On Dec. 4, New Balance will be honored with the Company of the Year Award at the 38th annual FN Achievement Awards. Below is an article from the magazine’s Dec. 2 print issue about the brand’s massive successes in 2024.
New Balance is on a major winning streak.
After hitting $6.5 billion in sales in 2023, the athletic giant is currently on track to achieve well over $7 billion in sales for fiscal year 2024, a milestone it expects to hit two years earlier than initially anticipated. The privately held company has also outlined a broader goal to become a $10 billion brand by the next few years.
“We’ve had strong momentum in 2024 and it’s really been a continuation of the momentum that we’ve had coming out of COVID,” New Balance president and chief executive officer Joe Preston told FN in an interview in early November. Since 2020, New Balance has achieved more than a 20 percent growth rate in every major market across the world, the executive added.
Behind the strong results in 2024 were a series of product wins, as well as strategic investments in athlete partnerships, retail expansion and a historic deal with the WNBA. Here, New Balance executives discuss six ways the company secured big wins in 2024.
Between the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and a highly visible season for the WNBA, New Balance had major representation on the global athletic stage in 2024. Eighty four New Balance athletes, including gold medalists Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, competed at the Olympic Games this year. New Balance also signed NIL deals with college athletes like Cooper Flagg to build up its presence in basketball.
“Our goal, from a sports marketing standpoint, is to be the most boutique sports marketing brand in the world,” said Chris Davis, brand president and chief marketing officer at New Balance. “And with that goal, it’s all about a fewer-bigger-better approach and ensuring that the group of athletes we’re cultivating is more like a family than a roster.”
When it comes to building its rolodex of partners, the company takes an athlete-first approach. For example, a year after signing its first women’s basketball player, Cameron Brink, New Balance deepened its relationship with the WNBA this past July and signed a multiyear deal that established the brand as the official partner of the league
The highly competitive running category was particularly strong for New Balance in 2024 and picked up even more momentum in the latter half of the year. Preston pointed to a spike in demand for the brand’s footwear platforms like Fresh Foam and Fuel Cell, as well as franchises like the Rebel. Newer releases of older running shoes, such as the 990, have also generated heat, which Preston credits to the brand’s history in running.
“If you see brands emerging and then continuing to grow, there’s usually an authenticity,” he said. “And for us, that’s rooted in our running heritage that is performance based.”
However, Davis is cautious about throwing around the “h” word. He described New Balance as a “brand with heritage” as opposed to a “heritage brand.” “That thesis is critical in sustaining both a performance and a lifestyle business, because a ‘brand with heritage’ honors its past but is relentlessly focused on innovating into the future, whereas a ‘heritage brand’ relies on its past,” Davis said.
To stay competitive, New Balance aims to drive forward innovations and new forms of storytelling across lifestyle and performance running.
“The running category is not a sprint,” Preston said. “It’s a long run. You need to be committed to it and you need to put resources against it — everything from tech reps who call on their run specialty stores and provide support to commitment to inventory and, obviously, innovation.”
As of mid-November, New Balance had opened 72 new stores and renovated 43 stores this year, as it looks to bolster its retail presence.
“Our brick-and-mortar retail locations need to be a physical manifestation of our brand,” said Davis. “A consumer should walk into our store and feel the New Balance brand and experience the New Balance brand. And if they don’t purchase something in that instance, that is totally OK. However, they need to have a positive brand impression when they leave the location.”
According to Davis, New Balance has seen positive performance indicators in traffic, conversion and consumer sentiment since renovating its store fleet across several store expressions, including running store formats and other new store concepts.
“I’m proud of the progress we’ve made in ensuring that our brick-and-mortar experience is brand accretive, and I think it has to be.” Davis said. “Brick-and-mortar retail is certainly not dead. We just have to think about it in a different way. We have to think about it with a brand-led vision.” In the next six to 12 months, New Balance plans to refresh its flagship stores around the globe, including in Boston, the U.K., Japan and New York City.
While New Balance does not parse out its wholesale sales numbers, executives have said that the channel is vital for growth.
“I don’t think we can be as successful as we have been, or will be, without our wholesale partners,” Preston said. “And that’s going to continue to be an integral part of our strategy.”
Among retailers like Foot Locker and Academy Sports + Outdoors, New Balance is consistently touted as a top performer.
In August, Foot Locker chief commercial officer Frank Bracken called out the chain’s robust partnership with the brand during a second-quarter earnings call.
“Our partners at New Balance continue to engage our shared consumers with strong product innovation, compelling assets and storytelling and operational excellence to help scale the business,” Bracken said. “With multiple footwear franchises connecting in the marketplace and a commitment to sport, lifestyle and streetwear, we are confident that we will continue to grow with this important partner.”
And it’s not just the large retail partners that are driving growth in the channel. Preston called out New Balance’s presence in the run specialty channel, as well as in various independent stores and boutiques in the lifestyle space.
Kris Hartner, owner and founder of Naperville Running Co., has worked with the brand for the last decade on a branded section in the basement of one of his stores designed to serve young athletes. The space, which features a pool table, X-Box and more, is available for team nights and shoe fittings.
“They’ve been great partners of ours,” Hartner said of New Balance. “They have their ‘Fiercely Independent’ tagline and we are that to a T. If there’s a vendor that we could say is similar to us, it would probably be New Balance. They’re not mom-and-pop size, but they’re mom-and-pop owned.”
New Balance does 35 percent of its business in North America and the rest in countries around the globe. According to Preston, the company utilizes a “think global, but act local” approach to grow its business in different regions. The goal is for 80 percent of brand messaging and expression to be the same across all regions, with about 20 percent given for leeway with specialization based on the region.
“We make sure we have those inputs coming in from the regions, and then we try to satisfy as much as we possibly can, while keeping in line with our brand roots and the authenticity that we instill on everything that we do,” Preston said.
For example, the brand recently debuted a new premium retail concept with its new store opening in Edinburgh, Scotland, this past September. The store was designed with central seating areas to promote engagement and features a curated selection of core lifestyle products, as well as premium Made in UK and Made in USA collections.
On the product side, New Balance released a five-sneaker “City Exclusives” pack in August, a collection where each shoe pays homage to a key region in the brand’s legacy and is only available in its respective region. For example, the Baltimore style was released exclusively at Social Status, the Shanghai model was available in the city’s NB Grey store, and the Tokyo rendition was available at Atmos Japan.
Even amid its global expansion, New Balance takes pride in being one of the few shoe brands with factories in the U.S. The brand operates six facilities in America, with a plan to merge two in Maine into one larger and more modern factory.
“When we go into a community, we stay in a community,” Preston said. “It’s really important for us, not just from a quality perspective, but also about the importance that these factories can have to a community.”
According to Preston, the community focus is also what makes the New Balance team uniquely special. “Our secret sauce is our people and our culture, and it’s all centered around teamwork,” he said. “Our culture and the way our associates take care of each other is inspiring. When I look back someday on my career here, that is what I’ll be most proud of.”
For 38 years, the annual FN Achievement Awards — often called the “Shoe Oscars” — have celebrated the style stars, best brand stories, ardent philanthropists, emerging talents and industry veterans. The 2024 event is supported by sponsors Listrak, Marc Fisher, Nordstrom and Vibram.
