As Foot Locker continues to transform its stores and merchandising mix, the retailer is set to add Salomon to its offering just in time for the critical back-to-school season.
On July 19, a select number of Foot Locker stores in key markets as well as on its e-commerce site will introduce an edited lineup of Salomon sneakers across three of the French mountain sports brand’s central footwear franchises. These models include the Salomon XT-6, XT-6 GTX and XT-Whisper silhouettes. All three will be available in men’s and women’s sizes and will retail between $145 and $200.
Michelle Wang, senior vice president and chief merchant at Foot Locker, told FN in an interview that the new partnership has “been cooking for quite some time.”
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“We’ve been in conversation to really find the right point in time to launch,” Wang said. “When Salomon solidified that it’s moving into North America and into New York, it really struck me because when you think about Foot Locker as a brand, we are rooted in the city of New York. So, we felt that Salomon was certainly ready just based on everything that they’ve been doing, be it from a hero space of collaborations to seeing it on the feet of many people in the streets of New York. We’re really excited to launch with them.”
Wang said that Foot Locker’s tie to New York will be on full display for the official launch event with Salomon next month. On Saturday, Aug. 1, Foot Locker will host a farmer’s market-inspired pop-up at its Union Square store located at 22 East 14th Street. The event will be open to the public and will bring together local vendors, immersive product discovery, and community experiences inspired by a classic summer farmers market, the executive noted.
Additional activations will take place at Foot Locker stores in Los Angeles and Philadelphia on Aug. 8, followed by Miami on Aug. 15, featuring DJs, light bites, and gift-with-purchase offerings.
As for how Salomon fits into Foot Locker’s renewed merchandising strategy, Wang noted that the consumer remains the retailer’s “number one priority.”
“There’s been so much that has changed in the last few years,” Wang explained. And I think you can feel that in terms of just the mix of brands that resonate with our consumers today. This anchors into our philosophy in that we’ve got to meet the customer where they are, and we’ve got to broaden our portfolio to give them the right curated options and the best product and the best brands.”
Indeed, since Dick’s Sporting Goods purchased Foot Locker for $2.4 billion in September, its new parent company hasn’t been afraid to bring the business back to growth mode.
On the company’s first quarter 2026 earnings call in May, Dick’s Sporting Goods executive chairman Ed Stack told analysts that this back-to-school season will mark the first time the new team “had full control” over the buys, which should help tell a new story to Foot Locker consumers. Stack has previously said, and reiterated on the call, that he felt like the Foot Locker footwear wall was a “run-on sentence.”
“[The Foot Locker footwear wall] was just filled with a bunch of shoes, and it was nothing important,” Stack maintained on the call. “What we did is we took all those shoes off the wall, we reduced roughly 30 percent of the SKU choices and focus on key styles, key colors and key stories that when the consumer came in, they knew what was important.”
Stack added that behind the scenes, the company is also working to strengthen the fundamentals of the Foot Locker business with improvements in supply chain, moving product faster and getting product into the right stores.
“We’re playing greater discipline around pricing and using real-time data to drive better decisions and sharper execution,” Stack said. “Finally, our brand partners remain fully engaged. They want a strong growing Foot Locker, and they are leaning in with us as their largest global partner.”
And these moves have been paying off, according to Wang. “We’re just really excited for the future and what’s to come,” she told FN. “You may have heard what Ed [Stack] referenced in our last earnings call all the work we’re doing together. And certainly, what I would say is being a part of the Dick’s organization has been great for us in terms of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
