The end of vegan Etnies, éS, and Emerica shoes?
The Nidecker Group from Switzerland has acquired Sole Technology, which includes the skateboard shoe brands Etnies, éS, and Emerica as well as the snowboard shoe brand ThirtyTwo. This seems to have happen around May 2024.
The Nidecker Group, based in Switzerland, is not a corporation but a privately held company founded in 1887. It is family-owned and operates several well-known snowboard brands, including Nidecker Snowboards, YES., Jones, Now, and Flow.
Searching "vegan" on any of these companies' websites does not lead to any results.
Pierre-André Senizergues, the CEO of Sole Technology, who is a freestyle pro from the 1980s who grew up skateboarding in Paris, France, in the 1970s, will continue as CEO of Etnies, éS, Emerica, and ThirtyTwo.
Don Brown, who is an OG freestyle pro from England and head honcho of Sole Tech, also appears to be staying at the company after the sale.
Currently, however, the Etnies, éS, and Emerica websites resemble a supermarket in the former Eastern bloc, with hardly anything available. The vegan capsule (section) already disappeared from the éS website quite a while ago.
My guess is that the company will from now on choose a more traditional approach to running a business by maximizing profits, and minimizing costs, in other words: selling the cheapest, most low quality product for the highest possible price. Or maybe they will go the route of Airwalk and end up in some kind of department store, an unrecognizable shadow of what they used to be.
The end of Sole Tech is the end of the last OG skater-owned skate shoe company and an interesting chapter in the transformation of the (pretty disgusting) skateboard industry.
Maybe the only skater-owned skate shoe company still left, least in Europe or North America, is the relatively new Last Resort, from Sweden, but they seem to have little interest in making decent vegan skate shoes.
Pierre-André Senizergues, the CEO of Sole Technology, who is a freestyle pro from the 1980s who grew up skateboarding in Paris, France, in the 1970s, will continue as CEO of Etnies, éS, Emerica, and ThirtyTwo.
Don Brown, who is an OG freestyle pro from England and head honcho of Sole Tech, also appears to be staying at the company after the sale.
Currently, however, the Etnies, éS, and Emerica websites resemble a supermarket in the former Eastern bloc, with hardly anything available. The vegan capsule (section) already disappeared from the éS website quite a while ago.
My guess is that the company will from now on choose a more traditional approach to running a business by maximizing profits, and minimizing costs, in other words: selling the cheapest, most low quality product for the highest possible price. Or maybe they will go the route of Airwalk and end up in some kind of department store, an unrecognizable shadow of what they used to be.
The end of Sole Tech is the end of the last OG skater-owned skate shoe company and an interesting chapter in the transformation of the (pretty disgusting) skateboard industry.
Maybe the only skater-owned skate shoe company still left, least in Europe or North America, is the relatively new Last Resort, from Sweden, but they seem to have little interest in making decent vegan skate shoes.
Similarly, it seems that Nike has zero interest in making vegan skate shoes, Adidas has zero interest in making vegan skates shoes, New Balance has (practically) zero interest in making vegan skate shoes. Cariuma has not really fulfilled its promise of moving towards making more vegan skates shoes. And Vans has zero interest in making decent vegan skate shoes.
"It's just the end of something", as Henry Rollins would say.