TIME TO FLY

Hoka One One may still be the new kid on the block, but the sports shoe brand is already showing the way with its innovative engineering.

- Lionel Kong

Hoka One One may not be a mainstream sports brand, but their unique shoe designs are winning them plenty of fans from the trail and long-distance running community. After a series of starts and stops with various distributorships in Singapore, the brand has found a permanent retail home at Running Lab stores here.

Hoka One One was born in Annecy, France in 2009, and first gained attention in the running industry by bucking the trends of that time. Minimalist, zero-drop running shoes with low cushioning were all the rage, and Hoka One One started by producing shoes with oversized outsoles, which they dubbed the "maximalist" movement.

The brand’s two founders, Jean-Luc Diard and Nicolas Mermoud, were both previously employees at another running shoe company, and broke away to build and market their own designs. They state, “Radical change often comes about in trying to solve a simple problem. Our original goal was to improve alignment, bring up endurance race times by designing a shoe to go downhill faster. In doing so, we inadvertently reinvented the running shoe.”

Despite the trepidation of releasing a totally different type of running shoe, the first generation Hoka One One designs were embraced by the international ultramarathon community due to their enhanced cushioning and stability.