Eight months after officially joining Axel Arigato as chief executive officer, Frédéric Serrant is just getting started.
In January, Serrant took over the role from cofounder Albin Johansson, who stepped back from the top job one year after his fellow founder Max Svärdh moved away from day-to-day involvement in the business.
Serrant spent the last 16 years at Adidas, most recently as managing director of its APAC business. While at the German athletic company, he also held roles like senior vice president and general manager of Southeast Asia, vice president and general manager of Brazil and Chile, and sales director.
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In his first extended interview as CEO, Serrant sat down with FN to discuss the tenth anniversary of the brand’s Clean 90 sneaker, which was designed by Svärdh in 2016. Still made in Portugal, the silhouette has barely changed over the years. And for Serrant, that staying power comes down to Svärdh’s vision for the shoe, which was not to design based on trends.
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“Max designed the sneaker to be above the trends, right, and also something that would be relevant every day, every year,” the CEO said. And he’s seeing the style continue to gain traction.
“If you look at the numbers over the last three to four years, Clean 90 has been gaining share in our business,” Serrant explained. “And the way I’m looking at it today is as the bigger players, the volume players, try to create the core trend for next year, which is looking like a court-inspired minimal shoe. If they are successful in establishing that as the trend, then obviously the Clean 90 will benefit, too.”
But for now, the Axel Arigato team is focused on the silhouette’s anniversary. To celebrate, the company has launched a new campaign built around a cast of five people. Rather than lead with what each is known for, the conversations go looking for the person underneath it: their habits, obsessions, and the things that actually shaped them, the company noted. And the one thing that connects all five is that they all wear the Clean 90 shoe.
The cast features filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.; Kai Avent-deLeon, the New York entrepreneur behind Sincerely, Tommy and Building Black Bed-Stuy; Max Radford, founder of the Max Radford Gallery and a leading voice in London’s design scene; and Jesse Jenkins, chef and founder of Another Day in Paradise. The fifth is Mark, who has worked security on the door of Axel Arigato’s Soho, London, store since it opened — the same ten years Clean 90 has been on shelves.
Beyond the campaign, the anniversary continues with a weekend of workshops at Axel Arigato’s recently opened Paris showroom on Oct. 10 and 11. Guests will be able to shape their own abstract ceramic pieces guided by ceramicist Sofia de Moser Leitão, or compose a bespoke Clean 90 scent with fragrance specialist Nour Ibrahim.
In addition to the Clean 90 sneaker, the Daze, Dice and Orbit models are the four silhouettes that are “doing tremendously well” for the brand, the CEO noted.
“We are currently enjoying a very impressive full-price performance,” Serrant told FN. “One hundred percent of our business is run at full price in our stores and on our website. We are growing double-digits, and that does not start with a one, or a two, actually. So, this is very encouraging, and it also means that it’s not only Clean 90 that supports that performance.”
But this growth wasn’t always the case. Serrant admitted that business started to slow down in 2022. “Axel was a growth company from 2014 through maybe 2021, but now the objective is really to reaccelerate in a sustainable way,” he said. The CEO pointed to the work the executive team has done to accomplish this over the last two years.
“I can speak about this without arrogance since I wasn’t here yet, but the team did the right things in 2025 to protect the business,” Serrant explained. “They made sure that we remain a full price business and cleaned some distribution where it was creating conflict in the marketplace. The team did a very good job on that, which has allowed us to have, I would say, a clean slate as we started 2026.”
Since March, the company has been “accelerating every month,” Serrant noted. “September was the best month on record in terms of growth at full price,” he said. “And that’s the most important. We’ve also worked on the brand playbook, which is the way we convey to the whole organization how we want to operate the brand, and this is bearing fruits.”
He’d also like to improve the company’s mix between men’s and women’s styles. “The honest answer is that the balance between the two categories is not good enough,” Serrant said. “In our plan for next year, we’re going to work more on variations of the Daze sneaker, on a mary jane style, ballet shoes and different things that should bring her to the brand more than what we already do today.”
The U.S. is also a major focus for the company. Serrant said that the region has become Axel Arigato’s most “important market” and that it’s “critically important” to focus even more energy and resources on the country. In addition to the first U.S. store for Axel Arigato, which opened in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood in 2024, the company has also shored up its logistics backbone in the region to support growth. More locations are most likely on the way, the CEO added.
“While I can’t say much since the paperwork is not signed, we’re going to expand our presence” Serrant said. “For the time being, we will stay on the East Coast to keep operations as simple as possible. We have big ambitions for the U.S. next year, it’s No. 1 on our list.”
For now, Serrant is focused on making sure the Clean 90 gets it moment in the sun as well as getting his team settled in Gothenburg, Sweden. Late last month, Axel Arigato closed its Drill Hall office in London.
“A decision like this, you don’t ever take lightly, and I understand the consequences,” Serrant described. “We have incredible people over there and they supported the brand until the last minute to the best of their capacities, which is fantastic. We officially started in Gothenburg with more than 25 people. We’ve built a very international company, which is exciting, with people coming from the U.S., people coming from Italy, from everywhere, and that’s going to be a great mix of people.”
Serrant noted that a handful of employees are staying back in London at a smaller office close to the brand’s Carnaby Street store.
“I’m excited that the whole team is in Gothenburg. We’re also working on a lot of innovations that will carry us next year and help us keep on generating double-digit growth.”