If you tried to buy rollerblades this summer, you may have faced delays, due to out-of-stock situations. Sales skyrocketed after the confinement. For example, Oxelo, Decathlon’s dedicated brand, sold 50,000 pairs of rollerblades in just one week, and in France, sales were up 250% in a year.
On social media, roller-skater videos are all the rage, transforming these millennials and gen Z-ers into real influencers, followed by a rapidly growing community worldwide. On TikTok, the hashtag #rollerskating now has 3.3 billion views. In April, when the young American actress Ana Coto filmed herself gliding down a sunny Los Angeles street on blue roller skates, with a Jennifer Lopez song in the background, the film went viral and garnered 17 million views in just a few months. This craze for roller skates has not gone unseen by brands, prompting big names in fashion to call on these new roller-skating stars to promote their collections. For their latest show, Etam invited Oumi Janta, a roller girl with 1 million followers, to rollerblade in the middle of fashion show around the models: the reaction from the public and on social media was explosive.