The Swiss are ‘sole-searching’ about a shoe
Debate over the On sportswear company raises questions about what should be labelled as a national product
A few years ago, Switzerland found itself in an oddly heated argument about a running shoe. The New York-listed sportswear company On had grown from a Zurich start-up to global challenger to Nike and Adidas and wanted to put the Swiss cross on its shoes manufactured in Asia.
Critics argued that a symbol so closely associated with Swiss manufacturing did not belong on products made thousands of miles away. Worth an estimated SFr7bn a year to Swiss industry, it is also one of the world’s most copied and fiercely defended brands.
Swissness Enforcement, a group that campaigns to protect Swiss origin labels, said consumers seeing the cross would naturally assume the shoes were Swiss-made. The organisation spent years challenging On’s use of the symbol and, in 2025, filed a complaint in China over whether the branding complied with local rules.
On countered that the value was created in Zurich, where the slightly quirky shoes — which have soles filled with holes — were designed, developed and engineered. In March this year, Switzerland’s intellectual property office clarified that companies can, under certain conditions, use the Swiss cross to signal Swiss engineering even when products are made abroad.
The dispute became associated with a broader question: is a product Swiss because it is made in Switzerland, or because it was invented there? And, how important is it that products are made entirely in Switzerland? Today, the issue has a resonance far beyond its borders. After decades in which companies chased efficiency and global supply chains, US tariffs and an onslaught of Chinese competition have prompted countries to once again ask what should be produced at home.
For On, the expertise, suppliers and production networks required to manufacture its running shoes sit largely in Asia. Making them in Switzerland would be extraordinarily expensive. It is difficult to argue that every pair of On trainers should be assembled in the shadow of the Alps.
But Switzerland has long attached particular importance to the connection between national identity and high-quality production. It has spent decades turning a white cross on a red background into one of the world’s most valuable commercial symbols. It appears on watches, chocolate and pocket knives, helping manufacturers command premiums that competitors can only envy. For a luxury watch, physical production in Switzerland is part of the appeal. A Rolex made elsewhere would not be a Rolex in quite the same sense.
Consider Toblerone as an example of how strongly the Swiss feel about the issue. When owner Mondelez shifted part of its production to Slovakia, the company had to remove the Matterhorn from the packaging.
Victorinox, maker of the Swiss Army knife, faces a similar tension. The company has had to navigate a soaring franc and the threat of tariffs while protecting a brand built around local craftsmanship. Faced with higher US tariffs, it explored moving some final processing steps, such as cleaning and packaging, to America.
On’s claim is that Swissness resides not in the factory but in the knowhow: the designers, engineers and researchers who create the product. The majority of its research, development and design team, roughly 400 people, is in Zurich.
Last year, On unveiled LightSpray, a technology that uses a robotic arm to spray a shoe upper directly on to a mould of a foot, replacing a process that normally requires dozens of separate pieces to be stitched together. Developed at On’s labs in Zurich, the process can create a shoe upper in about three minutes. The technology was developed in Switzerland and the first shoes made using it were produced there.
The volumes are tiny compared with On’s mainstream footwear business. But the choice is revealing. When the company wanted to make conventional running shoes, it went where the supply chains and manufacturing expertise already existed. When it wanted to invent a new way of making them, it stayed at home.
That feels like a more useful lesson than the older debate about whether every Swiss-labelled product should be made in Switzerland. The country is unlikely to compete on the mass production of trainers. The more important question is what capabilities — and more importantly what innovation — Swiss companies, including On, want to remain on home turf. For much of Switzerland’s history, the Swiss cross signified products made in Switzerland. Increasingly, it may come to stand for products imagined and designed there.