Two running brands that were small in 2019, HOKA and On, have each grown their annual sales more than tenfold since then. HOKA went from $223 million to $2.59 billion, and On from 267 million to 3.01 billion Swiss francs. Over the same years Nike's total sales rose 19%, and they are now 10% below their 2024 peak. Alongside the new brands sit a new kind of shoe, with a thick foam sole and an embedded plate, that made elite marathon times faster, and a fitness-watch business that now makes up a third of Garmin's sales. This article follows the money behind the sport we looked at in our article on who runs the fastest marathons.

The short version

• HOKA's sales rose from $223 million (year to March 2019) to $2.59 billion (year to March 2026), 11.6 times as much. On's rose from 267 million to 3.01 billion francs between 2019 and 2025, 11.3 times as much.
• Nike's sales were $39.1 billion in the year to May 2019, peaked at $51.4 billion in the year to May 2024 and were $46.4 billion in the year to May 2026. Asics, in yen, more than doubled between calendar 2019 and calendar 2025.
• Laboratory tests found that carbon-plated shoes cut the energy cost of running by about 4%. In real marathons the top finishers were 0.8% to 2.6% faster, depending on how it is measured.
• The first record-eligible sub-2 marathon, in April 2026, was run in an Adidas shoe that retails for about 500 euros, not in a Nike one.
• Garmin's Fitness segment, which includes its running watches, reached $2.36 billion in 2025, up 33% in a year.

The new brands: HOKA and On

HOKA is a brand owned by the US company Deckers, which bought it in September 2012. Deckers' annual report describes it as "originally designed for ultra-runners", and says it now appeals to "world champions, tastemakers, and everyday athletes". In the year to March 2026 HOKA's net sales were $2.59 billion, up 15.9%, and it made 47% of Deckers' total sales. In the year to March 2019 they were $223 million, so HOKA's sales rose from 0.6% of Nike's to 5.6% of Nike's.

On is a Swiss company founded in 2010 and listed in New York. It reports in Swiss francs. Its sales rose from 267 million francs in 2019 to 3.01 billion in 2025, and grew 30% in 2025 alone.

Both brands count more than running. HOKA also sells trail, hiking and everyday shoes, and On sells apparel and shoes for other sports. Their sales are therefore not a running-only figure, and neither is Nike's.

Note 1: Adidas's 2019 figure includes Reebok, which it later sold, and its 2020 to 2025 figures exclude it, so we compare 2021 to 2025 only. The "Times 2021" column avoids the pandemic dip of 2020. Each company's 2019 is the fiscal year that ended in 2019, and sales are in each company's own currency. The dollar figures in brackets are our estimates, converting each year's sales at that calendar year's average official exchange rate from the World Bank, so they ignore currency moves within a year and the fact that fiscal years differ. Because the yen weakened between 2019 and 2025 (109 to 150 yen per dollar), Asics grew less in dollars (1.6 times) than in yen (2.1 times), and Adidas grew about 12% in dollars from 2021 to 2025 against 17% in euros. The Swiss franc strengthened, so On grew more in dollars (13.5 times) than in francs (11.3 times).

The established brands

Nike is still by far the largest, with $46.4 billion of sales in the year to May 2026, but its sales are no larger than they were in 2022 ($46.7 billion). They fell from $51.4 billion in 2024 to $46.3 billion in 2025 and were flat in 2026. Nike's annual report does not break out running separately, so we cannot say how much of the change is running.

Asics is a smaller company that has grown quickly. Its net sales rose from 378 billion yen in 2019 to 811 billion yen in 2025, including 19.5% growth in 2025. Its own category called performance running reached 363.5 billion yen in 2025, up 11.2%, and was 45% of all sales. The fastest-growing parts of Asics in 2025 were its everyday-style lines, SportStyle and Onitsuka Tiger, each up about 43%.

Adidas's sales were 21.2 billion euros in 2021 and 24.8 billion in 2025, 17% more, with 2025 up 4.8% on 2024.

Are Chinese brands catching up?

Not visibly, in the reports we checked. ANTA Sports (which also owns FILA and DESCENTE) is a top-three sportswear group with 80.2 billion yuan of sales in 2025, but its growth came mainly from brands other than ANTA, which grew 3.7%. Li-Ning sold 29.6 billion yuan, and only about 1.4% of that was outside China. Neither report separates running, so we cannot say whether this changes.

The shoe that changed racing

Much of the new money followed one technology. "Super shoes", also called carbon-plated shoes, combine a thick, springy foam sole with a stiff embedded plate. Nike's Vaporfly 4% went on sale in 2017, and other brands soon followed with their own versions. A few dates mark the story.

