Product1 publisher2 min readPublished
On co-CEO credits CloudTech innovation and a premium strategy for its $4 billion brand, with a Federer Instagram post sparking one celebrity tie
David Allemann's account of On's growth runs through CloudTech, a Roland Garros post and a tennis movie. LightSpray, the robotic process billed as first of its kind, appears only in the host's introduction.
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What happened
- He dates the company to 2010 and the founding idea to CloudTech, which he describes as engineering the run instead of putting a mattress of foam underneath the foot.
- Fast Company's introduction promises a breakdown of the first-of-its-kind LightSpray robotic process, and the transcript breaks off mid-sentence during the Zendaya answer before reaching it.
- Allemann said the luxury scarcity and high-price model has probably lost tens of millions of consumers over the last two years, and he called that an opening for premium products.
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Why it matters
- contradiction For a reader trying to price On's defensibility, the publisher's framing and the answers on the record point at different assets: a robotic process in the introduction, a midsole idea and two celebrity introductions in the transcript.
- constraint A rival benchmarking On against Hoka or ASICS can only work the brand side from this account, because Allemann's answers stop short of the figures a process advantage would be judged on, cost per pair and output.
- decision Anyone tempted to copy the On playbook has to choose between the process story and the serendipity story, and only the second is documented here, twice out of two relationships.
- exposure The one number carrying strategic weight in the piece is Allemann's own hedged estimate of tens of millions of departed luxury shoppers, so anyone quoting it in a deck is quoting a co-CEO's guess about his own market.
The most specific product detail in the interview is a shoe closure. Allemann said Zendaya's character in Challengers kept having to tie On shoes "because we had a special closing mechanism" [11]. On built the closure, and a film needed a repeated action.
Fast Company's introduction promises something else. It says Allemann "breaks down what the first-of-its-kind LightSpray robotic process says about On's innovation philosophy" [2]. In the transcript as published, LightSpray appears that once, in the introduction, and the text breaks off mid-sentence during the Zendaya answer before it comes back [15]. What is readable is the brand case. "I think the plan is to be the most premium global sports brand, really based on innovation but also on design," Allemann said [4]. He dates the company to 2010 and the founding idea to CloudTech [5], and he credits the Roger Federer relationship, now a coentrepreneur at On [12], to a single post: "When Roger posted from Roland Garros on his Insta in an On shoe, we felt that was an invitation to a date" [9].
The copying question was put to him directly, and it is the moment where a manufacturing moat would show up. Asked whether it drives him crazy that rivals track and steal On's ideas, Allemann said: "No, I think that's exciting because then you always have to push yourself to create what's next" [7]. A co-CEO who thought the factory was the defense had the opening to say so there.
A process advantage is checkable on numbers a competitor has to match: cost per pair, output per line, how long the tooling takes to copy. The figures Allemann gives in the excerpt are the 2010 founding year and his estimate that the luxury scarcity and high-price model "has over the last two years probably lost tens of millions of consumers who are looking for something that's more accessible" [c8, c17]. The second one is a claim about demand, and he hedged it himself with "probably" [8].
One test is whether the process changes a number the customer can feel: price, weight, fit, or a closure a director can build a scene around [11]. The other is whether it changes a number the rival has to match: cost per pair, or the months of tooling before a competing upper ships. Both On's celebrity story and its CloudTech story sit on the first side [16]. The second side is where LightSpray would have to earn the word moat, and in this interview only the introduction brings it up [15].
What to watch
- Whether the full Rapid Response episode puts a cost per pair, an output figure or a factory count behind LightSpray.
- Any On figure for how many pairs the LightSpray process actually makes.
- How long it takes a competitor to ship a comparable sprayed upper.