The Journey of ARKK Copenhagen

We make sneakers, that’s what we do—plain and simple. In fact, it’s never simple. Before any pair of ARKK kicks hits the street, it goes through more than 18 months of research, design development, and materials testing. Why does it take so long? Because we want every sneaker we create to embody the spirit of Danish design, where timeless forms meet everyday functionality.

The ARKK journey has always been rooted in curiosity. ARKK started by questioning what was possible and by challenging the status quo. Ever since then, we’ve never stopped dreaming, pushing, and questioning how we can make timeless footwear crafted with architectural forms, thoughtful details, and innovative tech.

Before any ARKK sneaker is ready to touch your feet, it has already been touched (on average) by more than 200 pairs of human hands from around the world—from our Copenhagen-based design team to experienced materials experts around Europe to our skilled production partners in Vietnam—all working together to ensure quality in every stitch, consistency in every fit, and precision in every detail.

In early 2014, two lifelong friends, Kasper Høj Rasmussen and Thomas Refdahl, set out to discover if it was possible to push sneaker design forward by deconstructing the entire concept. Their quest for an answer led them to dream up a sneaker with a strikingly clean silhouette, rich in thoughtful design details, and featuring Nordic-inspired colorways—a go-anywhere, do-anything sneaker, versatile enough for every aspect of modern urban life.

After 18 months of painstaking trial and error, extensive research and development, and many sleepless nights, in September of 2015, the first ARKK sneaker was launched. That sneaker was The Raven. Since then, the now-iconic Raven has been re-imagined in more than 100 editions. Our original sneaker design is still our best-seller and, we’ve discovered, a source of limitless potential for innovation.