For ECCO, leveraging the Danish brand’s legacy of craftmanship and innovation is a key focus for 2026. In the U.S., where ECCO is looking to amplify its brand story, that also means getting the right product in the market and strengthening retail relationships.

We caught up with Neal Taylor, CEO Americas for ECCO, to discuss the brand’s plans for the year ahead.

Taylor, whose background includes exec roles at Adidas, Reebok and Red Bull, joined ECCO in March, 2025. He says that the ECCO brand’s Danish heritage and commitment to craftsmanship are main elements of the ECCO story that not only drew him to the brand, but also have him excited for the brand’s future.

Taylor acknowledges that ECCO has had a rocky couple of years in the U.S. market, but he is focused on righting the ship.

“If we’re honest, ECCO has been a little stale in the U.S. for the last couple of years,” Taylor tells us. “A lot of the same products, some of the newness we tried maybe didn’t feel right on brand for ECCO, whereas now we’re firmly focused on what ECCO does best, which is quality and craftmanship, but  with a kind of young, more energetic appeal through the brand. And a commitment to storytelling.”

Footwear Insight: The ECCO “story” includes the company owning its own factories and tanneries and designing everything in-house — what kind of advantage does that give the brand ?

Neal Taylor: “It’s twofold. On one side it gives us the advantage of authenticity, but also speed and quality control. So, if it’s not perfect it doesn’t come out. That’s our mantra. It helps us make sure every single product is designed, manufactured and produced with this absolute focus on quality and comfort. That is what that vertical value chain provides. So that is Part 1. And Part 2 is tied to the chaotic world that is tariffs and moving targets right now. Our vertical business provides us with agility, so we have manufacturing hubs in different parts of the world. We have Portugal, we have China, we have Vietnam, we have Indonesia… so we’re able to be very agile as a global business because of that supply chain diversity.”

The current business landscape in the U.S. is challenging and constantly shifting. Do you think brands and retailers have more of a grasp on it now? How do you feel moving forward?

“We’re all in the same boat which is why we’re trying to remain agile and open minded. It’s very difficult to plan with any certainty from a pure numbers perspective. And another concern is about ‘where is the consumer headed?’ What happens next in consumer [confidence]. When we talk to our retailers they’re trying to be cautious with their buying but still putting a great offering in front of their consumers. Our approach has been that we’ve been trying to be really protective of our customers and consumers in terms of tariff impact, and so we’re very surgical about our price increases. But ultimately everybody gets affected by this and so we’ll have some price increases but certainly not a blanket.”

When we’re talking about the “comfort consumer” in the U.S., who is that consumer for ECCO? What do they want in their product?

“From a consumer perspective ECCO went on a little bit of a detour — we went off on a tangent strategically, trying to go to a younger, aggressive aesthetic which just didn’t feel like ECCO. Now we’re back putting our innovation into this comfort consumer and what we know about them is that the things they value are value itself (price), and then right alongside it are comfort and quality. There’s lots of brands that claim they offer that, but they don’t deliver on the same comfort and quality as ECCO does because of all the pieces we talked about previously. That’s what we have to be better at communicating. That consumer does want innovation, but they want aesthetically appropriate innovation versus innovation for innovation’s sake, if that makes sense.”

How do you think the “comfort consumer” in the U.S. perceives the brand right now?

“A lot of those consumers have worn ECCO — and because we haven’t put enough newness in front of them, they’ve kind of drifted off to other brands. But they have no question marks about our quality or our comfort, so our job is really to make sure we have the right product, price point and aesthetic for the U.S. market and then tell them that story. The new Biom 720 (launched in November) is a big deal for us because we feel like that’s really on-trend product for this consumer.”

How important is the independent retail channel for ECCO? How will you balance the growth of the brand and your own DTC business with what the retailers need and ask for?

“The independents are incredibly important to ECCO historically and today. Candidly I don’t think ECCO has treated the independent retailers with the respect they deserved over the last couple of years and that’s definitely something we’ve addressed and then invested into. In terms of our growth, as a brand, it is going to be driven through wholesale more than DTC. We’ve made that commitment and the independents absolutely have an important part in the ecosystem.

I think we have been maybe too focused on the number of pairs in the market, but what we want to be focused on going forward is profitability for us and our retail customers. So that means we’re going to be more focused maybe on less places, on better business, and obviously that’s partly where the independents really come in.”

Where do you see the most growth opportunity for the brand in the U.S.?

“We are focused on women’s, and what we would call ‘wear to work.’ There’s a versatility that we do really well on the men’s side, where you can go from kind of Wall Street to a coffee shop in terms of our offerings. We have that on the women’s side, but there hasn’t been enough innovation within it, and that’s what’s coming really fast into next year.

And then, definitely within golf we have good brand recognition, and we have had some really good success in our golf business. It’s definitely a focus to get back to that golf business with a focus on authentic performance.”  

What new innovation or products are you most excited about from the brand?

“Three things — Biom 720, the women’s wear to work collection which will be out middle of next year and then the last one is our Receptor technology. You’ll see a new version of that coming out of the back end of next year. This innovation is within the core DNA of who ECCO is, so I’m super excited about getting that product in front of an American consumer. Getting back on the front burner and being at the very forefront of innovation — our accounts, our retailers are asking us to do this. ECCO has been a good business for them over the years, and because we went on this detour and lost our way, that hurt them as well. So, us being back in a good step and good firing line is important on all sides.”

From Denmark, With Love

Founded in Denmark in 1963 by Birte and Karl Toosbuy, ECCO today remains a 100 percent family-owned company. Craftmanship and innovation are the calling cards that the brand was built on and those are the traits the exec team wants ECCO to be focused on globally and in the U.S. going forward.

On a recent visit to ECCO’s HQ in southwest Denmark we were welcomed on a tour of the ECCO locations in the small towns of Bredebro and Tonder, located close to the German border. The vibe here is that of a quiet, farming community — Toosbuy originally set up shop there because of the down to earth, hardworking townsfolk.

A giant foot sculpture outside the ECCO campus in Tonder represents the company’s philosophy that “form follows foot.” That means designing shoes that fit the natural contours of the foot, rather than expecting the foot to conform to the shape of the shoe.

While ECCO product is no longer manufactured in Denmark, key R&D, design and global leadership is based in the Denmark HQ. As the consumer has evolved, ECCO now sells in over 100 countries worldwide. But as the global exec team told us on our visit to Denmark, “The U.S. is and remains a key market for ECCO, focusing on achieving steady, profitable, and sustainable growth across North America,” noting that designing with U.S. consumers in mind “requires close collaboration between our local and global teams."