Profit Margins On Roger Federer's 'On' Shoes Causes Stir In Switzerland

The profit margins of On's running shoes are causing a stir in their Swiss homeland over the difference between their sales price in Switzerland and the production cost in Vietnam.

The Swiss consumer magazine K-Tipp published a study last week which looked at customs data for 30 On products, comparing the figures seen there with the price in Switzerland.

For the model called "The Roger Advantage", co-created with the Swiss tennis star Roger Federer, On pays 17.86 Swiss francs ($20.50) to the manufacturers in Vietnam, and sells them online for 190 francs ($218), the magazine said.

K-Tipp said that while high markups are common for sports shoes, On's profit margin was much higher than that of rivals like Adidas and Puma.

Popular with athletes, On was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 and counts Federer among shareholders.

The company -- which had a turnover of 1.2 billion Swiss francs in 2022 -- produces high-performance sports shoes with "run on clouds" soles, according to the brand slogan.

"We do not disclose or comment on commercially sensitive or confidential information," On told AFP in an email.

"However, we would like to point out that the figures published in the media last week contained inaccurate information."

K-Tipp's investigation sparked numerous reactions in Switzerland, where Federer is comfortably the biggest sports star.

"Sustainable management consists of equitably sharing the fruits of value creation," Oliver Cassen, spokesman for the NGO Public Eye, told AFP.

"If the profit margin of a brand company is so much larger than the margin of shoe factories," he added, "then the balance is not good".

Public Eye regularly publishes reports on working conditions in the fashion and clothing industry.

The On brand was created in 2010 by Swiss ironman champion Olivier Bernhard, who developed a shock absorption system with an engineer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

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