In 2009, Nicolas Mermoud and Jean-Luc Diard — both veterans of ski and trail brand Salomon — set out to solve a problem specific to steep alpine descents: standard running shoes couldn't absorb enough impact to let a runner attack a downhill without wrecking their legs. Their answer was a midsole roughly twice the thickness of anything else on the market, paired with a curved "rocker" sole meant to roll a runner's stride forward. The result looked odd enough that early reviewers openly questioned it, but ultrarunners who tried it on 100-mile mountain courses became instant converts.
The brand's early growth was word-of-mouth among a tiny community of ultrarunners. That changed fast once Deckers Brands — the company behind UGG and Teva — took a stake in Hoka in 2012, completing a full buyout later that year. Deckers brought manufacturing scale, retail relationships, and marketing budget to a brand that, at the time, was doing only a few million dollars a year in sales.
