, and even in some markets where we’re just getting started, including China.
Have the drivers of success changed? The most important thing for us is to stay focused on our product strategy. We win because we create the best gear for runners worldwide. And we’re staying focused on the consumer insights and the runner insights we need to design and develop and ultimately create the best running gear in the world. And we’ve been able to do that over a 20-plus run here and continue to invest in R&D and innovation for the athlete and the runner.
And then we’re investing in the run community like never before, whether that’s our sales and marketing teams in the market or our sports marketing strategy and what Josh Kerr has been able to do for our brand in his sport as well as what Des Linden is doing in her new chapter. Our investment in the sport is at an all-time high as well. But, I think, the most important thing is that you don’t lose sight of execution. We’ve been able to execute at a store level for our retail partners season after season, encompassing inventory planning, marketing activation, sales programs, and, ultimately, products. Our initiatives remain pretty consistent. We’re committed to this multi-channel strategy where we just think that running is a local sport, and we have to be local in everything we do.
Can you elaborate on the lifestyle launch? Why now? Everything’s about timing, right? But, we’re at a point where what our consumers are saying to us is they want to be part of the Brooks brand not only on their run, but also off the run in their lives. And, we’re lucky because we’re 110 years old, so we have a catalog of products that are authentic in performance run that people are wearing to work, on weekends or just in their everyday lives. We’re bringing back some of these incredible styles that were meaningful in different eras of run, like the Chariot or the early Adrenalines. Lifestyle is here to stay for us.
How is Brooks getting its voice heard and reaching new customers? You need to start with the fact that we’re the number one brand in, ultimately, the most competitive category in sporting goods. And that came out of an intense focus. We like to say at Brooks that a “sharp focus creates mass appeal,” and we’re continuing on that. And this focus on performance run specifically remains a competitive advantage for us. From that, we can begin to expand this brand and how we talk to people, where we talk to them, and the content that we serve them.
A couple years ago, we made a bold move to change our brand campaign and our ethos here at Brooks from “Run Happy” to “Let’s Run There.” And that was a strategic decision of ours to really invite people in and know that we’re along for their journey in fitness and run specifically. And, so, “Let’s Run There” has been an unbelievable move for us to get more people to think about Brooks for whatever physical journey they’re on. It’s also about where we’re showing up that’s helping us talk to more people than we ever have.
We went to Paris Fashion Week in January for the first time to show our brand to a new set of consumers. It was led by our authentic position in performance, but the lifestyle category was at center stage there. We’re also back at events. We sponsor the Barcelona Half Marathon. We showed up at the Tokyo Marathon with a brand activation, and what we’re doing in China now is a similar playbook to other regions where we’re authentic in the run community, but we’re starting to activate a retail muscle there. We opened a store in Shanghai last year and had a pop up in Beijing that went really well. Our goal is to stay focused on a performance pinnacle product strategy and tell more people about it. And right now, the shoe of choice is a performance run product, so that’s why we’re winning and why we’ve had these record results.
Brooks saw double-digit growth in the first quarter. What’s driving the gains? Every single region had double-digit growth in the first quarter. In North America, revenue grew 13 percent in Q1, including 38 percent year-over-year growth in Canada. In the U.S., we’re number one in adult performance running, and that’s really rooted at specialty run and general sporting goods. But within the national retail channels, we had seven of the top 25 styles. In U.S. specialty run, we grew 20 percent. We’re still continuing to grow strongly in our home market. In EMEA, sales were up 11 percent currency-neutral with big market share wins in France and Germany; Our European team is executing a multi-channel strategy rooted in performance run that’s helping us continue to expand. In China, we grew over 200 percent in the first quarter. This brand has the permission to expand into these markets where running is growing and participation rates are really strong. So, we just had a fantastic quarter and it’s continuing into the second quarter.
How is Brooks managing the tariff situation? This is a challenging time for most businesses that have their supply chain throughout Southeast Asia, and Brooks is no different. And the truth is we’ve had high tariffs since 1930 in the footwear industry. So, for us, it’s really just a math problem. The majority of our product comes from Vietnam and Indonesia so we went to work on a new math problem as the tariffs were announced. And the truth is, it’s a holistic supply chain challenge, and that’s how we’re attacking it. We’re working the entire supply chain because we don’t want to punish consumers. So, cost savings in the supply chain is important, and we’re working with our partners on that, but it’s also price increases where it makes sense. We want to make sure that we’re pitch-perfect on pricing, and the team has worked really hard over the last 45 to 50 days to be thoughtful in how we approach it. We announced to our customer base slight price increases on a couple of key styles and that’s been well received. But we’re still in a moment of uncertainty where we don’t actually know if these tariffs are going to stay in place or if they’re going to come off. It’s a difficult situation for any business.
What’s your outlook for 2025? We’re obviously very bullish on this category that we have a singular focus on. I’ve been through many different cycles in this industry, and what always remains true is if participation rates are strong, you’re in control of the business outcome. And participation rates around the world are very, very strong. Coming out of COVID, we saw just a huge acceleration in the number of people that were choosing to run or walk or just take on fitness activities, and the running silhouette, the style, was their choice in their activity. And we’re still seeing that around the world. I was in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago, and it’s happening in China. The middle class is growing. Government policy is creating spaces for people to recreate and move. When you take that backdrop of the participation, add the confidence that I have in our product strategy and marketing engine, and how strong our brand is now, we’re extremely bullish on our outcomes for this year, and I would say the next couple of years as far as we can see.
Image courtesy Brooks Running
