On Running Brand History: The Story Behind Cloud Shoes
Every pair of On Cloud shoes on a coffee shop floor today started with a garden hose glued to the sole of a training shoe by a retired Swiss triathlete. It sounds like a marketing origin story, but it’s genuinely true, and understanding the On Running brand history changes how you see the shoes on your feet. From a three-person Zurich startup in 2010 to a company valued heading toward $20 billion in 2025, with Roger Federer as an investor and Zendaya on its marketing campaigns, On’s rise is one of the most improbable success stories in modern sportswear. For the wider product context, the full CloudTec technology explanation, and how to pick your first pair, our complete On Cloud shoes guide covers that ground. Here we’re focused on the story itself: who built On, why they built it, how three Swiss friends took on Nike, Adidas, and ASICS with a shoe most experts told them looked ridiculous, and what that history means for the shoe you’re about to buy. By the end, you’ll understand the brand behind the pods and why the story keeps mattering to serious buyers.
The Founder: Who Is Olivier Bernhard?
Understanding On starts with understanding Olivier Bernhard, because everything about the brand traces back to him and the frustration he felt as an elite athlete who couldn’t find a running shoe that actually worked the way he wanted. Bernhard is Swiss, and before founding On he was one of the most decorated multi-sport athletes in the country’s history. His trophy cabinet includes three World Duathlon Championships, multiple Ironman victories (six by some counts), a European title, and 15 Swiss national championships across duathlon and Ironman events. When he retired from professional competition in 2009, most people in his position would have moved into coaching, commentary, or a comfortable sponsorship role. Bernhard did none of those. Instead, he became obsessed with a specific engineering problem: no running shoe on the market gave him the exact sensation he wanted, which he described as cushioned landings combined with firm, responsive push-offs. His logic was straightforward. Traditional cushioning softens impact but wastes energy on take-off. Traditional racing shoes give you push-off response but batter your legs. Nobody had solved both at once. That gap became the founding problem behind On. Around this time, Bernhard crossed paths with a like-minded Swiss engineer who had been experimenting with a new cushioning concept. Their conversation turned into a partnership, and the partnership turned into dozens of prototypes over the following months. A key detail most owners don’t know: Bernhard’s own competitive background as an Ironman athlete is what shaped On’s early performance obsession. Every original design decision came from a working athlete’s perspective, not a designer’s. That matters because it explains why the shoes prioritise responsive ride over marshmallow softness, and why max-cushion models like the Cloudmonster took years longer to arrive than the leaner, firmer original Clouds.
The Garden Hose Prototype and the Founding Story
The most famous story about On’s founding is the one about the garden hose, and it’s not a marketing exaggeration. In the late 2000s, Bernhard was testing his cushioning theory the way any tinkering engineer would: with whatever materials were lying around his workshop. He cut pieces of garden hose into small curved sections and glued them to the outsole of a standard running shoe. When he ran in the prototype, something unexpected happened. The hollow rubber tubes compressed on impact, softening the landing, and then rebounded on push-off, giving him the powerful take-off he’d been chasing. It looked ridiculous. It also worked. Test runners who tried the early prototypes kept using the same phrase to describe the sensation: they felt like they were running on clouds. That single phrase became the entire brand identity. The name “On” itself is inspired by the feeling. So is the CloudTec name for the pod technology, and eventually every product name in the range, from Cloud 5 to Cloudmonster to Cloudsurfer. The story is more than folklore. It’s genuinely the technical foundation of every shoe On sells today, because those garden hose tubes evolved into the hollow Cloud Elements that still form the sole of every current model. Modern CloudTec uses engineered polymer rather than garden hose, and the newer CloudTec Phase design sequences the pods so they collapse in order rather than all at once. But the core mechanical principle hasn’t changed since Bernhard’s garage prototypes. If you want to trace exactly why an On Cloud shoe feels different from a Nike or Hoka, this is where it starts. If you’re weighing whether that difference is worth the premium price, our honest breakdown of value against price and durability covers what current owners actually think.
The Three Co-Founders Behind On
Bernhard didn’t build On alone. The prototype needed business and branding minds to turn it into a company, and that’s where Caspar Coppetti and David Allemann entered the story. Both were Swiss, both were avid runners themselves, and both saw commercial potential in what Bernhard was building. Coppetti brought an economics doctorate and business strategy expertise. Allemann brought brand and marketing experience along with his own athletic background as an Ironman winner. In January 2010, the three of them formally established the On company in Zurich. A detail most brand stories skip: each of the three founders invested $150,000 of their own money into the company at founding, and they signed an agreement that if any of them took another paid job within three years, they would forfeit their shares. That’s a level of personal commitment most startups never see, and it’s part of why On’s early story reads differently from typical Silicon Valley or Nike-imitator origins. This was three Swiss friends putting personal savings and career risk into a shoe idea most industry insiders thought was strange. Their bet paid off almost immediately. Just one month after founding, in February 2010, the On prototype won the ISPO BrandNew Award, one of the most prestigious innovation prizes in the global sports industry. Suddenly the little Zurich startup had industry credibility. By July 2010, just six months after founding, the first On running shoes were on the shelves of European retailers. That’s an unusually short timeline from founding to retail. Today, all three founders remain deeply involved in the company. Bernhard focuses on athlete relations and performance strategy, Allemann leads brand and marketing direction, and Coppetti handles business strategy and global expansion. The Swiss precision that shows up in every On shoe design traces back to this three-person founding partnership that has stayed intact across 16 years of growth.
