HOKA Sneakers 56 Items

HOKA Sneakers

HOKA coincidentally reinvented the running shoe. Radical change often comes about in trying to solve a simple problem. The original goal of the HOKA founders, Jean-Luc Diard and Nicolas Mermoud, was to improve endurance race times by designing a shoe that offered a better performance on downhill segments. While they tried to do so, the HOKA guys learned that their new shoes improved the experience of going uphill too. And it also turned out that the redesigned running shoe not only helped to tackle 100 miles in challenging conditions but also helped all runners to improve their performances. While creating trail runners by night, the HOKA founders’ day jobs were in gravity sports, they participated in several snow sport and cycling innovations, including the parabolic ski. So, Jean-Luc and Nicolas asked themselves how to use the form-follows-function motto for a trail runner. The answer was a design that was met with ridicule by the running shoe establishment while being embraced by running athletes. But since those runners started winning races, HOKA shoes couldn’t be ignored anymore. Today, the patented elements HOKA incorporated into the original shoe – aka the Hoka One One ® difference – influence every shoe they build.