Olympic Store Openings: New Sports Brand Spaces

Oakley’s Branded Bunker Showcases R&D & Aids Athlete Success

US sports eyewear brand Oakley’s ‘Exoplanetary Bunker’ pop-up is running at the Palais Brongniart from July 26 to August 11 for Oakley athletes and guests. The vault-like space – the design of which recalls Oakley’s California headquarters, famed for resembling a movie villain’s lair – comprises:

• A branded Muzm (museum) showcasing Oakley’s most iconic products in the context of the sporting moments that contributed to their fame. These include Over the Top ­– the radical shades with arms that extend over the top of wearers’ heads rather than at the sides, worn by Trinidadian sprinter Ato Boldon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
  
  
• An Innovation Area displaying new products including the mask-like QNTM Kato sunglasses and the brand’s new surfing helmet, the WTR Icon. Surfing is an Olympic sport for the first time at the Paris games, with competitions held in Tahiti. To find out how Samsung is tapping into surf culture during the Olympics, see Samsung Documentaries Surf Sport’s Powerful Subcultures in Olympics & Paralympics: 10 Big Ideas for Sports Marketing.
  
  
• The Shiftwave Experience, which is designed to help athletes enter a flow state, prepping them for victory. Athletes sit in pulse wave therapy booths, with the pulses adjusted to suit their needs. Pulse wave, or shockwave, therapy stimulates cellular processes that encourage the recovery of both bone and connective tissues. A guided breathwork meditation will play throughout the therapy. For more, see Brands Leveraging Breathwork.
  
  
• Finally, the Future Genesis Room, where visitors – who are not allowed to bring their phones into the room – can get a glimpse of Oakley’s future research and development plans; and a Lens Cut Bar, where athletes and guests can customise a pair of special edition Sphaera.

Salomon’s Innovation-Centric Flagship & Streetwear Concept Store

French sports shoe brand Salomon, known for its gorpcore appeal (see Gen Z Style IRL 24/25) has opened two distinct Parisian stores, each trading on the sports boom engendered by the Olympics.

The first, a Champs-Élysées flagship, foregrounds the brand’s technical know-how via a central innovation table displaying its research and development milestones, including the science behind its recent release, the hyped S/Lab Pulsar 3, designed for ultra-fast short runs. Its alpine credentials – the brand was founded in Annecy in the French Alps – are embodied both in a mountainous façade constructed from angled panes of glass, and an inverted mountain-esque structure made of ultra-reflective chrome, suspended from the ceiling above the innovation table.

The second is the brand’s first store dedicated to its streetwear-focused division, Sportstyle. Based in the Le Marais district, known for its design-forward shopping, the store fuses its location with its Annecy roots via elements including wooden ‘pavés de Paris’ floors (wooden tiles in the style of Parisian pavements) and split wooden logs for benches.