Born in Helsinki. Built for champions. It was 1916. In a small workshop on a side street in Helsinki, we started with a simple belief: Finnish athletes deserved the best equipment in the world. We were called Ab Sportartiklar Oy back then, a modest name for what would become one of the most quietly influential running brands in history. Our first products were javelins, skis, and discuses crafted from locally sourced Finnish birch, a wood uniquely lightweight and flexible, with a natural spring to it. But we didn't stop there. Running spikes and other sporting goods became part of our range too.

At the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, the world got its first real look at what the company was doing. Finnish athletes swept all three medals in javelin using KARHU equipment, and the Flying Finns, a group of extraordinary Finnish long-distance runners, claimed five gold medals in track & field events wearing KARHU spikes. The bear had arrived on the world stage. 

In 1924, we became the official Olympic Equipment Supplier. That same summer, Paavo Nurmi, perhaps the greatest middle-distance runner who ever lived, took five gold medals in track & field events in Paris. Over eight years, Nurmi would bring nine Olympic gold medals back to Finland, setting 22 official world records. He wasn't running in our shoes. He was flying in them.

Our relationship with the Olympics deepened over the following decades. Factory workers at our Helsinki facility became champions themselves. In 1932, KARHU employees Matti Jarvinen (javelin) and Lauri Lehtinen (5,000m) won gold at the Los Angeles Olympics. The pursuit of excellence wasn't just in our shoes. It was in our culture.

The Trampas broke entirely new ground. It featured a padded heel collar to protect the Achilles, genuine arch support, and a construction designed for road and trail rather than the track. These were innovations that simply didn’t exist in running footwear before us.

That same year, we channelled everything we had learned into what became our most iconic silhouettes: The Mestari 76, Finnish for "champion". Launched as a trusted performance runner, it featured our patented Air Cushion midsole, delivering balanced cushioning and everyday comfort in a way the running world had never experienced before.  The Mestari 76 is still part of our collection today.

Working with the University of Jyväskylä, Finland's leading sports and fitness research institute, we developed what became our most defining innovation: Fulcrum technology. Launched in 1986, it was the result of years of rigorous research into the natural biomechanichs of runners.

The Fulcrum creates a pivot point in the midsole. It guides the foot efficiently through its gait cycle, using the body's natural energy to create a smooth, rolling ride forward, which we call the Rolling Effect. Less bouncing. More moving.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, following the success of Fulcrum, we developed the first iteration of Ortix, a system focused on creating tailored insoles for the consumer. By analysing the individual runner's foot, we could provide a personalised footbed that supported the arch properly, rather than leaving every runner to figure it out themselves with aftermarket solutions.

Then, in 2018, that philosophy took a significant leap forward. With the launch of the Ikoni, Ortix evolved from tailored insoles into something broader, using data from over 100,000 real foot scans to shape the midsole geometry and upper volumes of the shoe itself. The personalisation was no longer just in the footbed. It was built into the entire architecture of the shoe.