Telling On’s incredible growth story

On’s rapid growth and crossover from running fans to fashionistas has been astonishing. With projected sales of £1.58 billion in 2024, the brand has a booming online presence and physical stores in London and Liverpool. Aspire’s goal was to use the launch of a new store in Spitalfields, London, to invite key media and journalists to hear about On’s success story.

On and Aspire have been on a journey together for over a decade. During that time we have seen the brand grow from a start-up to a $7 billion company and celebrate its first flagship store opening on Regent Street.

With On increasingly appealing as a must-have casualwear item, the brand’s popularity has exploded further. In recognition of its fashion credentials, On launched its second physical store in Spitalfields Market, the heart of trendy East London.

For Aspire, the store opening reflected the brand’s rapid growth in the UK and presented the ideal opportunity to drive footfall, connect with loyal customers and introduce new fans to On.

We used the store launch to gain strategic PR coverage with clear objectives:  

To achieve our goals, we split our PR approach into 3 phases: news outreach, 1:1 exclusive media tours and a launch event for press, community leaders and content creators.  

Our pre-launch activity raised awareness of the store opening with key publications in the London, national, sports, retail, and health and fitness press. We sent out invites to journalists to save the date for the evening press night.  

In the run-up to the launch, we reached out to our contacts from titles such as i-D, Forbes, Wired and Esquire for exclusive tours of the new store. We used these moments to connect journalists with 1:1 interviews with the On London team to hear about the bigger brand story of On’s exciting growth.  

The launch event itself was a mix of London running communities, fashion journalists, influencers and national media. The event was informal, energetic and brilliantly cool. The evening kicked off with a leisurely 3K run through the busy East London streets followed by drinks, music and networking.  

The Spitalfields store PR strategy generated coverage with some impressive numbers: 72k Insta impressions, 647k online reach and 2.8 million online views.

Beyond the statistics, was a bigger story. By nurturing key media relationships we were able to highlight key brand moments including the continuation of the Cyclon Programme and On’s creative collaborations with Loewe and Beams.

The key highlight of the launch project was securing a wider brand feature in The Sunday Times Style magazine by Fashion Director, Karen Dacre. The article highlighted On’s exciting growth in the UK, hitting the strategic bullseye for our PR plans.