In addition to being a shoe addict, I also like observing sales trends in specialty running stores. My go-to source for this info is Leisure Trends Group, and earlier this month they released their report for June 2012. Here’s an excerpt:
Sales of all running shoes (road, race and trail) reached $53M in June, 15% above June 2011. Road running shoes, with $50M, also gained 15%. All three running shoe categories (motion control, stability and neutral/cushion) posted dollar growth this month. Stability shoes jumped 12%, neutral cushion another 21%. Even motion control shoes eked out a 1% gain, the second straight month of increased sales for the category. Although all three categories were up, Neutral/cushion shoes increased their pace in the race to the top, just barely outselling stability shoes for the third straight month. Still, the top five best selling shoes this month were all stability models (Brooks Adrenaline men’s and women’s, Asics 2170 men’s and women’s and Saucony Progrid Guide 5, women’s)
Trail runners were ahead of June 2011 by 8%; year-to-date sales were 15% above the same period in 2011.
Minimalist shoes outpaced traditional models at retail for yet again. All minimalist running shoes pulled in $6M, up 41% from June 2011. So far this year, minimalist accounted for $31M in dollar sales.
The gist is that running shoe sales were all around strong, with neutral cushion shoes (21%) and minimalist shoes (41%) posting the biggest increases in sales over numbers from June 2011. I’m not sure how they define minimalist shoes as a category, but these numbers would indicate that they are about 10% of the specialty running market. Interesting that despite the continued strong performance of the “neutral cushioned” category, the top five selling shoes are all stability shoes (though I must admit that I have put about 50 miles on the Saucony Guide 5 and it’s a pretty solid shoe at 8mm drop!).
To read the full report, visit Leisure Trends Group.
About Peter Larson
Pete,
a couple comments on Leisure Trends:
1. It doesn’t include any Run Specialty On Line dealer only the 1000 running stores.
2. Adrenaline, GT 2170 and Saucony – The old saying if it isn’t broken don’t fix it applies here. The Adrenaline and GT 2170 have been #1 or #2 for 10 years. 3rd place is always the next best shoe and Saucony has it today. When you have runner after runner simply replacing their old shoe, the next runner that walks in with the exact same build, profile etc it going to be offered what? It’s a simple a very profitable formula.
3. Minimalist – As you know there are lots of brands playing in this but the big drivers of that growth are Nike Free, Saucony Kinvara, a Brooks Pure shoe or two and New Balance Minumus. After that it’s a mix of all those other brands.
Dave,
Thanks for the info – I would have predicted the Brooks and Asics to be among the top – they were two of the shoes offered to me when I first got fitted back in 2007. I personally think minimalist as a category isn’t all that meaningful since shoes vary so much – I’d much rather see a list of the top 50 shoes anyway.
Do you know of anywhere that reports on on-line sales? I think SportsOneSource includes them as part of their overall analysis, but I haven’t seen independent analysis of just the on-line channel.
Pete
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