Industry Sportswear

Founded 1966

Headquarters Westlake Village, California, United States

Products Athletic shoes

kswiss.com

K-Swiss was founded in 1966 in Los Angeles, California, by the two Swiss brothers Art and Ernie Brunner who became interested in tennis after immigrating to the United States, where they introduced the first leather tennis shoes.

K-Swiss, Inc. is an American athletic shoes manufacturer brand based in downtown Los Angeles, California, and currently owned by Xtep.

K-Swiss was founded in 1966 in Los Angeles, California by two Swiss brothers, Art and Ernie Brunner. They became interested in tennis after immigrating to the United States. They imported the patent leather tennis shoes from the Swiss Kuenzli shoe manufacturer, re-naming their company K-Swiss (K is for Kalifornia).

In the 1990s, Steven Nichols boosted K-Swiss's marketing budget, and hired a number of key individuals from large companies, such as Procter and Gamble, and began a marketing blitz around the K-Swiss brand. Award-winning Creative Director Mindy Gale led her NY-based agency team in developing and producing K-Swiss advertising and publicity campaigns from 1997 through 2008. The "I Wear My K-Swiss" multi-media campaign ran for five consecutive years, targeting young urban consumers in print and on TV.

A re-branding campaign appealing to a wider modern female target, featuring Anna Kournikova rolled out in 2007. Advertising campaigns encouraged users to personalize the trademark stripes under the slogan "Put Your Spin on It." The brand includes their licensed highly successful color-changing K-Swiss Tongue Twisters starting in 2002, Stripe Shifters, and more recently their Band Em footwear styles.

K-Swiss purchased the majority stake of Australian brand Royal Elastics in 2001. In 2003, they acquired 100 percent ownership of the company; in 2008, it was sold to a Taiwanese businessman, Eric Ma, who then went bankrupt in 2014, and refused to pay the rest contracted money, but transferred the brand's ownership to his mother.

In January 2013, the company — which posted $195 million in losses between 2009 and 2012 — was sold to Korean firm E-Land World Limited for $170 million. The following May, E-Land named a new executive team to oversee the newly formed K-Swiss Inc., including Truman Kim as chairman and Larry Remington as president and CEO.

On June 1, 2015, K-Swiss acquired Supra Footwear.

In August 2019, E-Land Footwear USA Holdings Inc. and consequently K-Swiss was acquired by Xtep International Holdings Limited.