What are the key takeaways from this Masters of Scale episode?

Key insights include: **Equity over endorsement:** Rather than paying celebrity athletes cash, On offered Roger Federer equity when he expressed interest seven years into the company's founding. Federer then invested money into On instead of receiving payment. This model aligns incentives long-term and preserves capital for product innovation — a replicable alternative to traditional endorsement contracts for growth-stage brands.; **Premium vs. luxury positioning:** On deliberately occupies the space between mass athletic brands and luxury labels. Luxury restricts access through scarcity; On restricts nothing but charges a premium justified by R&D investment. Apparel is growing over 50% year-over-year, and margins remain the highest among scaled sports brands — proof that premium positioning outperforms volume-chasing strategies.; **Small attack teams for radical innovation:** LightSpray — a robotic arm that sprays a shoe upper in three minutes versus the traditional 200-step process — originated from one designer watching a Halloween hot-glue-gun video on YouTube. On assigned five specialists around that designer. This small, focused team structure consistently produces breakthrough prototypes faster than large development pipelines.

What did Rapid Response discuss on Masters of Scale?

On cofounder and co-CEO David Aleman details how the Swiss athletic footwear brand grew from zero to nearly $4 billion over 16 years by prioritizing innovation over scale, partnering with Roger Federer and Zendaya through equity deals, and targeting a rising "movement class" with premium-positioned products across running, tennis, and apparel. Key topics include: **Equity over endorsement:** Rather than paying celebrity athletes cash, On offered Roger Federer equity when he expressed interest seven years into the company's founding. Federer then invested money into On instead of receiving payment. This model aligns incentives long-term and preserves capital for product innovation — a replicable alternative to traditional endorsement contracts for growth-stage brands.; **Premium vs. luxury positioning:** On deliberately occupies the space between mass athletic brands and luxury labels. Luxury restricts access through scarcity; On restricts nothing but charges a premium justified by R&D investment. Apparel is growing over 50% year-over-year, and margins remain the highest among scaled sports brands — proof that premium positioning outperforms volume-chasing strategies..

How long is this episode of Masters of Scale?

This episode is 27 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Masters of Scale

Rapid Response: On's 16-year overnight success: Zendaya, Federer, and outrunning competition

September 12, 2026

27 min episode · 2 min read

Rapid Response

Episode

27 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Relationships, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Published Sep 12, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Equity over endorsement: Rather than paying celebrity athletes cash, On offered Roger Federer equity when he expressed interest seven years into the company's founding. Federer then invested money into On instead of receiving payment. This model aligns incentives long-term and preserves capital for product innovation — a replicable alternative to traditional endorsement contracts for growth-stage brands.
✓Premium vs. luxury positioning: On deliberately occupies the space between mass athletic brands and luxury labels. Luxury restricts access through scarcity; On restricts nothing but charges a premium justified by R&D investment. Apparel is growing over 50% year-over-year, and margins remain the highest among scaled sports brands — proof that premium positioning outperforms volume-chasing strategies.
✓Small attack teams for radical innovation: LightSpray — a robotic arm that sprays a shoe upper in three minutes versus the traditional 200-step process — originated from one designer watching a Halloween hot-glue-gun video on YouTube. On assigned five specialists around that designer. This small, focused team structure consistently produces breakthrough prototypes faster than large development pipelines.
✓Retail stores as brand amplifiers, not just revenue channels: On opened its first New York store at Lafayette Street during COVID in 2021, securing favorable rents. Now operating 80-plus stores globally, the physical locations serve two functions: embedding the brand in city centers and providing full-expression space for apparel, which cannot be merchandised effectively on a single shelf in partner retail environments.
✓Maintain an athlete-first pipeline while expanding the audience: On manages one of the industry's largest dedicated athlete groups — the Unathletic Club — covering runners and sprinters. Keeping elite athletes at the core preserves brand credibility while the broader "movement" lens (tennis, hiking, training) enables expansion without alienating the performance base that validates product claims to mainstream consumers.

What It Covers

On cofounder and co-CEO David Aleman details how the Swiss athletic footwear brand grew from zero to nearly $4 billion over 16 years by prioritizing innovation over scale, partnering with Roger Federer and Zendaya through equity deals, and targeting a rising "movement class" with premium-positioned products across running, tennis, and apparel.

