Cameron Black Puts Saucony’s Europe Push in Three Capitals

Cameron Black has put most of Saucony’s European brand money into three capital cities, two years after he said the brand might open its own stores. The London Pioneer Store is trading. A five-floor Paris hub was dated for June 2026 and still sat in the future tense in early July.

Black, vice president and general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, joined in September 2023 from Deckers Brands, parent of Hoka. The job was to take a 1898 running house, owned by Wolverine Worldwide since 2012, and put it in front of younger buyers who treat a trainer as weekend kit.

Black’s 2024 Store Map Is Now a Capital-City Plan

In a June 24, 2024 interview during Paris Men’s Fashion Week, Black said Saucony had no branded shops in EMEA and was “considering opening branded stores in the region in the future.” He named London, Paris and Milan as the cities with “the most significant impact across Europe.”

Having a branded store can create a strong market presence, strengthening brand awareness. This can impact wholesale sales in the region, benefit local retailers, and boost the brand’s e-commerce sales.

Cameron Black, vice president EMEA, Saucony, June 2024 interview

He also said sales were about 60% performance and 40% lifestyle, and that the line was getting harder to draw because technical shoes leave the track and go to the street. Online sales, he added, sat “probably below the industry standard” after years of living through wholesale.

The map did not stay still. By January 2026 he was no longer talking about a balanced Europe. He said that since his arrival the budget had been recut year by year: the United Kingdom in 2024, the UK plus France in 2025, then the UK, France and Germany in 2026. 70% of the global budget, he said, would sit on those three markets, and only on their capitals, London, Paris and Berlin. Milan, named in 2024, was not in that spend trio.

The London Shop on James Street

The first European test opened in June 2025 at 4 James Street in Covent Garden, billed as the Saucony Pioneer Store. Black called Covent Garden a natural choice for a “community-driven brand” and said the shop should work as a hub, not a box of boxes.

He put footfall at 44 million people a year on that street, with about 600,000 coming through the door. Hoka already trades on the same stretch. The man hired out of Hoka’s parent now has his shop on Hoka’s street.

INSIDE THE LONDON PIONEER STORE

• The floorplate: 3,695 square feet over two floors of full-price footwear and apparel.
• The lockers: 100 community lockers so club runners can dump a bag, go out, and come back.
• The extras: a coffee station, a community wall, event space, and an interactive treadmill demo.
• The launch week: more than 50 runners raced a branded bus across central London the weekend it opened.

Black said the brief was an “engaging yet relaxing, friendly, welcoming, and authentic environment.” The UK, he said around the opening, accounted for about 10% of brand sales, with France, the Nordics and Italy in a similar band. Italy alone was selling Saucony in around 600 stores, and he joked that Italians still know Jazz and Shadow better than they know the brand name.

Seventy Percent of Spend Goes to Three Countries

That 70% figure is the quiet rewrite. A wholesale running brand used to spread trade money across doors. Black’s version parks most of the purse on three countries and three capitals, then uses races and a shop to make the brand feel local.

THE MONEY AND THE HEAT

• Budget split: 70% of the 2026 global budget on the UK, France and Germany, aimed at London, Paris and Berlin.
• Search lift: Black said Google searches for Saucony in France were 10 times higher than a year earlier, speaking in January 2026.
• Awareness lift: the global “Run As One” platform, launched in March 2025, showed a 12 percentage-point rise in awareness among 25- to 45-year-olds by the end of May, plus an 18% rise in purchase consideration and a 46% rise in branded search, per then-CMO Joy Allen-Altimare.
• The target buyer: Black described a 25- to 35-year-old “young, hip, active consumer,” reached with own races rather than a cheque to a giant marathon.

Allen-Altimare left in November 2025. Wendy Kula took the global CMO seat in May 2026. The spend logic did not change with the name on the door: buy heat in a few cities, then hope wholesale and.com catch the spray.

Performance Still Makes Most of the Money

The accounts still look like a running company. Wolverine’s Saucony sales of $533.1 million in fiscal 2025, the year ended January 3, 2026, were up 31.1% from $406.5 million in 2024. That $126.6 million jump made Saucony the sharpest brand in a group that booked $1,874.3 million, up 6.8%.

SAUCONY SALES UNDER WOLVERINE

Chief executive Chris Hufnagel said 2025 was a record year for the brand. In the fourth quarter, performance, “the majority of the brand’s business,” was up over 20%, with lifestyle growing even faster. The annual report traced the Saucony increase mainly to U.S. and EMEA wholesale and to Asia-Pacific distributors. The fashion-city plan is the story Black tells. The invoice is still a wholesale running invoice.

