Preserving a premium position

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After his first earnings report as CFO of Swiss running brand On, Frank Sluis said he was delighted by how broad growth was in the second quarter; the Asia-Pacific region accounted for more than 20% of global net sales, and the 16-year-old company’s global direct-to-consumer business grew 26% YoY.

“We have reached a younger audience, and now the consumers—basically the demographic 34 years and below—is now a third of our customer base, and that’s super exciting,” Sluis told CFO Brew.

Sluis came to On in May from Netherlands-based food retailer Ahold Delhaize, where he was CFO of its Europe and Indonesian regions. Even though he lacked specific experience in footwear and athletics, he said, his previous work centered around delivering a premium product via a premium brand. And “premium means that you need to exceed the expectation of customers every single day,” he added.

On running shoes broke into the American market in the Covid era, when stir-crazy quarantiners picked up the activity. What also plagued footwear companies around that time, though, was how to balance priorities between wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales. As a fast-growing and newer entry into the US’s $101 billion footwear market (as of 2025), Sluis said he’s “mak[ing] sure that the business can support that scale.”

Channel adjustments. On is delivering differentiated but “complementary” experiences for wholesale versus DTC customers, Sluis said.

“Wholesale is how we meet new communities where they are already shopping,” and “ensure an excellent brand experience, as reaching new consumers should build the brand rather than dilute it. Our own stores and e-commerce platform are where our fans experience On in its fullest expression, and where we build a direct relationship with them,” he added in an email.

In a national economy battered by inflation and tariffs, where consumers appear to be focused on value, preserving a premium position as well as forecasting demand can be difficult.

In Q2 2026, On’s wholesale channel saw moderate growth compared with DTC, Sluis said on the August 11 earnings call. “With sell-out softer in some of our everyday running franchises in a highly promotional environment, we chose to hold back sell-in rather than ship volume that would build inventory in the channel and put a full price integrity at risk,” he said.

Quick response. Sluis said he believes in “[empower[ing] people to make the decisions to deal with the uncertainty.” So On gives its regional demand planners “autonomy to adjust local forecasts and reallocate supply based on real-time market signals,” he said in his email. That allows the company to tailor inventory levels and prices to consumer needs regionally, he continued, “securing full-price sell-through and maintaining disciplined inventory levels worldwide.”

“If an organization has that in place, then you can respond to a crisis, because the crisis itself, you cannot predict. They always come unexpectedly, and it is much more important how you deal with it,” Sluis said.

Sluis is also proud of how the company handled the effects of the Middle East crisis with the increase in air freight tariffs. On executives quickly came together to work out demand planning, he said.

“Excellent demand planning is even more important [when anticipating higher costs]…we get the company together every month in order to cross-functionally look through all the plans, and make sure that the forecast is the best possible forecast, so that you don’t need to spend your money on that way of getting the product to where it needs to be,” Sluis said.