FitFlop CEO: “We want to own summer”

British footwear brand FitFlop, founded by wellness entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore in 2007 and known for its ergonomic and wellness footwear, is undergoing a brand evolution to transform into a global lifestyle brand, aiming to "own summer" by focusing on women's footwear and expanding its reach through strategic collaborations to become a billion US dollar company.

In the past five years, since the appointment of former Ugg and Coach executive Gianni Georgiades as chief executive in 2021, FitFlop has been on a journey to reset its global brand image, transforming itself from a functional, comfort shoe aimed at an older consumer looking for orthopaedic relief into a design-led, science-driven innovative footwear brand, where “style is fused with comfort”.

“I’ve been here five years, and the brand has gone on a real evolution,” said Georgiades in an exclusive interview with FashionUnited at the brand’s SS27 conference. “We had great foundations and obviously heritage, but we weren't realising our full potential. To do so, I needed the team, the product, even the back-end operations all set up to deliver; that takes time, which is why I always set out for spring 2027 to be our big moment.”

Working alongside Georgiades on FitFlop’s brand reset is Louise Noble, chief product and brand officer, who joined the footwear company in late 2024, tasked with shaping the global creative, strategic, and innovative future of its product offerings. With experience as global category director of active lifestyle at Vivobarefoot and senior roles at Clarks and Nike, Noble has more than 25 years of experience across product creation, merchandising, and sustainable innovation, and her first fully directed collections for FitFlop are scheduled to debut for spring/summer 2027.

Other key members include Phil Brunetti, the brand’s head of product merchandising; Chris Anderson, footwear design director, who joined the company in May 2025; and Kim Lilley, innovation and product development director of product, who has more than 12 years of leading research and development projects and serves as FitFlop’s in-house biomechanist.

Georgiades added: “The starting point was having the right team. Before we started about product, before team culture, I needed a team around me that could sit in a room and plan and strategise and build things forward.

“There are a lot of brands now that talk about comfort, wellness and the science that goes in the product, but I can tell you nobody in casual or lifestyle footwear does what we do. We know what goes into making a performance product. We have 20 years of history; our technologies are real, they all stand for something, they all work. Now we need to fuse our technology and science with that comfort, without sacrificing style.”

SS27: Start of FitFlop’s evolution to drive global brand ambitions

As part of its ambition to become a global lifestyle brand, SS27 is FitFlop’s realisation of a “new era” of comfort, evolving its footwear brand, designed primarily for women, with a clear ambition to design “for women who make the ordinary extraordinary,” underpinned by its in-house biomechanics lab led by Dr Kim Lilley, which builds products utilising extensive scientific understanding of the female body to ensure that styles supports women through every part of their day, “empowering every movement from the first step to the last”.

As FitFlop enters its new phase of accelerated growth, the footwear brand is concentrating its efforts on collections that “feel purposeful, wearable and culturally in tune,” in response to global consumers increasingly seeking product that truly fits the way they live and “demanding comfort,” explains FitFlop’s CEO, with its core collections for SS27 bringing together “biomechanics, design and cultural insight to create product that supports the body intelligently, while connecting with how people want to live, move and express themselves today”.

“Women’s is the most important category to get right, and is our focus,” said Georgiades. “Whilst we still take care of men, we still bring out new products, ensuring that it's relevant product; it's women's where our focus and investment is. We want to create beautiful product that is comfortable. Comfort used to be a dirty word, but I’m not ashamed to say it, we’re going to own it, because we already own it, we're just not driving it hard enough, but that changes now.”

While open-toe styles, which the brand is known for, are still very much a key component of its upcoming drops, there is also a strategic move into “transitional close-toe” products, with the brand reporting “phenomenal” growth in its sneaker and ballerina styles.

Georgiades added: “With SS27, we’re setting a new direction for FitFlop, one that puts design and performance on equal footing. We’re seeing a clear shift in the market toward footwear that must deliver across multiple expectations: it needs to perform, it needs to be wearable, and it needs to feel relevant.”

A key highlight for SS27 is its iQushion products, tipped as the brand’s entry market styles, offering lightweight and flexible flip-flops and pool slides, in bold, playful colours, featuring technology that makes every step “feel soft, springy and light,” due to the high-rebound cushioning that absorbs impact and bounces back, while reducing fatigue and keeping movement smooth.

“iQushion is going to be something quite special over the next few years,” explains Georgiades. “It’s not just flip flops, it’s a really important part of our strategic approach to own summer. The market leader in that category has a tremendous business, but they don't have what we have; theirs is basic and not very comfortable, our technology makes them flip flops that you can live in.”

