Sneaker designer Salehe Bembury authors his next chapter

Salehe Bembury makes shoes.

Over the course of his 15-year career, the heralded sneaker designer has crafted sneakers for everyone from Versace to Payless, Yeezy to Cole Haan.

In 2025, Bembury embarked on a venture entirely his own. 

Spunge, the independent footwear brand founded by Bembury, sees him launching what’s positioned as the first designer-led label in the $94.1 billion sneaker industry.

“I don’t think brands empower their designers to take these leaps,” Bembury told Andscape. “It seems like we’re all conditioned to work for someone, which I was. Now I’m trying something new.”

In 2026, Spunge enters the year stocked by more than a dozen retailers worldwide, with various colorways of the seminal Osmosis model sold alongside the industry giants he’s designed for.

Bembury’s independent leap, however, did not happen overnight.

The origins of Spunge date back to January 2021, when Bembury announced on Instagram that “@beaSpunge is my brand.” Initially, the concept served as a hub for the collaborations Bembury was releasing with New Balance, Crocs, Puma, Moncler, Anta, and others.

“If he’d have done [Spunge] out of the gate, I think he’d have had a harder time getting traction,” Sneaker Politics founder Derek Curry told Andscape. “But because he used these bigger brands first, he was able to build his name up.”

Over time, Bembury’s name and output grew.

His unique lens on design and storytelling quickly endeared him to consumers and retailers in a manner most behind-the-scenes creatives rarely garner.

Roughly a year after Bembury introduced the idea of Spunge, in 2022 to be exact, an ally to Bembury’s broader vision formed.

Violet St, an independent footwear company based in Los Angeles with the ability to manufacture sneakers at international production factories, was founded with the intent of scaling individual creatives into standalone sneaker brands.

Helping fund Spunge and operating as a joint venture, Violet St and Bembury aligned on a vision that was less about one-off collaborations and more about inverting the industry’s entire model.

“It’s a big swing, it’s not a drop,” Violet St co-founder Luke Wood told Andscape. “This is a new way to build a business.”

Wood, a music vet who served as Nirvana’s publicist and COO of Beats Electronics, sees Bembury as an auteur designer who can build Spunge into a global game-changer, the way the late musician Kurt Cobain disrupted rock or Dr. Dre changed the headphone market.

“Salehe’s a classically trained, real deal footwear designer,” said Wood. “He understands engineering, but he wants to tell deep, honest, cultural stories. He wants to connect with people emotionally.”

Like Wood’s previous projects led by high-profile creatives, the desire is to connect people with products at scale. Handling the operations and logistics to support Spunge distribution and storytelling, Violet St aims to enable Bembury’s broader dream of building a brand.

“Violet St has all of the infrastructure I need to evolve from mom and pop to a properly structured brand,” Bembury said. “This is a brand that will be readily available to everyone that wants it.”

Being readily available is a sharp zag in a sneaker marketplace where hype has been king. Typically, both brands and collaborators of Bembury’s ilk operate on a scarcity model to drive perceived value. At Spunge, the aim is access.

As Bembury charts a brave new path – though collaborations will continue under the ‘by Salehe Bembury’ tagging with Crocs, New Balance, and Puma – his new partners present a path unexplored and unrestrained.

“Collaborations will continue,” said Bembury. “But now I’m taking all of those learnings and turning that into Spunge.”

With Spunge comes the challenge – or opportunity – to convert a creator into a standalone sneaker company capable of moving $150 shoes without existing intellectual property (IP) attached.

Throughout the 2020s, Bembury has leveraged his name with New Balance to release runners that resell for three times their retail price. In 2018, Versace had Bembury craft the Chain Reaction, a $995 luxury sneaker tied to rapper 2 Chainz. In 2025, he designed the Hali 1, the introductory signature basketball shoe for NBA All-Star Tyrese Haliburton at Puma.

Perhaps the best proof of concept of what Bembury has achieved in the market is his work with Crocs. An industry insider tells Andscape that Bembury’s introductory Crocs Pollex collaboration, an all new silouhette created by Bembury, did $50 million in sales.

The above number does not account for the number of sneakerheads Bembury converted into Crocs-wearing consumers.

“We started selling thousands of Crocs a month due to this guy,” said Curry, who owns six Sneaker Politics stores across Louisiana and Texas. 

Curry originally stocked Spunge on the advice of his former buyer Fletcher Sanders, who died Dec. 8, 2025. Sales of his previous collaborations largely informed the decision to bet on Bembury as a standalone brand.

“We’ve had tremendous success with all his products,” Curry said. “I saw Salehe’s [product] boom in our store – and it was all kids wearing them to high school and college. The kids are so into Salehe as a brand himself.”

As Curry sees it, Bembury – both with his previous brand partners and now with Spunge – understands the youth consumer that many traditional footwear powers are struggling to reach.

“Salehe’s aiming towards our consumer directly and that’s why it’s interesting to us,” said Curry. “​​You see kids making Tik-Toks with his product in their own lens.”

Those kids – Gen Z (born 1997-2012) and Gen Alpha (born 2013-mid-2020s) – are interacting with Bembury’s product far differently than the millennial collectors (born 1981-1996), who played a part in making sneaker culture mainstream.

“They’re using the shoes like we didn’t,” Curry said. “We treated them like trophies. They’re buying them for what they’re made for.”

Bembury, ever curious and well-versed in the minutiae of the market, sees this same shift.

“I feel like I’m witnessing the death of hype,” said Bembury. “I see a void in footwear that I’d like to fill.”

Through Spunge, Bembury has a chance to fill the void that it feels like only he sees.

Well-versed in the ethos of hype and function, he has a chance to apply the lessons he’s learned from 15 years of industry experience to tilt the market toward an age of independence.

“He could definitely change footwear,” said Curry. “Steph Curry and Travis Scott are huge names right now who could easily go on their own in the free market and turn away from the majors – and I think kids would support them and follow them.”

To change footwear, Bembury will have to endear new silhouettes to an evolving fan base and lean on Violet St to execute his ideas at a high level and high speed.

“Salehe has an expectation coming out of the work he’s done with other partners,” said Wood. “His expectation is that our work will be no less great.”

Entering his first full year as the face of a pioneering designer-led brand, Bembury will attempt to make his greatest shoes yet.

“How we execute Spunge will be product over everything,” said Bembury. “Everything else will fall into place after that.”

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