Kilian Jornet’s NNormal Bucks Running Shoe Trends as It Eyes the Crowded US Market

The highly successful ultrarunner’s brand, which has already made inroads in Europe and China, is looking to disrupt the American market by prizing sustainability above all

Trail running brand NNormal’s business model is anything but the industry norm.

When professional ultrarunner and mountain athlete Kilian Jornet was building his brand with Spain-based shoe company Camper, he set out to challenge traditional business practices by discouraging overconsumption and encouraging people to buy less.

“We believed even if we are making another company…we could do things a bit differently and hopefully have some (positive) influence,” Jornet told Athletech News.

Spanish-born Jornet is widely regarded as the greatest trail and mountain athlete of all time. His feats including summiting Mount Everest twice in one week without supplemental oxygen, numerous wins in prestigious 100-mile ultramarathons including Western States and Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), and most recently climbed 72 U.S. peaks over 14,000 feet over 31 days last summer, covering over 3,000 miles and over 400,000 feet of elevation gain while connecting every mountain by running and cycling.

When Jornet decided to launch NNormal in 2021, he ended an 18-year sponsorship with Salomon, wanting to put his passion for the environment and sustainability to use in a booming outdoor industry.

“It was a risky move, leaving Salomon,” NNormal brand and marketing director, Jordi Lorenzo Catala, who spent 15 years working with Jornet managing his athlete sponsorships and contracts, told Athletech News.

“One thing is to have a dream, another is to make it a reality,” Jornet said.

A Mechanic For Shoes

One of the running industry’s greatest tolls on the environment is wastefulness, as people are frequently replacing shoes that wear out quickly with new ones, whether that’s because they’re captivated by upgraded models or simply have no way to repair the shoes they already own.

That’s why Jornet and his team at NNormal have set out to make repair a mainstay in the running shoe ecosystem, just as it is for cars and appliances that people hold onto for decades.

The brand has partnered with performance rubber sole maker Vibram and local cobblers around the world as part of its Lifetime Repair Guarantee, offering free minor repairs on all shoes across France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Hong Kong, Norway, Poland and the U.K.

NNormal is also looking to reduce the need to repair or replace shoes in the first place, with durability being one of its core selling points, from a marketing perspective, and a sustainability one.

“Every shoe should last 1000 kilometers,” Catala said. That’s roughly 620 miles — almost double what the average running shoe lasts. He added that the brand has conducted several third-party studies to verify the shoes’ durability.

“The durability is the concept that is most different from the rest of the brands,” NNormal CEO Sito Luis Salas told ATN.

A portion of each NNormal purchase also goes towards the Kilian Jornet Foundation, which focuses on preserving and protecting the mountain environment.

While most shoe brands tend to update their models every six months to a year, Jornet set out to create shoes that were effective from the outset, with plans to only update every three years.

Results show that the shoes can perform well — Jornet, along with other NNormal-sponsored athletes, have claimed podium finishes at world-renowned races while wearing his brand’s gear. Immediately following NNormal’s launch, Jornet went on to win three prestigious trail races — Zegama Sky Marathon, the Hardrock 100-miler and UTMB — all while wearing his own brand’s shoes.

Breaking Into the US Market

NNormal is already at the heart of European trail running, with its origins in the mountains of Spain and Norway, where Jornet currently lives. But to have a strong future in a booming running and mountain sports market, its founders know that they have to win over U.S. consumers.

“We don’t want to be a European brand; we want to be a global brand,” Catala said. 

But capturing the U.S. market as trail running continues exploding among consumers is no easy feat, with major brands like Salomon, Hoka, Adidas Terrex and Nike All Conditions Gear showing up in bold ways at events across the country.

Catala acknowledged that one of the biggest obstacles they face is trying to understand how different the U.S. market is from Europe and even China, where NNormal has seen steady growth.

European customers, Salas explained, are likely to buy NNormal because they see it being worn by major athletes like Jornet. In the U.S., however, consumer culture is more social, favoring in-person events and on the ground engagement — which gives the upper hand those bigger legacy brands who already have name recognition and a wider network of resources.

“We need some local partners,” Salas said. “You want to compete in the U.S., you have to do it seriously. Doing it from Europe is not going to work.”

That’s why the brand is focusing its energy on key epicenters of trail running in the U.S. like Lake Tahoe, California, Boulder, Colorado and Bend, Oregon.

But NNormal’s execs already know they don’t have the resources to outdo Nike and Hoka, which is why they’re betting on differentiation — not only in their products, but how they show up at events.

“What we’ve been trying to do in the past few years is focus on the community,” Catala said. 

The brand hosts programs like Restore the Trails, group trail clean-up runs while test-wearing NNormal shoes and learning about the environment, and Running Minds, five to seven-mile runs with a scientist who teaches about the environment around them, to equip participants with knowledge to take action for the planet.

Those kinds of events hit multiple birds with one stone, helping build community around trail running, marketing NNormal and having that positive impact on the planet that is so integral to the brand’s mission.

“I don’t think any other brand is trying to do it this way,” Salas added.

The Consumption Elephant in the Room 

Jornet is clearly torn as a founder. His passion lies in the environment, protecting the mountains he grew up in and which serve as the origin for his entire career. But NNormal’s success exists in a space of contradiction: on one hand, the only way to grow the brand built to discourage overconsumption and wastefulness is to encourage people to buy products.

“The biggest challenge is both on the commercial side and the marketing side in the way that you need to sell, but at the same time to make people think about why they are buying things,” Jornet said. “You need to change the perception of the runner.”

Despite that, Jornet firmly believes in his brand’s model and its ability to not only succeed, but influence the rest of the running industry in shifting how customers approach consumption.

“Our mission long-term is to prove that this kind of business model is successful economically. In reality, that’s how you influence people,” he said.