After decades of peddling many of the top running shoe brands, Austin, TX-based Karavel is going after the Austin runner with intent and focus like never before. With its new sub-brand, Karavel Run, the 87-year-old footwear retailer has hustled into the run specialty game, investing time, energy and capital into wooing Austin area runners to its 22,000-square-foot storefront about eight miles north of the Texas Capitol.

Employing the store-within-a-store concept, Karavel Run features footwear, accessories, athlete nutrition, physical therapy tools and more to accommodate runners, walkers and others leading active lifestyles. The family-owned operation, which largely built its business on shoes for casual wear, has also ingratiated itself with Austin’s booming run community, sponsoring running clubs and races and forming a group of ambassadors to spread the Karavel Run gospel. 

“This is just the beginning,” says Rick Ravel, the second-generation owner of Karavel, which debuted Karavel Run on September 1.

Nearly Nine Decades in the Making

Rick Ravel’s father, Irving Ravel, co-founded Karavel in 1937 with college buddy, Bob Karotkin – deriving the name Karavel by blending together the two founders’ surnames. 

After working in a women’s shoe store in Austin, Irving Ravel noted the absence of a store dedicated to youth footwear. He and Karotkin filled that gap and later added orthopaedic shoes at the suggestion of local doctors. In time, Karavel became a family shoe store dispensing everything from Keds to tap-dancing shoes to Buster Browns.

The latter half of the 20th century brought a range of adventures, including a mall-based retail shop, the addition and then subtraction of athletic footwear, a bankruptcy and then robust growth in the 1990s fueled by cornering the Euro comfort market with brands like Birkenstock and Dansko. 

Karavel rode the Euro comfort wave into the 2000s, but kept an eye on performance run, especially as some of its existing vendors, such as Brooks and New Balance, flourished in the category and running shoes accounted for more and more of store revenue. By 2018, Rick Ravel began investigating a dedicated focus on running.

“It’s what the business was dictating to us,” says Ravel, a certified pedorthist who entered the family-owned business full-time in 1972. 

Performance Run As A Growth Driver

While pandemic-induced chaos temporarily halted any aggressive movement, Ravel and his team, including marketing director Lisa Daugherty, knew they needed to look at the business differently coming out of the pandemic. They identified three key target areas: medical, women ages 35-55 and run.

“And running was the one spot we thought we had the most potential,” Ravel says.

To be certain, Karavel was already selling running shoes from leading brands and providing one-on-one, sit-and-fit experiences with knowledgeable fitters. In fact, industry insiders told Ravel his store’s running shoe sales were nearly triple the volume of the nation’s average run specialty store. And yet, Karavel wasn’t on the radar of most Austin runners. 

“We had an awareness problem,” Daugherty says. 

In March 2023, Karavel moved into its new 22,000-square-foot home in Austin to accommodate its booming business. While space considerations drove Karavel’s relocation to a storefront four times the size of its previous location, the added room enabled Ravel and his team to develop plans for a more aggressive and visible move into performance run. 

“We were doing volume on word of mouth alone, so it was a logical extension to go to the next level with running,” Ravel says. 

A Bet On Running

At the start of 2024, Karavel leadership began activating their plans. They brought in run specialty consultants to review the store’s inventory mix and to help them craft a run-oriented environment within their existing store. They also solidified relationships with new vendors, ordering footwear models from the likes of ASICS, Saucony and Mizuno and expanding their lineup of running accessories.

Throughout the spring and into the summer, Karavel leadership talked to race directors and clubs, building buzz with their plans to better serve Austin’s running community. They later created a 25-member ambassador team to champion Karavel Run in their respective networks and provided staff run-specific footwear fitting education with RunLab, an Austin-based sports medicine clinic specializing in biomechanics and gait analysis.

Though Karavel Run is only four months old, Ravel has been encouraged by the early results.

“I’m pleased with the direction we’re going and the response we’re getting,” he says. “Still, we know success doesn’t come overnight. This will be a longer-term effort to get the Karavel Run name out there and serve the community as we envision.”