Every pick this week is a brand answering the same question — who gets to come in? Three said yes and handed over real ground: a flagship marathon racer, an aisle in the celebrity grocery store, a hybrid super shoe and the line between running and cycling. Two are in court trying to keep someone out: a founder, a namesake.
TL;DR
- Pas Normal Studios and Salomon drop their SS26 GRVL Concept — a hybrid super shoe that collapses road, gravel, and the line between runner and cyclist.
- On x Erewhon opens with a Cloudsurfer Max capsule, a co-branded post-run juice, and a wellness club planted inside LA's loudest grocery store.
- adidas hands Satisfy the Adizero Adios Pro 4 — the marathon flagship, in three mismatched colorways, under a multi-year deal.
- Lululemon settles with Chip Wilson. Two of his nominees — including former On co-CEO Marc Maurer — join the board; Wilson agrees to 18 months of silence.
- Patagonia stays in federal court against Pattie Gonia. She answers with an open letter and a Chouinard quote turned back on the company.
Pas Normal Studios and Salomon merge road and gravel — and runner and cyclist.
Pas Normal Studios and Salomon launched their SS26 crossover collection this week — a continuation of the partnership the two have been building since their debut capsule in February 2023, designed under Pas Normal Studios' experimental T.K.O. line. At the center is the GRVL Concept: a hybrid performance shoe with a PEBA-based supercritical foam midsole, dual full-length carbon blades, an integrated knitted gaiter, and Salomon's quickLACE system, weighing in at 262 grams. The outsole carries 1.5 mm lugs whose geometry is borrowed from bicycle tyre tread — gripping loose terrain without surrendering speed on tarmac. The collection is rounded out by the Race Skin 2 running vest. The brand decision underneath the product decision is the more interesting one. Pas Normal Studios is a Copenhagen cycling brand whose entire posture is cycling-grade taste; Salomon is the trail-and-technical company quietly reshaping running's design ceiling. Letting a cycling label design a running shoe is a category move, not a colorway. It positions gravel running — the discipline that doesn't yet have a flagship brand — as the territory both companies want to claim, and it argues that the next move in running's design vocabulary will come from cycling. Open pick, category extension by who you let into the lab.
On opened a wellness club inside Erewhon — and brought a Cloudsurfer Max capsule, a juice, and a community calendar with it.
On and Erewhon went live this week with a multi-year partnership "spanning product, community, and culture," anchored by three pieces. The product side is a curated run collection: Cloudsurfer Max in black and white, plus Run T-shirt, Performance 2-in-1 Short, Performance Bra, Performance Tight, Club Premium T-shirt and Hoodie — neutral tones with orange accents pulled from Erewhon's in-store palette and produce displays. The product line lands alongside a co-branded post-run juice (golden sea moss, liquid magnesium, turmeric, organic orange juice) on shelves at all Erewhon locations during launch. The third piece is the On x Erewhon Wellness Club — a recurring series of running, training, and recovery events across Los Angeles, framed as a community calendar rather than a marketing activation. The campaign was shot inside Erewhon's Manhattan Beach store, with runners moving through the aisles. The brand decision is what On didn't do. The easy version of this partnership is a co-branded smoothie and a shelf line — a logo trade. On built a community calendar inside the cultural anchor of LA wellness, which is the room a generation of "I do Pilates, I run sometimes, I drink twenty-dollar smoothies" consumers already lives in. For a brand whose growth thesis depends on landing the wellness-adjacent runner before the wellness-adjacent runner finds a different shoe brand, Erewhon is the most direct way in.
adidas put its flagship marathon racer in Satisfy's mismatched hands. The Adizero Adios Pro 4 SATISFY drops as a multi-year deal.
The Adizero Adios Pro 4 SATISFY released May 22 at satisfyrunning.com ($300 a pair) and went wider May 25 via the Confirmed app and select adidas stores. Three colorways — Army Green, Earth Brown, Core Black — each sold as a mismatched pair, with an asymmetric color fade running across the two shoes. Satisfy's stated reference points for the treatment: skateboarding, spray paint, off-road buggies. The Satisfy mantra "stay possessed" sits under each heel tab; the Satisfy logo runs on top of adidas's three-stripe motif. The launch event, billed as "The Circle Pit," was a closed-loop running and music set staged at a pump track in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. The brand decision is who adidas hands the asset to. The Adizero Adios Pro is the line that anchors adidas's elite marathon roster — the platform the brand builds its racing claims on. Satisfy is the Paris label whose entire posture is that running isn't a meritocracy; that the runner isn't a Boston qualifier; that running is a refuge for the people who don't want to be timed. To put Satisfy's mantra under the world's fastest shoe is to argue that the cultural pull of running in 2026 sits outside the elite end of the field. adidas has named this a multi-year partnership, with more projects coming. They're not borrowing the aesthetic. They're buying the argument.
Lululemon settled with Chip Wilson. Two of his nominees join the board; he goes quiet for 18 months.
Lululemon announced a settlement with founder Chip Wilson, ending the proxy contest he opened in December after the stock retreated sharply this year. Wilson's two nominees join the board following the 2026 annual meeting: Marc Maurer, former co-CEO of On, and Laura Gentile, former chief marketing officer of ESPN. A third director with product and brand expertise in apparel will be appointed by October 1. Wilson, who owns 8.7% of Lululemon, signs an 18-month standstill — no public criticism of the company — and commits to a donation supporting athletics, art, and landscaping at Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, where Lululemon was founded in 1998. The brand reality underneath the governance one: Lululemon's board is now meaningfully changed by two outside hires the company did not choose. The Maurer pick is the louder of the two. He's the operator whose Swiss DTC brand has been gaining the most ground on Lululemon's own DTC and athleisure posture for the last three years; his appointment lands the same week his former company opens a wellness club inside Erewhon. The settlement language calls it a partnership; the structure is a concession. Hold pick number one — and a useful reminder that founder equity, kept on the cap table, is brand equity that has not been spent yet.
Patagonia stays in federal court against Pattie Gonia. She answered with an open letter and a Chouinard quote turned back on the company.
In January 2026, Patagonia filed a federal trademark infringement suit against Wyn Wiley — better known as the drag artist and climate activist Pattie Gonia — in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeking $1 in nominal damages, an injunction against Pattie Gonia merchandise, and denial of the "Pattie Gonia" federal trademark application. This week, Wiley published an open letter to Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert, the Patagonia board, and the Purpose Trust trustees, asking them to drop the case. The letter cites eight years of work, a community of more than three million, $3.7 million raised for environmental causes, and a Yvon Chouinard line — "You are what you do, not what you say you are" — quoted back at the company. A scheduling conference is set for June 8. The brand reality, separate from the legal one: Patagonia is the company whose positioning depends on being unlike the kind of company that files this lawsuit. Whatever the trademark merits, the dispute is being adjudicated in the press before it's adjudicated in court, and the press is sympathetic to the activist. The lawsuit is doing the brand work the lawsuit was meant to prevent. Hold pick number two — and the more expensive of this week's two examples of what a closed door costs.
Presented by The Brand Report Advisory.
The Advisory is where our editorial lens does the work — brand strategy engagements with the CMOs, founders, and brand leaders on the hook to grow brands in outdoor, sport, and lifestyle. If you're sitting with a brand decision that would benefit from the same thinking we bring to the brief, [reply to this email / start a conversation →].
If a pick in this week's brief lit you up to go drive more great work, forward it to one person who'd feel the same. That's how this stays in the right hands.