Brand president Rob Griffiths, who ran Wolverine’s EMEA business before moving to the United States to focus on Saucony, said first-quarter 2026 sales were up 15%, and that the house was aiming for about 15% on the $533.1 million base. After the second-quarter 2026 call, retail analyst Matt McClintock wrote that Wolverine had lifted the brand’s full-year view to the mid-teens and that the lifestyle push still lacked a hard scoreboard. Specialty shops are loud on ProGrid retro models. The published mix has not caught up with that noise.

What Saucony Wants From a Paris Hub

On January 27, 2026, Black said London had opened the previous June and that a Pioneer Hub would open that June in the Marais, next to Veja and Camper Lab, with Ami, Gentle Monster and Autry nearby. He called it a lifestyle district, “which suits us perfectly as a lifestyle running brand.” Construction, he said, was under way.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The building: five floors, with two for storage, a logistics area, one selling floor, a showroom and community space, and offices on top.
• The date he set: June 2026, timed with Paris Men’s Fashion Week.
• The neighbour set: Veja, Camper Lab and a cluster of fashion flagships in the Marais.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A public opening: Griffiths, speaking on July 2, 2026, still said Saucony “will open a Pioneer store there.”
• A live listing: Saucony’s own community pages still invite visitors to the Covent Garden shop and do not list a Paris address.

Griffiths was clear about the model. The aim “isn’t to open a multitude of retail stores,” he said, but a few rooms in strategic cities that can talk to the buyer without a buyer’s appointment. After Paris he named Berlin, Milan and New York. Tokyo already has a Harajuku shop, which he said throws heat back into Paris, London and the United States.

Own-Brand 10Ks Take the Race Budget

The same logic sits on the start line. Black said Saucony would rather build its own events than “spend a fortune to be just another sponsor of giant marathons where the return on investment is difficult to measure.” The first Eiffel Tower 10K, in December 2025, drew 20,000 runners. The Berlin, London and Paris 10K calendar on Saucony’s community hub now runs as a house circuit, not a logo on someone else’s gantry.

THE CAPITAL-CITY BUILD

1. September 2023: Black arrives as EMEA vice president and general manager.
2. June 24, 2024: He says there are no branded EMEA stores yet and names London, Paris and Milan.
3. June 2025: The Pioneer Store opens at 4 James Street, Covent Garden.
4. January 2026: He puts 70% of the 2026 budget on the UK, France and Germany, and dates a five-floor Marais hub for June.
5. June 20, 2026: The Saucony Berlin 10K runs at Tempelhofer Feld.
6. July 2, 2026: Griffiths still describes the Paris Pioneer store as a store that will open, then lists Berlin, Milan and New York.
7. July 12, 2026: The London 10K is run as a title event.
8. September 20, 2026: The Shoreditch Half is run in east London.
9. December 6, 2026: The Tour Eiffel 10K is due back in Paris.

Griffiths put the same method on Philadelphia’s Love Run and on the Tempelhof 10K: get inside the local running culture, then sell both the race shoe and the lifestyle shoe from that room. Collabs still do the fashion-week work. Westside Gunn’s Grid Jazz 9 “Awesome God” was shown in Paris during Men’s Fashion Week in June 2026, with a London flagship collection window attached to the draw. Jae Tips, the collaborator who had given the lifestyle line a lot of its heat, signed with Nike in March 2026. The archive is doing more of the lifting now: ProGrid Omni 9, Ride Millennium, Jazz, Shadow.

Berlin Moves Ahead of Milan

The 2024 shortlist treated Milan as a peer of London and Paris. The 2026 budget treats Berlin as the third capital. Italy is not being dropped. Black said the country still needs the running DNA sold to a younger buyer before lifestyle distribution can speed up, and Griffiths kept Milan on the store list after Paris. Germany simply got the money and the 10K first.

That is the trade Black is asking the company to live with. Independent running shops still stock the shoes, and wholesale still produced the record year. The brand spend, the Pioneer rooms and the house 10Ks now live in a handful of capitals, where a 25-year-old can find Saucony next to Veja rather than only next to a gait-analysis bench.

Hufnagel has called Saucony “really a global growth story,” not only a U.S. running-category story. EMEA is the proof he wants. It is also still a build. Until the Marais hub is open and the mix is published, the three-city plan is a marketing map laid over a wholesale running business that just had its best year.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Saucony’s European retail and marketing plan and of figures published by Wolverine Worldwide. It is informational only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or guidance on how to allocate capital in footwear or retail stocks. Readers who want to act on company results, outlook ranges or brand growth rates should consult a qualified financial adviser or licensed investment professional who can assess their own position. Sales figures, store plans and event dates reflect the company statements and filings cited here and may change with later results, openings or calendar updates.