Here's something that shouldn't be possible. A brand that was the butt of every sneaker joke, the shoe your dad wore to the farmers market, the default footwear of suburban orthodontists, just grew its revenue by 136% in four years. It now sits alongside Nike and Adidas as one of the most culturally relevant shoe companies on the planet. And here's the part that should really make you put down your coffee: it did almost none of the things the marketing playbook says you should do.
No rebrand. No celebrity-fronted Super Bowl ad. No chasing the algorithm. No desperate pivot to Gen Z.
Revenue growth from 2020 to 2024. A 136% increase in four years.
Of over 20% annual growth in an industry where 5–8% is considered healthy.
Average selling price increase over five years, without heavy discounting.
Projected revenue by 2026, which would make NB the third-largest sportswear brand globally.
To put this into context: New Balance generated the fastest growth in the category on roughly 2.5% of its biggest competitor's marketing spend. Nike's marketing spend in 2024 was estimated at over $4 billion. New Balance's was under $100 million. That's not luck. This is highly strategic, and hiding in plain sight.
In the early 2010s, New Balance was everywhere. Discount shelves. Sports chains. Clearance bins. The brand was accessible (which sounds positive) but accessibility without positioning is just commoditisation. When a product is always on sale and available on every corner, the consumer's brain quietly files it under 'unremarkable'.
New Balance reversed this. Selectively and deliberately. The brand pulled back from mass distribution channels and became more intentional about where its product appeared. It invested in owned retail, boutique wholesale partnerships, and direct-to-consumer channels. It wanted to control not just what people bought, but the context in which they discovered it.
CEO Joe Preston put it plainly: "The way we try to manage the marketplace is making sure we show up how we want to show up. If we are stuck in the corner, then the customer is not going to be able to experience our brand."
Think of it like a restaurant analogy. A meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant and the same dish from a service station are not the same experience, even if the recipe is identical. Where you show up shapes what people believe about you before they've even tried the product.
The result? An average selling price increase of 30% without the brand changing its core product significantly. The product didn't become more premium. The positioning did.
Distribution is brand strategy. Where you choose to be seen is just as important as what you choose to show.
When most companies decide to do a brand collaboration, they reach for the biggest name they can afford. A celebrity. An athlete with 30 million followers. The logic makes sense on the surface: bigger name, bigger audience, bigger awareness. New Balance went in the complete other direction.
Instead of paying for reach, they invested in credibility. They partnered with Teddy Santis (founder of cult New York menswear label Aimé Leon Dore) not because he had the biggest platform, but because he had the deepest trust with exactly the right people. Joe Freshgoods, a Chicago-based creative with an impeccable eye. Salehe Bembury, a designer with a dedicated following in the sneaker world.
These weren't household names. They were tastemakers. And there is a crucial difference. Tastemakers don't just bring audiences. They bring endorsement — the implicit signal that a brand has been discovered, not manufactured. When Santis wore New Balance, it didn't look like an advertisement. It looked like a recommendation from someone whose opinion actually matters.
But the most telling story is the New Balance 550. A basketball shoe from 1989, never broken through in its original run, sitting largely forgotten in New Balance's archives. Teddy Santis found it in an old Japanese sneaker magazine and saw something others had missed. When the ALD x New Balance 550 dropped in 2020, it sold out immediately. A shoe that had been gathering dust for 30 years became one of the most sought-after silhouettes in streetwear — not through a marketing campaign, but through the power of the right person with the right eye saying the right thing at the right time.
Your most valuable collaborators are not necessarily the most famous. They're the ones whose recommendation carries genuine weight with the people you most want to reach.
While Nike and Adidas were chasing hype (hyper-limited drops, NFT integrations, and celebrity-fuelled noise) throughout the late 2010s, New Balance doubled down on what it had always been: a brand that valued craftsmanship, function and quiet authenticity.
It maintained its 'Made in US' and 'Made in UK' manufacturing lines, expensive decisions in an industry that had largely offshored production, and leaned into these as genuine differentiators rather than legacy costs. The 990, which debuted in 1982 at $100 (the first sneaker to cross that psychological price barrier), still retails above $200 today, many pairs still made domestically.
When post-pandemic consumer sentiment shifted (toward substance over spectacle, toward heritage over hype) New Balance was already there. It hadn't pivoted to meet the moment. It had just waited for the moment to catch up.
European sales grew by more than 35% in 2023 alone. North Asia, where New Balance had quietly invested in cultural relevance for years, signing Korean pop star IU as early as 2021, became one of its fastest-growing markets globally. The brand had been planting seeds in markets that hadn't come online yet, and was now harvesting.
Audit where you're showing up, not just how often
Are you everywhere because it's strategic, or because you said yes to everything? There is enormous power in being selective. A brand that says no to certain clients, channels, or opportunities sends a signal about what it values, and that signal is often more powerful than any campaign.
Stop chasing the biggest audience and start finding the right one
Ten thousand deeply engaged followers in your exact niche will outperform a million passive ones almost every time. Before your next collaboration, ask: whose recommendations actually move this specific audience? That person may only have 12,000 followers. Work with them.
Your archive might be your best asset
New Balance's 550 had been sitting in a drawer for 30 years. What's in yours? Old frameworks you developed and never published. A brand voice you used in your early days that people remember fondly. Sometimes the best new thing is the right old thing.
Premium positioning is a decision, not a destination
New Balance didn't raise its prices because it launched a luxury product. Premium pricing is the output of premium positioning, not the input. The question isn't 'how do we justify this price?' It's 'how do we become the kind of brand people expect to pay for?'
Patience is a competitive advantage most brands aren't willing to take
New Balance spent years being quietly consistent while everyone around it was chasing new and shiny. The brands that will look like overnight successes in 2028 are the ones building quietly and consistently right now.
The question for your brand isn't 'how do we become the next New Balance?' It's 'what would we look like if we stopped trying to be something we're not, and built the best possible version of what we already are?' That's it. That's the whole strategy.
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