ecco®︎ ZipFlex Warm Grey pictured above
I’m just beginning to learn about ecco®︎ and maybe my enthusiasm should be tempered considering the brand’s sales have been decreasing in the Americas, but I love brands that have the ability to move a product from conception to the consumer, in house. Merrell is a company that can do this because of Wolverine Worldwide, but it’s difficult to find a lot of footwear that looks as beautiful as the product being produced at ecco®︎.
The family owned operation out of Denmark has so much information available to learn about the company, I’m going to place a link here for your research: https://group.ecco.com/en/about-us
They also have a detailed company report available here: https://vimeo.com/488293896/3c15c8aeed
In this video I discuss that ecco®︎ is a company that could benefit from relationships in the niche areas. I think acquiring or investing into companies like OLLO and COMUNITYmade could provide dialogue and discussions about production methods and sustainability while also pulling in small unique demographics. The acquisition of these smaller brands won’t increase the overhead, but there has to be a point where a larger company discusses the benefit of creating an umbrella to cover and support small business. There are opportunities to develop a dialogue in North America on a smaller boutique scale creating a network of entrepreneurs and community oriented shops. It’s an idea I’ve discussed about every brand attempting to grow DTC while creating small footprints to increase shipping speed and opportunities.
While ecco®︎ isn’t at the front of mind by style centric consumers on the sneaker side of things, When you consider they created the footwear for Stone Island (recently acquired by Montcler for over a billion dollars) the company is already there, just not as ‘ECCO’. As evidence, I’ve dropped some of their shoes throughout this post and it’s clear, their footwear is more than capable of crossing over to other demographics on the strength of style alone, but a lot like Merrell the footwear is buried on the site and there aren’t campaigns that are making their way to a new consumer. This is a compelling company. Take a look at this video as I go a bit more into this convo.