Hoka Focuses on Wholesale Expansion as Key Retailers Like Dick’s Sporting Goods and JD Sports Add Inventory
Incoming CEO Stefano Caroti dubbed fiscal 2025 “a year of wholesale growth” for Hoka.
As Hoka continues its winning streak in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, Deckers Brands executives are laser focused on building its wholesale business.
On the company’s first quarter earnings call on Thursday, Deckers Brands’ incoming president and chief executive officer Stefano Caroti dubbed fiscal 2025 “a year of wholesale growth” for Hoka, adding that the star running brand is seeing an expansion of both shelf space and new doors within the segment this year.
Caroti also noted on Thursday that some of the retailers expanding Hoka distribution are Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, Intersport in Europe, Top Sport in China, Sport Chek in Canada and JD Sports in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Results of this emphasis on growth were already seen in the first quarter, with Hoka bringing in $333 million in wholesale sales in the period, a 27.7 percent increase from the same time last year. Overall net sales at Hoka in the period were $545.2 million, up 29.7 percent from $420.5 million in Q1 2024.
Outgoing president and CEO Dave Powers added on Thursday’s call that Q1’s wholesale growth was mostly due to the brand refilling inventory in the channel and continuing to see high levels of full price sell-through.
“Part of our approach to building Hoka brand awareness is through expanded points of distribution with key partners,” Powers said. “During the quarter, we added strategic doors with select partners around the world, which contributed to Hoka wholesale growth in the quarter. We also continued adding shelf space and gaining market share.”
Overall, Powers said that Hoka’s performance in the quarter was driven by the brand’s “compelling product assortment,” including new launches, which experienced strong demand across the brand’s global marketplace.
“More specifically, top styles like the Clifton and Bondi continued to experience healthy growth,” Powers said. “Emerging franchises like the Mach, Transport and Kawana drove outsized gains and new styles like the Skyward X, Cielo X1 and Skyflow brought incremental volume and attention to the brand through segmentation and greater innovation.”
The Clifton and Bondi models remain the leading franchises for Hoka, Powers added. “The brand continues to build demand for these popular franchises through distribution segmentation as the introduction of model updates increasingly allow for differentiation of key partners to satisfy incremental demand and limited-edition lifestyle treatments and collaborations that regularly sell out offering unique versions of these hero styles,” he said.
This comes as Deckers Brands reported net sales in the first quarter of 2025 increased 21.1 percent to $825.3 million compared to $675.8 million the same time last year. Net income in the period was $115.6 million, up from $63.6 million in the same quarter last year.
Looking ahead, Deckers is still expecting net sales for the full fiscal year 2025 to increase approximately 10 percent to $4.7 billion, with diluted earnings per share expected to be in the range of $29.75 to $30.65.