Key Questions Answered

•Equity over endorsement: Rather than paying celebrity athletes cash, On offered Roger Federer equity when he expressed interest seven years into the company's founding. Federer then invested money into On instead of receiving payment. This model aligns incentives long-term and preserves capital for product innovation — a replicable alternative to traditional endorsement contracts for growth-stage brands.
•Premium vs. luxury positioning: On deliberately occupies the space between mass athletic brands and luxury labels. Luxury restricts access through scarcity; On restricts nothing but charges a premium justified by R&D investment. Apparel is growing over 50% year-over-year, and margins remain the highest among scaled sports brands — proof that premium positioning outperforms volume-chasing strategies.
•Small attack teams for radical innovation: LightSpray — a robotic arm that sprays a shoe upper in three minutes versus the traditional 200-step process — originated from one designer watching a Halloween hot-glue-gun video on YouTube. On assigned five specialists around that designer. This small, focused team structure consistently produces breakthrough prototypes faster than large development pipelines.
•Retail stores as brand amplifiers, not just revenue channels: On opened its first New York store at Lafayette Street during COVID in 2021, securing favorable rents. Now operating 80-plus stores globally, the physical locations serve two functions: embedding the brand in city centers and providing full-expression space for apparel, which cannot be merchandised effectively on a single shelf in partner retail environments.
•Maintain an athlete-first pipeline while expanding the audience: On manages one of the industry's largest dedicated athlete groups — the Unathletic Club — covering runners and sprinters. Keeping elite athletes at the core preserves brand credibility while the broader "movement" lens (tennis, hiking, training) enables expansion without alienating the performance base that validates product claims to mainstream consumers.

Notable Moment

Aleman revealed that On's LightSpray shoe technology — which collapses 200 manufacturing steps into a single three-minute robotic spraying process and cuts CO₂ footprint by over 75% — traces its origin directly to a designer watching someone use a hot glue gun on a Halloween costume video online.

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Episode Transcript

We took a conscious decision to embrace a lot of risk and say, hey, it sounds crazy, but crazy is good because the night is always the darkest before dawn. And you can imagine if you build over sixteen years from zero to, almost a 4,000,000,000 US dollar brand, you have to have a very, very strong execution engine or it will fall apart in that journey. So it's really an opportunity to build a brand that doesn't have to be ultimately the absolute biggest, but is the most premium brand of the future. That's David Aleman, cofounder and co CEO of On. On is the bellwether for a new generation of athletic footwear and apparel companies that are posing a significant challenge to the likes of Nike and Adidas. David explains how On! Is taking advantage of the increased visibility of sports in society, partnering with stars like Zendaya, Roger Federer, and others, and appealing to what he calls the movement class. Whether you've ever slipped on a pair of On Cloud shoes or not, David's insights will inspire you to keep moving personally and in your business. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is rapid response. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with David Aleman, the cofounder and co CEO of On. David, great to sit down with you. Thank you very much for having me, Bob. On has been an amazing growth story. The lead player in sort of a a new generation of athletic footwear and apparel companies. Is that how you see on as, like, the next big global brand? I mean, you started with a unique sole design, which is also the way that Nike started with their waffle shoes. What is your plan? I think the plan is to be the most premium global sports brand, really based on innovation, but also on design. At the end, it's about making sure that people are excited about sports, that they love to go out. I was out running at the Hudson this morning, and it was so inspiring because there's such a big group of runners out there. So I think when you move, whether that's running or something else, something happens to your mind as well, and that's really important for us via our our mantra is dream on, and so that encapsulates encapsulates it. It. Sometimes I feel like when I go running here in New York, it's a race even if there's not a race on because there's so many people out running. It's it's New York it's New York face. Right? You have to overtake each other. I mean, the the legacy players in this space, they sort of didn't seem to see the competition rising that you're part of. I mean, Nike's struggling. Adidas seems to be finding its way a little bit. You know, they're sort of the strivers like New Balance and Asics, and then there are other newer players like you, like HOKA, …

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