How Ecco Is Repositioning Its 'Made to Last' Footwear for a New Generation

The shoe industry, like most apparel categories, is prone to consumer overconsumption. Algorithm-driven trends and accelerated product cycles lead to impulsive shopping decisions, often made with little regard for product quality or comfort. It puts labels in a tricky spot, forcing them to navigate and adapt to ever-changing trends and consumer needs without sacrificing standards or their unique brand identity.

Ecco, however, isn’t fazed by all the noise: Since its launch in 1963, the shoe brand has steadily built a reputation for producing functional, high-quality footwear with an innovative edge. Take, for example, its golf shoes: In 2010, the Denmark-based brand introduced its now-iconic Golf Street Shoe, a spikeless, golf shoe/sneaker hybrid. That design revolutionized golf footwear by normalizing spikeless shoes and sparking widespread demand.

The company’s ingenuity extends to its manufacturing process: In August, Fashionista and a group of international press were invited to Ecco’s research and development center in Tondor, Denmark, and had a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of its innovation and production factory to see how Ecco’s designs come to life firsthand.

A highlight was witnessing how the brand utilizes Fluidform, a distinct technology that uses a direct-injection technique to seamlessly bond a shoe’s upper to its sole. (The method requires no glue or stitching.) In the middle of Ecco’s spacious Innovation Center was a massive molding machine that generates materials like phorene — a bouncy, ultra-light substance used in the midsole of Ecco’s outdoor styles — and puts the direct injection technique into play.

While the label isn’t the first to employ this technology, it was one of the first to adopt it and has spent years perfecting it. It’s just one example that speaks to how Ecco’s foundation is built on an inventive mentality.

“When we are looking at how we run and conduct our business, it is always with a forward-looking mindset,” CEO Thomas Gøgsig told a group of press during an information session at Ecco’s Denmark headquarters. “We will be the first ones to challenge the status quo simply because we have to; otherwise, somebody else will do it first.”

Recently, the company has been focused on repositioning itself to take a more consumer-considered approach to design and marketing. “We are through and through a company that started with manufacturing,” says Casper Gram Hvejsel, chief commercial officer. “The journey we’re on now is really becoming a lot better at resonating with our consumers and going from focusing just on the foot to thinking more about how we are relevant in the everyday use of our customers.”

Ahead, Ecco executives share their strategy for how the business is staying competitive amid a crowded landscape and reaching a new generation.

Sustainability

In a way, eco-consciousness has been a leading company value since Ecco’s inception: By owning its production factories, the company minimizes its carbon footprint. It’s also enforced a comprehensive code of conduct that’s applicable not only to employees, but also to all suppliers and partners. But it wasn’t until recent years that Ecco started acknowledging “sustainability” as a way it conducts business. Now, executives think extensively about how being environmentally friendly can both inform the brand’s future and be an important value for consumers.

Pia Yasuko Rask, vice president of Group Responsibility & Sustainability, believes leaning into Ecco’s versatility and durability is the selling point for consumers who shop with sustainability in mind.

“Those are things that will actually have people wear things for longer and wear them more,” she explains. “In Denmark, we walk everywhere, we bike everywhere, then we get in the car, then we take a train, then we take a ferry; it rains in the morning, it’s sunny in the afternoon and we don’t change our shoes. We just have to get through the day in whatever we are wearing. And I think that’s super well reflected in the way we choose to make our shoes.”

The goal is to create footwear that has a long lifespan and encourages consumers to keep their shoes for as long as possible, Rask notes. It’s a nice concept, but how does a brand present this message to the customer in an understandable and immediately eye-catching way?

“You only have seconds to grab their attention,” says Ezra Martin, chief marketing officer. “So how do you tell them about comfort? How do you tell them about quality? How do you tell them about sustainable efforts?”

Then, there’s the issue of promoting a “sustainable” mindset without discouraging consumers from buying new product full-stop. In both cases, Ecco lets the shoes speak for themselves: It’s betting that once customers experience the ultra-comfortable design firsthand, they’ll be tempted to come back for more.

The company also recently introduced its Ecco PreLoved Program, a recycling initiative that allows customers to trade in used items once they’re done with them; they receive a voucher for new products in return. The traded-in items are cleaned, repaired and refurbished to be resold at a discount. (Ecco PreLoved is currently on a trial run in Germany.)

