Out in the open
Running and ski mountaineering star Kílian Jornet has launched a new footwear, clothing and accessories brand with Mallorca-based footwear group Camper.
Few people have the strength, fitness, determination and toughness to compete at the top level of competitive mountain running. Even fewer are able to combine winning medals in ultra-trail events all over the world with other demanding activities such as ski mountaineering and record-breaking fast times for the ascent and descent of major peaks, including Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. Kílian Jornet, however, seems able to achieve all of this and still to have carved out time while preparing for the 2022 season of the global trail running World Series to launch a new sports footwear, clothing and accessories brand, NNormal.
This is a partnership the Catalan athlete has established with footwear brand Camper. This is more than a marketing initiative; Kílian Jornet will wear NNormal shoes and clothing to compete in this season’s competitions, which means they will have to be able to withstand, and help him perform at, events involving distances of, sometimes, more than 100 kilometres and climbs of thousands of metres.
Country roots
It is not unusual for athletes and brands to describe their partnerships as something more than a commercial arrangement, and this certainly applies in the statements that have accompanied the announcement of the Camper-Kílian combo. In fairness, though, a number of elements support the ‘meeting-of-minds’ narrative here.
Camper is fiercely proud of its heritage, its links to the artisan footwear industry in Mallorca and its country roots. Its name does not derive from ‘camping’ as we understand it today; it simply means ‘from the country’, as opposed to ‘from the town’. Its headquarters are in the town of Inca, in the north of the island, 35 kilometres from the nearest beach and the same distance in the other direction from the city of Palma.
It launched in 1975, but founder, Lorenzo Fluxà, had impeccable Mallorcan shoemaking credentials as the grandson of Antonio Fluxà, a footwear craftsman who, in 1877, became the first person to bring stitching machines to the shoe workshops of the island. Since 2012, a representative of the fourth generation of the family, Miguel Fluxà, has been running the company. It now employs more than 1,000 people and has shops in major cities all over the world, as well as a bit of a cult following among shoe fans.
On the subject of setting up a new brand now, Miguel Fluxà says it is always “an exciting adventure”, but that having the chance to set up NNormal with Kílian Jornet was a one-off opportunity. He talks of a “perfect complementarity” between the two partners. “A union between performance and responsibility is totally written into our philosophy,” he continues. “Kílian also has a unique vision of outdoor activity, as well as some solid expertise in product development, while we at Camper have been able to bring our entrepreneurship, our footwear-manufacturing expertise and our creative know-how to the table.”
On top of the world
Kílian Jornet grew up in the Pyrenees, a dozen kilometres from the border between Spain and Andorra, at a large, popular mountain refuge called Cap del Rec, where his parents worked as mountain guides and winter sports instructors. Since 2016, his home has been in Rauma in the fjords of western Norway. The point is that he is no city boy either.
By his early 20s, he was winning world championships in trail-running and ski mountaineering. He entered the famous Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc mountain marathon for the first time in 2008, at the age of 20 and won, completing the 166-kilometre course in a record time of just under 20 hours and 57 minutes, almost an hour faster than the athlete who took second place, Sherpa Dachhiri-Dawa. He has since won the event on two other occasions.
He has won the Skyrunner World Series mountain-running championship six times and made films of his solo, unassisted ascents of the highest mountains in the world.
Saying and doing
“To talk and talk and talk and not to act adds up to nothing,” NNormal’s launch announcement states. “We know that it’s what we do and not what we say that will define us.” Nevertheless, as with the introduction of any new brand, what the partners have said about NNormal is all we have to go on for now.
The NNormal name came about, partly, through a combination of Norway and Mallorca. The products for its first collection, which will launch in Europe and North America this autumn, were designed at Camper’s home in Mallorca and tested on its new partner’s snow-covered home turf in Norway. The extra N is because what the brand partners seek to achieve in terms of product quality, sustainability and social responsibility is, they say, “not normal” today, but will be in the near future.
They describe their mission as being to inspire people to enjoy and respect nature. They commit to being “authentic”, which is to say true to their passion for the outdoors, and at the same time “functional”. This means they are determined to make products that outdoor enthusiasts will be able to wear while carrying out a series of different activities and still get lengthy service from them. These products will be repairable, reusable and recyclable, the partners insist.
They launched with a five-point manifesto, declaring that NNormal will blaze its own creative trail, which will push it “to contribute, for the good of people and the planet”. The open air is the brand’s home, the manifesto continues, because of its passion for outdoor sports and because, “on reaching the summit, we take with us our memories of the people who have accompanied us on our journey”.
It also aims to “empower simplicity”, it says. Simplicity for NNormal means being able to do more with less, and a conviction that, sometimes, the simplest solution can be the most effective, “even if it’s the most difficult solution to imagine”. The fourth manifesto point extols teamwork and taking personal responsibility for our actions, and the fifth states that actions speak more loudly than words.
Transparency promise
Rounding off, for now, the words that have accompanied the introduction of NNormal, Kílian Jornet goes into more detail about what some of these manifesto pledges mean.
“We need a new way of thinking and of acting in relation to the environment and to outdoor activities,” he says. He explains that this will of necessity mean being “very honest” about how NNormal products are made and the impact the brand has on society and the environment. “This has to translate into total transparency,” he continues, “and into working to avoid excess consumption by creating products that are long-lasting.”
With the aim of making sure NNormal shoes, garments and accessories have the lowest possible environmental footprint, the mountain athlete explains, the brand will work with “different materials and different designs”. He concludes: “It’s going to be a long and difficult process, but that’s what motivates us, the whole team and me, as we launch this project”.
Kílian Jornet will wear NNormal shoes and apparel to compete in the 2022 international trail running World Series.
All Credits: Jaime de Diego
