“So you can’t see that we’re not 6 foot, 10 [inches], but we’re not six foot, 10 [inches],” Adam Goldston, told Retail Brew matter-of-factly over Zoom with his brother, Ryan Goldston. “We played basketball…in college at USC, and our passion was always to push ourselves to get to the next level physically.”
In 2009, the identical twins decided to put their money where their foot was by launching Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL), an athletic footwear brand they describe as “luxury performance” for its ability to “instantly make you jump higher.”
“We knew that we had to start within a micro niche where we had true credibility and authenticity, to kind of lay the groundwork for what we’re trying to do in the future,” Adam explained. “And when it came to basketball shoes that instantly make you jump higher, us being sport collegiate athletes at USC, it made sense.”
The message seems to have reached far and wide, including as far as the NBA. For its 2010–2011 season, the NBA banned APL’s Concept 1 shoes for giving players a “competitive advantage,” the twins tell Retail Brew proudly.
- Since then, the duo have also been inducted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), while sales grew 102% YoY in 2020 and over 70% in 2021.
- The brand also has a presence across the globe through partnerships with Nordstrom, Selfridges Net-A-Porter, ShopBop.com, Lane Crawford, and Harvey Nichols. Over 70% of its sales, however, come through its own website and stores.
Adam added that the company has also “never raised $1 of outside capital” and remains completely independent, which makes creating new products even more challenging as it expands its presence across the market.
- Some of its best sellers include its Zipline shoe and its Techloom shoes.
Long road ahead: APL’s Zipline shoe, for instance, took 18–20 months from ideation to getting it on the market, Ryan said.While the shoe was designed in Los Angeles, the manufacturing for the product occurred in Asia, and the inspiration came from a trip to Japan. “One day, we walked 14.3 miles, and when we were walking through Tokyo…[we] went in to go get these Japanese soufflé pancakes,” Ryan explained. “They were so thick, fluffy, like every aspect about them…and we [thought], ‘We got to create a midsole that is inspired by these…that can be worn in all different ways.’”
The Zipline shoe, which was originally conceived in October 2019, is APL’s best-selling product today at $320 a pair and is now available in several colors for both men and women.
- Out of the two demographics, however, the brand’s ethos seems to have struck a higher chord with women, who make up 65% of its business.
- Adam claimed that APL is the “only major athletic brand” with such a chunk of its sales coming from women versus men, which the brothers attribute to increased social media engagement with women.
- Ryan noted that it made it easier to have an “open form of dialogue” and receive feedback from customers via email, socials, and text messaging.
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Up next: Over the next year, the brand plans on both physical and digital expansion across key regions in the US, UK, Europe, and the Middle East.
It opened its first flagship store in Los Angeles in 2019 and has another one in the works at a location that remains confidential. But while the Goldstons are confident in their vision for expansion, the challenge remains allocating funds as an independent brand. “We don’t have any investors, but the 100% of the business we built, [we] did it profitably,” Adam said. “If you do it that way, you’re capital constrained—that doesn’t mean that you don’t have capital; it just means that you’re constrained how you can deploy it.”
For now, the company is investing in offering more colors and styles. Its biggest strength, per Ryan, however, is still its ability to occupy that space between luxury and sports performance, which he is holding on to, despite any financial constraints. “We don’t have excess resources, but we have the resources that we’ve built over time with the team that we have, and we’ve deployed them in a really strong way,” he said. “That’s part of the reason why the brand stands for what it does is because when we put something out, we truly do believe in it. We’re not just throwing darts against the wall and hoping something sticks.”—JS