How large is the effect? It depends on what is measured. In a laboratory, the prototype shoes lowered the energy cost of running by about 4% compared with established racing shoes. In races the gain is smaller. A study of the top 50 men and top 50 women in the Boston, London, Chicago and New York marathons in the 2010s found finishing times 2.0% faster (2.8 minutes) for men in Nike's new shoes and 2.6% faster (4.3 minutes) for women. Those runners were not randomly assigned, so the comparison also reflects who chose those shoes. Among the runners who changed shoes, the gain was 0.8% for men and 1.6% for women. A separate study of seasonal best times found falls of 1.7% to 2.3% for women between 2016 and 2019, and 0.6% to 1.5% for men.

These shoes are expensive. Reported prices range from about $200 to $500 a pair. The Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 that Sawe wore retails for about 500 euros and weighs 97 grams, and some super shoes are designed to be worn for a single marathon. Nike's own sub-2 projects came close in 2017 and 2019, but the first record-eligible sub-2 came in an Adidas shoe.

Watches: the other spend

Running watches are the other large purchase. Garmin, which makes the Forerunner running series, groups them in its Fitness segment, together with cycling, swimming and wellness devices. The segment's sales were $1.32 billion in 2020, dipped to $1.11 billion in 2022, and reached $2.36 billion in 2025, which was 33% of all Garmin sales and a rise of 33% in a year. The segment is wider than running, so it overstates running alone, and other makers of running watches and phone makers' wearables are not in these figures.

What this does and does not show

• Not running-only sales. Nike, Adidas, Asics, On and Deckers sell for many sports and for everyday wear. Only Asics reports a running category (performance running). HOKA is one brand within Deckers, but it also sells outside running.
• Not market share. We compare each company with itself over time. We did not find an open, comparable measure of the total running market, so we do not say who has the largest share of it.
• Mixed currencies and years. We use each company's own currency and fiscal year, and indexed growth, instead of converting exchange rates. Nike's year ends in May, Deckers' in March and the others' in December, so the last points are not for exactly the same months.
• Growth is partly price. Company sales include price rises and new product lines, so they do not equal the number of pairs sold or the number of runners.
• Shoe studies have limits. The laboratory study tested prototypes on 18 runners. The race analyses compare shoes the runners chose and cover Nike models, so they do not say how other brands compare.
• No endorsement. We describe sales and published research. We do not recommend any product, and the order of brands is not a ranking of quality.

Method and data

• Nike and Deckers (HOKA): annual reports on Form 10-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, for Nike, year to 31 May 2026 and Deckers, year to 31 March 2026. HOKA's sales by year come from the brand tables (wholesale plus direct-to-consumer) in the Deckers reports for 2020, 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The purchase of the HOKA brand in September 2012 is stated in the 2018 report. Nike's earlier years come from the filing index (annual revenue, years ended 31 May 2019 to 2026).
• Chinese brands: ANTA Sports 2025 annual results announcement and 2019 annual results announcement; Li Ning Company 2025 annual results announcement (HKEXnews). We did not use Xtep or 361 Degrees because we could not check their results against a primary document.
• Exchange rates: World Bank, official exchange rate (local currency units per US dollar, period average), indicator PA.NUS.FCRF, for Switzerland, Japan, China and the euro area, 2019 to 2025, retrieved October 2026. Dollar conversions are our own estimates.
• On: annual report on Form 20-F for 2025 (net sales 2022 to 2025, founding in 2010), and earlier 20-F filings for 2019 to 2021, in Swiss francs.
• Asics: consolidated financial statements summaries for 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025, in yen (the 2019 figure is the prior year in the 2020 report, and the performance running category is in the 2025 report).
• Adidas: ten-year overview in the 2025 annual report, net sales in euros. Figures for 2020 to 2025 exclude Reebok.
• Garmin: Form 10-K for 2025 (segments 2023 to 2025, and the Forerunner running series) and Form 10-K for 2022 (segments 2020 to 2022).
• Super shoes: Hoogkamer W and others, A Comparison of the Energetic Cost of Running in Marathon Racing Shoes, Sports Medicine 2018; Senefeld JW and others, Technological advances in elite marathon performance, Journal of Applied Physiology 2021; Bermon S and others, Effect of Advanced Shoe Technology on the Evolution of Road Race Times in Male and Female Elite Runners, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living 2021.
• Shoe rules: World Athletics, modified rules on competition shoes, 31 January 2020. Shoe history and the sub-2 events: Wikipedia, Super shoes and Ineos 1:59 Challenge. The weight and price of the Adios Pro Evo 3: Marathons.com. Race results as in our marathon article.
• All figures were retrieved on 28 October 2026. Charts and tables are our own derived work from these sources and are not endorsed by them.