Skechers now only trails Nike for most popular shoe company in America

Skechers is now the second-largest footwear company by market share in America, trailing only Nike/Jordan, according to new data from industry analysts NPD Group.

U.S. retail sales have increased nearly 20 percent in 2015 year-to-date, the group says, helping them vault ahead of Adidas, which held the position for “years” according to NPD analyst Matt Powell, though he could not say precisely how long.

How have they done it? Almost all their products are performing well, but the GoWalk, an “athleisure” walking shoe, has seen the strongest growth since launching around 2012.

“Skechers’ success is being driven by strengths across many product categories.” Matt Powell, sports industry analyst for NPD Group, said in an email. “GoWalk has been a success based on the strong ‘athleisure’ trend in the U.S. GoWalk is fun, affordable and comfortable footwear.”

Skechers has spent the last few years spending its earnings on building a higher profile, including endorsements from celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Brooke Burke-Charvet, and Mark Cuban, and multiple Super Bowl commercials, like this one featuring champion runners racing animals:

As of mid-August, Skechers was the best-performing retail stock of 2015 by an incredible margin, up 150 percent on the year, according to Morgan Stanley. Shares of Oxford Industries, the company behind Tommy Bahama and Lily Pulitzer and runner-up to Skechers in the retail sector, has climbed 54 percent. Here’s their stock chart since 2010:

While it’s been a mostly down year for consumer discretionary stocks, Skechers has helped lead “branded apparel/footwear” (+20.8 percent) as the category’s top overall performer this year, beating the S&P’s +1.3 percent return by 1,950 basis points year-to-date, Morgan Stanley said in a recent note.

Skechers went public in 1999.

Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.