Liberty Shoes steps forward: Redefining footwear with innovation and brand identity
For generations of Indian consumers, Liberty Shoes has been a familiar name. But the company is more than the name on a shopfront. Within Liberty sits a focused line-up of four brands, each intended for a different customer or occasion – Healers, Leap7X, Lucy & Luke and AHA. Anupam Bansal, executive director, Liberty Shoes, now has an opportunity to make those individual identities stronger.
The business had begun in Karnal in 1954 as Pal Boot House, producing four pairs of shoes a day. It has now grown into a footwear manufacturer & retailer entity, with hundreds of exclusive showrooms and a presence beyond India.
Bansal has been associated with Liberty since 1994. Before becoming executive director in 2024, he led the retail division and oversaw marketing and brand management. That experience places him at the meeting point of product and consumer: understanding what the company can make, what shoppers want and how a brand must present itself to be chosen.
“When I took on the Liberty challenge, I asked myself, ‘Why a 70-year-old footwear brand’?” queried Bansal in a public reflection on his leadership journey. He saw an Indian consumer seeking “premium quality at accessible prices, heritage with contemporary design and brands that truly understand their needs.” Liberty had manufacturing expertise, brand recall and distribution depth, he said, but needed ‘a strategic reset’.
The four brands give him a way to pursue it. Healers makes comfort its central promise, with formal footwear such as oxfords, derbies, loafers and dress sandals for people whose workday runs well into the evening. Leap7X is positioned as an athleisure lifestyle brand, aimed at consumers whose footwear moves between workouts, the office and weekend plans. Lucy & Luke brings the same thinking to children’s footwear, while AHA rounds out the Autumn/ Winter 2026 (AW’26) collection with a fresh, fashion-led offering.
Engineering holds them together
What ties the four together is engineering. Liberty’s Innovation Lab and Human Tech Centre, both long established, work on the biomechanics and materials behind each range, and the results now carry their own names on the shelf. High-tech sits at the core of Healers’ comfort promise through platforms such as HG, HA and H8. Leap7X has the widest stack, with NitPro cushioning, EasyGo convenience, and Twist & Go fastening, while VibraStep adds a long-press massager insole and ProTrackter, a GPS-enabled smart shoe, shows how far the brand is willing to take the category.
Dynamo adding the lights and Velcro (hook-and-loop) closure also finds its way into Lucy & Luke, so that children can get their shoes on and off with ease. That investment is at the heart of the Chalo Apni Chaal campaign, in which, Bansal says, he continued work in technology, biomechanics and product development, meant to give consumers the confidence to move their own way. The campaign places Healers with work and after-hours plans, Leap7X with active lifestyles and Lucy & Luke with children, and it runs across films, YouTube, Meta, Google and influencer-led activity in key markets.
Good products matter only if they are easy to find, and here Liberty is joining physical strength with digital reach. Its network includes more than 500 exclusive showrooms, over 100 distributors and more than 7,000 multi-brand outlets across India. A next-generation store design has begun to appear most recently at Elan Epic Mall in Gurugram, the company’s 46th outlet in Delhi NCR. Online, shoppers can browse the range at libertyshoesonline.com and on marketplaces such as Myntra and Flipkart, while Step Up Club, Liberty’s four-tier CRM loyalty programme, connects the two worlds so that the experience feels the same whether someone walks into a showroom or scrolls on a phone.
That approach brings an execution challenge. Each brand must be recognisable on the shelf and on the screen, available in the right sizes and consistent in the experience it offers. Bansal has emphasised that the work of renewing Liberty extends from design decisions to the daily realities of retail. “Turnarounds are not just about grand strategies,” he says. “They also involve daily execution, respecting teams on the ground and making decisions with data, while delivering with empathy.”
Financially speaking, Liberty reported revenue from operations of Rs740 crore and a net profit of Rs11.19 crore in 2024-25, with the share trading at Rs210. The company’s next chapter, then, may be told through four names rather than one. Whether someone chooses Healers for the office, Leap7X for the weekend or Lucy & Luke for a child, Bansal wants Liberty to have a place in that decision. The enduring name on the shopfront provides the foundation; the individual brands, the technology inside them and a seamless presence across channels give it room to grow.