JV International (JVI), the new company that is handling the design, development and manufacture of high-performance Michelin branded soles, is expanding its collaboration with the Oberalp group and with Ride Snowboards and is working with two additional sports brands – Hi-Tec Sports and Kodiak – for the autumn/winter 2016/17 season.
Oberalp presented the first two models of Salewa outdoor shoes featuring Michelin outsoles at the OutDoor fair in Friedrichshafen last summer. At the more recent Ispo Munich show, Salewa presented the winter version of one of the two shoes with a Michelin sole developed for “mountain training,” which also features a Gore-Tex membrane.
Hi-Tec, which is already working with Michelin Technical Soles for its Magnum brand of tactical boots, presented a versatile new model of city hiking shoes with a Michelin sole that is intended for trekking as well as an urban environment. Kodiak is using a sole developed by Michelin for icy and slippery grounds in a new line of technical children's boots introduced by the Canadian brand for the next winter season.
In its second year of collaboration with Ride, Michelin has developed new soles for two new models of snowboard boots, inspired by the tires of mountain bikes, that have interesting self-cleaning properties. Meanwhile, JVI continues to work with Under Armour on the soles of different types of shoes since the launch of a collaboration in the trail running segment at the Outdoor Retailer show in January 2015.
Michelin's big R&D department in France has a modular team of about 20 persons who are dedicated on-and-off to the development of new solutions outside the automotive and motorcycling sector. With its design center based in Verona, Italy, JVI is currently using ten different compounds developed by them for the sports market. Acting as a sort of “open kitchen,” JVI puts together the most appropriate recipes in collaboration with the sports brands to design the most suitable technical soles for their future shoe models.
Through JVI, Michelin already has a partnership with Northwave in the area of mountain-biking shoes. Before its strategic collaboration with JVI, Michelin formed a partnership with Babolat in the area of tennis shoes, which is being expanded.
Babolat announced last month the release of a new, ultra-light tennis shoe, the Babolat Jet All-Court. Developed in collaboration with the French tire maker and Chamatex, another French firm that has supplied the Kevlar-polyamide yarn for the woven upper.
