✳️ The UTMB 2025 Lowdown
Observations, stories and rumours from the valley floor
Hey pals,
As the sun sets on one of the most eventful week’s in UTMB’s history, It’s time for my annual summary of industry observations, stories and rumours from the valley floor.
My time in Chamonix was subsidised by the lovely support from my paid subscribers who allow me to keep this outsider perspective and industry analysis running. Hence, my analysis of the themes from the week will be behind the paywall, but everyone can get the lowdown of what went on outside the races below.
Hope you have a grand week,
Matt
Observations, stories and rumours from the valley floor
Last year Asian brands started to arrive in the expo, this year they went full send into industry runs, dinners and meetings. Kailas even had a pop-up store on the UTMB finish line and practically had an entire corner of the Expo.
Whenever I get into Geneva airport I always look to see who has taken over the digital billboards - planting a flag that screams we’re making an effort this year and you should pay attention. Recently it’s been Hoka, but this year Brooks took up a good chunk of airtime. They even had a partnership with Alpytransfers, a company that transfers people from the airport to the alps (it’s fairly self-explanatory branding), who distributed branded Brooks bottles and caps.
On the free stuff theme - it was everywhere. Piles upon piles of merch given out by every brand there. The obvious strategy by shoe brands with big budgets is to give out as many shoes as possible so when you walk around the town the ‘most popular shoe’ is theirs - a bit of social proofing. When Hoka’s Mafate 5’s are an intense electric blue, they are hard to ignore. The other merch war were on bags, with the obvious battle being between Satisfy’s big grey bin bag and Norda’s Power Hiker dyneema tote.
^A hotel floor full of Mafate’s
Rumour had it that Adidas is to remove the Terrex brand next year and make it simply outdoor in a bid to simplify their branding. No one in their pop-up could confirm that.
Door to trail and gravel is the next thing - Mount2Coast, Tracksmith, Salomon, Hoka, Speedland, they all have an offering. No one I spoke to about it knows who the audience is but everyone agrees that people will buy it.
Many brands in-store leant more on their lifestyle offering, all leaning heavily into a ‘return to nature’ theme - touching grass vibes.
X-bionic had the most interesting concept for a shoe - their first shoe is built to have a better downhill racing sensation and comes with socks engineered to fit with the shoe (silicon pads that match the insoles, material that reduces friction with the shoe liner, ventilation that matches the vents on the shoes etc.) buttttt it’s £240…
Nike ACG came out of hiding with a branded store, Sentier, in partnership with neighbouring retail store Ravenel, to launch their ACG brand in Chamonix. Beside the workshop interior design and the launch of the ACG Racing division, the staff inside couldn’t say much more about what their intentions in trail are. After a few conversations across the week I’ve heard ACG will be the outdoor face of Nike alongside Jordan, Converse, Hurleys etc. Nike’s vision has always been to be there for every athlete and recently they realised that they weren’t there for outdoors folk. When Nike Trail never took off, they decided to turn the ACG collection into a standalone brand that already had credibility built-in rather than develop a new name.
Branded food was a thing with Satisfy coming out with a Peach tea, Norda had their own “Power Hiker” coffee and Buff had what they called “Buff cream”, which I hope was ice cream.
Talking of Power Hiker, Norda’s partnership with Yaboyscottjurek took people across the industry by surprise for its somewhat different angle to what Norda takes to marketing. When I asked Nick Martire, Co-CEO of Norda, about why they chose to partner with the meme account he replied that they don’t want to take themselves too seriously, so this partnership lightened their image. The actual 001A launch event was packed and despite Nick only talking for 5 minutes, people hung around for over 2 hours talking shop and getting espressos of the Power Hiker blend. (I also suspect people were waiting for some grand Yaboy reveal, but alas they remain anonymous.)
Pop-ups were the trend du jour this year with Nike, Hoka and Kailas all taking up space to show their wares how they wanted. These shops were consistently packed.
The most common refrain from everyone this year when I asked about what differences they’re seeing in UTMB this year was that Chamonix was significantly busier than the past few years. It felt like the difference was not so much runners, but families (trying not to trip over kids wandering around shop floors was a regular occurrence) industry and content creators. If you follow anyone even tangentially related to running on IG, they were likely there this year. However one taxi driver I spoke to said that traffic around the town hadn’t changed, suggesting Poletti’s attempts to reduce car usage and encourage public transport was working.
I learned about the wild agency world that keeps the expo working. One dude I met at the Mount2Coast stand was working on 6 other brands. During a normal day for 8 days he would switch between the t-shirts and socks of each brand morning, noon and night, both for events and to simply speak French to anyone who ventured onto whatever stall he so happened to be working on.
Group runs were everywhere. I mean, EVERYWHERE. There was a continual morning traffic jam across the valley of runners adorned in branded kit running the same riverside loop. I have a theory that brands put on group runs because they know that the main reason the majority of people are there is to buy the latest trail running kit, so group runs allow runners to trial a brand’s expensive launch products with the hope they have a lovely memorable Chamonix experience with the shoe and ultimately buy it. For everyone else who isn’t in the valley to shop - there wasn’t much to do. Films were commonly mentioned as a highlight for a lot of people, particularly Hoka’s Katrina Hartmuth film. I’m hoping next year brands have a little more… creativity.
Overall three common themes emerged across the week that speak volumes for the state and future of trail: The real-estate battleground, the re-emerging giants and the lifestyle land-grab.