FitFlop to use collaborations to drive brand reach

With its core collections taking shape, FitFlop is also looking to drive brand awareness and expand its creative reach with a series of brand and designer collaborations.

With success from its partnership with London Fashion Week designer Roksanda, FitFlop is implementing a three-track strategy, designer collaborations that are “more direction, unexpected” partnerships, alongside more “commercial” collaborations, such as upcoming collections with Pantone and Haribo, as seen with its recent line with Keith Haring, which drew inspiration from the artist’s use of streets and subways of New York as a living canvas. In addition, FitFlop plans to add local collaborations with local designers to ensure “cultural relevance” in key markets, such as Asia, which is shaping up to be one of the brand’s strongest markets.

“The collaborations we do, it's really about generating interest, brand heart,” adds Georgiades.

FitFlop CEO: Global success comes with having the “right partners”

Since joining the business, Georgiades states that FitFlop has grown “every single year,” and 2025 was a financial record year, reaching 170 million US dollars, up from 114 million US dollars when he arrived.

“I have no doubt in my mind that this can be a billion-dollar brand,” adds Georgiades. “I've worked for billion-dollar brands, so I know it can be, because those billion-dollar brands don't do what we do. “We’ve sold more than 75 million pairs worldwide - the consumer is choosing our products, and even during the last few years where the world has been in turmoil, we grew nearly 60 percent. We're in that period where wellness, comfort, how a woman feels is really important. Once we fuse that style with comfort, which is what we're doing right now, the acceleration will come.”

The UK is the brand’s home market; however, it doesn’t have a standalone store here, but rather a multi-brand distribution through department stores, such as Selfridges and House of Fraser, whereas in Asia and the Middle East it has utilised distribution partners to roll out stores and brand reach.

Georgiades added: “We are a small to medium-sized brand. So, for us to be able to really scale, we need the right partners, and the likes of Samsung C&T Fashion in South Korea, Apparel Group in the Middle East, Whiteplane in the Philippines, and Albion 1879 in Spain are helping us to scale locally.

“They have the infrastructure, they have the experience, the right retailers and wholesalers. We couldn’t do it on our own. We see our disruptors as an extension of our team, and we work in partnership.”

FitFlop taking on Europe and South Korea

The most recent of those collaborations was with Albion 1879, which introduces, develops and manages international brands in the Iberian Peninsula, including AllSaints and Ugg, and opened FitFlop’s first-ever store in Spain, in Puerto Banús, Marbella, as part of the British footwear brand’s European retail expansion strategy.

Spain is described as a “strategic market” for FitFlop, and Albion 1879 are accelerating brand visibility and activation across the market, supporting the brand's vision to build momentum across Europe.

Growth in Europe will also be supported by a new warehouse hub in mainland Europe, which is set to open in the autumn. Georgiades adds the move will allow the brand to “really accelerate its digital business” across the region, with Germany and Switzerland being key targets for the brand.

“Brexit does not help trading with mainland Europe now,” states Georgiades. “The demand is there, but the service hasn’t matched it. You try being a customer waiting weeks for your product and paying a premium. Having a distribution centre in mainland Europe is a game-changer for us, and we need it to absolutely power what we want to achieve in mainland Europe. I really believe it will push our digital business through the roof.”

FitFlop has also started accelerating its South Korea expansion through an exclusive partnership with Samsung C&T Fashion, responding to consumers increasingly prioritising wellbeing alongside functionality and style, with comfort-led footwear emerging as a “high-momentum category,” explains the British footwear brand.

“South Korea is a market that doesn’t just follow trends, it helps set them,” explains Georgiades. “As consumers look for footwear that supports how they feel and live, we see a powerful opportunity to grow a category that blends style with real-world performance. Partnering with Samsung C&T Fashion enables us to scale with precision, combining the biomechanical expertise of FitFlop with their outstanding local retail and digital capability to build long-term brand momentum.”

Under the partnership, Samsung C&T Fashion lead FitFlop’s retail, digital and wholesale operations across South Korea. The company currently operates 22 premium shop-in-shop locations at key destinations, including Lotte Department Store Jamsil, Shinsegae Gangnam and Hyundai Department Store Trade Center. This retail presence will also be supported by “a robust online strategy and a broader wholesale distribution network”.

The first standalone concept store between the two opened recently at Starfield Suwon Mall, establishing the brand’s physical footprint in the country to bring the product experience closer to Korean consumers. The goal is to expand this concept store strategy to 30 locations across South Korea by the end of 2026.

FitFlop has a presence in 88 countries, through more than 5,000 stores and over 2,000 retailers. The footwear brand operates 89 concept spaces across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, India and APAC, and has showrooms in London and New York.