From Zurich Startup to Global Brand: The Key Milestones
The trajectory from 2010 to today is one of the fastest scale-ups in modern athletic footwear. In 2012, On released the Cloudracer, its first true performance model, which was worn to Olympic success by Swiss professional triathlete Nicola Spirig. That legitimised the brand for elite endurance athletes. Frederik Van Lierde, a future Ironman World Champion, became one of the first elite athletes to sign with On, and his subsequent victories gave the brand serious credibility in a market dominated by Nike, Adidas, and ASICS. By 2019, On products were sold through 6,000 retailers across 55 countries. The company held 40% of the running shoe market in Switzerland and 10% in Germany. That’s dominance in a category where global giants usually take decades to build market share. In 2020, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson famously wore On shoes in public despite his active Under Armour sponsorship, which caused industry headlines and pushed the brand into mainstream celebrity culture. In September 2021, On filed for and completed its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ONON, which took the company from private Swiss startup to publicly traded global brand in just over 11 years. Financials from 2024 tell the rest of the story. On Holding AG posted CHF 2.32 billion in annual revenue, CHF 242 million in net income, employed over 3,254 people (now over 4,000 globally), and operated from headquarters in Zurich with offices in the USA, Japan, Australia, and Brazil. As of 2025, the company is heading toward a $20 billion market capitalisation. That’s roughly the size of some legacy sportswear brands that have been building for 50 years. Product-wise, this is the era where models like the Cloudmonster, Cloudsurfer 2, and Cloudeclipse were released and refined. Our ranked breakdown of the current On Cloud lineup covers which specific models sit at the top of the range today.
The Roger Federer Effect and the Celebrity Era
If there’s a single moment that pushed On from serious running brand to global lifestyle icon, it was Roger Federer joining the company. In 2019, Federer had ended his sponsorship deal with Nike and was looking for a partner that shared his Swiss identity and performance values. He met the On founders, tested the shoes, and eventually signed on as both an investor and a design collaborator. Federer’s equity stake in On is not just symbolic. He genuinely participated in product design, most notably The Roger lineup, which is now one of On’s most recognisable sub-collections and includes The Roger Advantage, The Roger Centre Court, and The Roger Pro. Federer’s involvement gave On credibility that money simply cannot buy. Suddenly the brand had one of the greatest athletes in history publicly using and endorsing the shoes, and other celebrities followed quickly. Zendaya became a global brand ambassador and appeared in major On campaigns from 2023 onwards. FKA Twigs designed the Cloud X FKA collaboration. Hellen Obiri, the Kenyan-born marathon champion, joined the elite athlete roster and won major races in On racing flats. The brand’s aesthetic direction also shifted during this era, moving beyond pure performance into what Global Head of Design Thilo Brunner has described as rational, minimal, and functional yet playful Swiss design language. Casual buyers started wearing On shoes with jeans and streetwear rather than only for training runs. If you want to browse the current lineup that came out of this era, our Cloud 5 and Cloudmonster collection at oncloudduk.com has the models most influenced by the Federer and celebrity design era. The lifestyle-plus-performance positioning that defines On today didn’t exist in 2015. It was built almost entirely between 2019 and 2024.
Men’s Cloud 6 Waterproof Thorn Black – On Cloud UK
What This Brand Story Actually Means for Buyers
Knowing the brand history isn’t just trivia. It genuinely changes how you evaluate a pair of On Cloud shoes. Because the founding was athlete-led rather than marketing-led, the shoes prioritise responsive ride over pure soft cushioning, which is why they feel firmer than a Hoka to most first-time wearers. Because the company is Swiss-engineered rather than American or Asian mass-manufactured, the design language is minimalist and understated rather than loud and logo-heavy, which is part of what makes them wearable with everyday clothing. Because Roger Federer is an actual investor and not just a paid spokesperson, the Roger sub-line represents genuine design collaboration rather than a licensing deal. And because the company was still a Zurich startup less than 15 years ago, they still move faster than legacy competitors on product iteration, which is why the CloudTec Phase midsole redesign arrived so quickly across the lineup. What this doesn’t mean: On isn’t a budget brand and never has been. The Swiss engineering premium is built into every retail price, so if your budget is under $100 you’re better off with Brooks or ASICS. It also doesn’t mean the shoes are perfect for every foot, as our detailed value assessment of price, comfort, and durability lays out honestly.
The Final Recommendation
The On Running brand history matters because it explains what you’re actually buying. Not just a running shoe, but a product built by a retired Ironman champion trying to solve a specific engineering problem, backed by two Swiss business partners who bet their own money, refined over 16 years, endorsed by Roger Federer, and now worn by 7 million athletes in over 50 countries. That story doesn’t guarantee the shoe suits your feet. But it does mean the brand isn’t a marketing invention. If you’re picking a first pair and want the model most influenced by this design lineage, start with the Cloud 5 for lifestyle or the Cloudmonster for maximum cushioning. Both trace directly back to Bernhard’s original garden hose prototype.