Founded: 1985
Founder: George Yohn and Bill Mann
Location: Carlsbad, CA

Airwalk is an interesting brand. Despite the fact that in the last two decades, possibly longer, Airwalk was synonymous with posers, it was once a thriving, important brand in the skate scene and later in the snowboarding scene. During the height of their popularity, they sponsored skaters like Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi and Mike McGill.

The crazy thing about Airwalk is that the brand was create by two guys who weren’t even skaters. George Yohn had a background in shoes already and Bill Mann was an art school student who dabbled in sportswear. It was Mann’s son who was a skater at the time that gave him the idea of creating a better skate shoe. The shoes that were being worn by skaters in the early 80s were all garbage. None of them were built for the specific needs of skaters or built to stand the specific wear that skaters put on their shoes. Mann recognized this and saw an opportunity to take advantage of an underserved market and thus, Airwalk was born.

Mann actually spend weeks and weeks hanging out at skateparks across California observing how the skaters used their feet and shoes to control the board, what parts of the shoes wore out the fastest, and learned how he could build a shoe specifically for the needs of skaters. Airwalk was the first shoe brand to offer skate specific features such as lace saver flaps and rubber ollie pads.

Airwalk initially went to market in 1985, only 2 years later, in 1987, their total revenue was over $20 million dollars and they had over 100 styles of skate shoes that were being sold around the world. They were dominant in the market.

Around 1987 Airwalk tried to expand into the apparel market but never gained any traction there. So while vintage Airwalk shoes are readily available, Airwalk clothing, especially cut and sew is much more rare.

Contributing Members: @mrthingone