Marques

K-WAY

K-way was born in PARIS in 1965 on a rainy day. Inspired by wet and stressed passers-by, Léon Claude Duhamel, son of a textile manufacturer drew the sketch of a simple raincoat without lining ant that could be turned inside-out and rolled as easy as you could peel a banana. That's how the windbreaker raincoat you attach around your waist was born.

Called "en cas" for "in case of rain", this pocket-sized raincoat was renamed K-way a little later on the advice of the HAVAS advertising agency who believed English brand names helped increase sales. Proof thereof is made, 2 years later when the number of sold K-Way reached more than 25 million in the world. Besides having become the must have in case of rain, the K-Way has became the generic term which is used in the common (french) language and the dictionary to describe any type of rain jackets.

But the hegemony K-way had only lasted until the mid 90's. In spite of a strong brand recognition, their global strategy had  many weak points. Because it branched out into  too many varieties of products, the brand  failed to integrate new markets and was totally overtaken by new brands too (such as OXBOW or QUICKSILVER on the surfing clothes market). The brand also fell victim to a more and more stylistic and technical competition represented by brands like PATAGONIA, THE NORTH FACE, MONCLER, etc.

Since the beginning of 2009, K-WAY’s collaboration with APC (through the  distributor for Belgium) and its purchase by an Italian firm, it seems that the brand  wants to position itself as a first class brand with a higher price, more high –end materials and finishings–, in addition to making the most of the current wave of vintage nostalgia which is sweeping over the fashion world.
One regret we do have though is to see that GORE-TEX is still not used by K-WAY, which is rather unfortunate as the material is famous for making clothes extremely breathable. But if you are not sweating in your K-WAY it's not a real one, right?