“We’ve been a bit late to the party of, let’s call it ‘responsible consumption,’ of taking care of our goods even after consumers use them,” Hvejsel says. “But that’s something we think deeply aligns with our ethos of Made to Last and Made for Life and we love that we can make our refurbished products more available to consumers from an affordability perspective.”

It helps that Ecco doesn’t specialize in a specific shoe silhouette, but instead offers options to build an entire rotation: “We basically have a shoe for every occasion, which I don’t think a lot of our competitors do,” Martin explains. “They either make running shoes or they make sneakers or they make dress shoes. We happen to make it all, and they’re all equally comfortable.”

Designer Collaborations

To help reach new audiences, Ecco launched Ecco Kollective in 2022, through which the the company collaborates with emerging fashion talent spanning footwear, apparel and accessories. It has led to a unique creative exchange between Ecco and participating brands, allowing the footwear company to be more exploratory with its designs beyond its usual core products.

To date, designers such as Eckhaus Latta, Craig Green, Louis Gabriel Nouchi, Kiko Kostadinov, Nina Christen, Peter Do and Natacha Ramsay-Levi have all participated in the initiative. Ramsay-Levi even went on to become an ongoing creative partner, releasing multiple seasonal collections with Ecco.

“Ecco Kollective was such an experimental thing where we really wanted to see what it is you could do thinking about comfort and quality and how you can be true to that but then twist it in different aesthetics and have different points of view,” shares Niki Tæstensten, design director.

An unexpected benefit is that it has opened the doors to retailers that Ecco would otherwise not have had access to, such as Svrn, Ssense, H. Lorenzo and Carrousel, to name a few. Martin points out that, by partnering with designers they don’t typically collaborate with, there’s a mutual benefit of leveraging each other’s audiences to learn about the respective brands. “In a lot of ways, it can be a consumer’s first introduction to Ecco,” he says.

But the company doesn’t agree to work with just anyone. Design partners need to be excited enough to extract from Ecco’s DNA and interpret it into their own design language, says Hvejsel. The brand is also selective when it comes to working with celebrities. “It’s really easy to throw a partner or a celebrity or whoever a bag of cash and ask them to endorse your product,” Martin explains. “But I think people see through that as inauthentic when it’s done that way.”

Ecco’s latest celebrity endorsement came via Chloë Sevigny, the face of the brand’s Spring 2025 campaign. This came after Sevigny was spotted wearing Ecco shoes around the streets of New York, highlighting her genuine appreciation for the brand.

It’s about finding a partner “who we have either a natural tie to or who loves the brand, just to make sure that there’s an authenticity check before we actually do something,” Martin adds.

Trends and Design Process

Where many brands rely on trend-driven lineups, Ecco prioritizes comfort — in many forms.

“If you have a shoe and it gives you physical comfort, but you think it’s piss ugly, then you’ll not find yourself in a comfortable position,” Tæstensten laughs. “So a mix of emotional comfort and physical comfort is really what we aim for.”

In the past, Ecco’s design process began with the foot. Today, the design team thinks of the customer as a whole. “That’s really the journey that we’re on now: To become a lot more consumer-obsessed than foot-obsessed,” Hvejsel explains. “The foot is a part of the consumer, but we want to understand how our consumers look better and how we can be a bigger piece of that in their everyday walks through life.”

This approach also means that the company doesn’t follow every trend. The design and trend forecasting team will keep tabs on what’s new in the market, but ultimately make decisions based on what’s “relevant to our consumers,” Hvejsel adds. “We try to be in sync with some of these much larger trends, but not pick out the small ones that are for very specific players in the field, or so that’s not our game.”

Take, for example, its Biom Lite Lace-Up Sneaker, which has become a top seller amid the ongoing hype around ballet-sneaker hybrids. A different iteration of the chunky style — the Biom C-Trail Lace-Up Sneakers — went viral after Sevigny was photographed wearing a pair repeatedly (hence her eventually fronting the brand’s campaign. The newer version features a slightly more subdued design, offering better styling versatility. Another bestselling style is its Biom Lite Textile Sneaker, which aligns with consumers’ preference for sleeker, streamlined runners.

Ultimately, though, the brand is betting on durability, exceptional craft and comfort to compete. It’s a risky move, turning away from market pressures and playing the long game — literally, with the brand designing shoes “made for life” — in a space that encourages rapid production. Still, Ecco is positioned exactly where it wants to be.

Disclosure: Ecco paid for Fashionista’s travel and accommodations to report this story.

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Source: Fashionista.com