Kilian Jornet Co-Founds New Brand, NNormal

Published April 15, 2022 02:57AM

Mountain running legend Kilian Jornet has announced his newest venture: an apparel and outdoor equipment company called NNormal.

The brand’s creation was announced last month, a partnership between Jornet and Spanish footwear company Camper. According to the brand’s website, the company name comes from locations of the designing and testing of products in Mallorca, Spain, and Norway, respectively (Nor + Mal). Jornet, who is originally from Spain, now lives in Norway.

According to the brand’s website, the first line of NNormal products – set to include shoes, apparel, and accessories – will launch this fall, both online and in specialty running stores in Europe and North America. Additional members of the NNormal athlete team are also set to be announced in the coming weeks and already include Swedish athlete Emelie Forsberg, Jornet’s partner.

While no products have been made available yet, NNormal’s website notes that the first line is currently being tested, and that co-founder and first brand ambassador Jornet will wear the gear during his 2022 racing season, ostensibly including his seventh appearance at UTMB this August. Jornet split from longtime sponsor Salomon last year with an announcement that he would be turning toward a new venture, rather than signing with another existing company. Until recently, he had given few other details.

A Focus On Sustainability

NNormal’s slogan, “Your path, no trace,” alludes to Jornet’s activism and dedication to environmental sustainability, and in a video on the website, Jornet outlines the mission and plans for the new company, including that all of its products should be reusable, repairable, or recyclable.

“Whatever we produce, it has a negative impact on the environment,” says Jornet in the video. “Transparency is necessary to be honest about what we are doing well and what we should improve. How our company is contributing to climate change, to biodiversity loss, to introducing new chemical elements to nature, to ocean acidification, to land use, and to freshwater consumption, should be studied.”

Jornet’s partner business, Camper, was founded in Spain in 1975, and is currently headed by Miguel Fluxa, whose family has been crafting shoes for four generations. Camper has laid out ambitious sustainability goals itself, including 100% recycled or circular packaging, 100% of products made with recycled or renewable materials, and 100% ethically trusted and verified supply chain members by 2025, as well as net-zero emissions by 2050.

“So, how do we approach, at NNormal, our environmental responsibility?” said Jornet in the video. “Our DNA is to work on functionality. Our products are made to be used in multiple activities, and to be worn. Durability: to ensure that with this functionality, they can last the maximum. And repairability: to prolong the life of each product. Our end goal is to work toward real, circular products, leaving no trace in our path.”

In the video, Jornet goes on to note that the brand’s apparel is fully designed and created in Europe with materials from European producers, but that footwear will be manufactured in Asia, at least at first, due to better industrial capacity for producing performance shoes in that area of the world.

“Our goal is to produce more in Europe in the future, and for that we must invest in creating infrastructure and the know-how for it,” Jornet says. “We are building long-term relations with our partners and providers to ensure the environmental and social levels of all our supply chain…[This] means our internal emissions, but also from our external partners, such as factories, materials, et cetera, and working on reducing it with the goal of having the lowest emissions possible, and compensating the rest of emissions to become carbon neutral.”

The Goal? Better, not more.

Jornet notes in the video that in the interest of producing less waste and more timeless products, NNormal will include unisex color schemes, emphasize multifunctionality of products so that they can be used for more activities, and limited new releases, creating new designs only if better materials or strategies are identified, rather than releasing revamped editions each year.

The company plans to pursue the highest possible certifications in social and environmental responsibility, notes Jornet, including being a 1% for the Planet member and dovetailing with the work of Jornet’s own Kilian Jornet Foundation, which supports environmental projects such as the World Glacier Monitoring Service and the science education work of the Athlete Climate Academy.