Digital Audit: Skechers

Enterprise Technology Stack & Vendor Relationships

Skechers’s FY2024 10-K cybersecurity disclosure (filed February 28, 2025) describes a Cybersecurity Risk Management Program built on NIST CSF and CIS frameworks, including a third-party risk management process for vendors, but the filing does not name any specific security or IT vendors ¹. Confirmed enterprise technology vendors include Amazon Web Services, with a 2024 network transformation covering AWS Cloud WAN, AWS Network Firewall, and AWS Direct Connect ²; a broader multi-cloud footprint spanning AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure ³; Oracle Financials Management as the company’s ERP system since 2003 ⁴; a SAP-based SmartRecruiters applicant tracking system adopted in 2016 ⁴; and N2WS (N2W) for backup and disaster recovery across the multi-cloud estate ³. None of the identified vendors - AWS, GCP, OCI, Oracle, SAP/SmartRecruiters, or N2WS - are Israeli-origin firms. Targeted searches pairing “Skechers” with named Israeli cybersecurity vendors (Check Point, Wiz, SentinelOne, CyberArk, NICE, Verint, Claroty, Palo Alto Networks) returned no linking results. A subsequent expansion round of research surfaced no additional vendor names and produced no evidence altering this conclusion. No public evidence identified of a licensing, subscription, or integration relationship between Skechers and any Israeli-origin cybersecurity or enterprise software vendor. No public evidence identified of systems integrators or IT consultancies engaged by Skechers that mandated or deployed Israeli-origin technology.

Surveillance, Biometrics & Retail Technology

No public evidence identified of Skechers’s use of facial recognition, biometric identification, or gait-analysis technology from vendors such as Trigo, BriefCam, AnyVision/Oosto, or Trax; searches pairing “Skechers” with each named vendor and with generic “frictionless checkout” or biometric loss-prevention terminology returned no company-specific results. No public evidence identified of predictive policing, sentiment analysis, social-media monitoring, or workforce-surveillance tools of Israeli origin used by Skechers. No public evidence identified of indirect exposure to such tools via managed security services or bundled suites, as none of Skechers’s confirmed vendors (AWS, N2WS, Oracle, SAP) were linked in the sources reviewed to Israeli biometric or surveillance sub-vendors.

Cloud Infrastructure, Data Residency & Sovereign Cloud Participation

Skechers’s only confirmed presence in Israel is retail, operated through the “Skechers Footwear, Ltd.” joint venture formed with Israeli distributor MGS Sport Trading Ltd. in September 2016 ⁵⁶⁷, including a VAT-refund-eligible retail store in Tel Aviv-Yafo ⁸. The joint venture’s Israeli retail network is confirmed to comprise six locations, including stores in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem - specifically at Malha Mall (southern Jerusalem) and on Jaffa Street ⁶⁹¹⁰¹¹. MGS Sport Trading Ltd. is registered in Holon, Israel, per a company-registry snippet; ownership and directorship detail beyond this basic registration was not obtainable, leaving MGS’s corporate structure an unresolved evidence gap ¹².

On settlement nexus specifically: Malha Mall sits within the Israeli municipal boundary of Jerusalem (the post-1967 expanded municipality) but is not identified in any source reviewed as a purpose-built settlement site in the sense used for neighborhoods like Ramot; no source reviewed characterizes Malha Mall itself as settlement-linked, though broader international consensus treats Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem as occupied territory. By contrast, Ramot Mall sits in Ramot (Ramot Alon), an East Jerusalem neighborhood explicitly documented as one of Jerusalem’s “Ring settlements” and considered illegal under international law ¹³¹⁴. No evidence was identified of a Skechers store at Ramot Mall - targeted searches found no Skechers listing there. Searches of D-City mall (Ma’ale Adumim settlement) and Ariel Mall, two West Bank settlement retail centres, likewise identified no Skechers tenancy; Ariel Mall’s confirmed tenants (Castro, Nitsat HaDuvdevan, Fox) do not include Skechers, and D-City’s storefronts were not enumerated by brand name in available sources ¹⁵. Based on available evidence, Skechers’s confirmed Israeli retail footprint is located within Israel proper / Jerusalem-municipal commercial areas (Tel Aviv, Malha Mall, Jaffa Street) rather than any confirmed West Bank or East Jerusalem settlement site; No public evidence identified of Skechers or its MGS Sport Trading joint venture operating in a documented settlement location.

No public evidence identified that Skechers operates, leases, or co-locates data centre infrastructure within Israel; searches for Skechers data centres or co-location in Israel returned only general Israel data-centre market listings and the Tel Aviv retail-store registration, not IT infrastructure ⁸. No public evidence identified of Skechers participation in Project Nimbus or any comparable Israeli government cloud initiative - a direct search pairing “Skechers” with Palantir, Cellebrite, NSO Group, and “Project Nimbus” returned no connecting results. No public evidence identified of Skechers providing data-sovereignty, data-residency, or infrastructure-resilience services to Israeli state institutions or military bodies.

Defence, Intelligence & Security Sector Technology Relationships

No public evidence identified of any contract, partnership, or service agreement between Skechers and the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IDF, intelligence agencies, or other state security bodies. No public evidence identified of Skechers’s commercial technology - footwear, apparel, or retail systems - being deployed for military, intelligence, or law-enforcement surveillance in Israel or the occupied territories. No public evidence identified of Skechers developing, selling, licensing, or maintaining offensive cyber capabilities, zero-day tools, or digital weapons systems. Skechers is not present among the sampled entries of the Who Profits companies database, which lists firms with documented ties to the Israeli occupation and settlement economy ¹⁶. An expansion cross-check of Who Profits’ published reports surfaced only unrelated material on Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing’s West Bank real-estate venture, confirming no Skechers linkage ¹⁷¹⁸. Skechers is likewise absent from the Wikipedia-compiled list of companies operating in West Bank settlements ⁹.

Skechers could not be confirmed present or absent in the extractable text of the UN Special Rapporteur’s A/HRC/59/23 annex (July 2025), as the PDF did not render machine-readable text matching the company name; this remains an unresolved evidence gap rather than a confirmed negative ¹⁹. This inconclusive direct-PDF result is corroborated by independent secondary sourcing: a summary of the same report describes it as naming approximately 60 companies - including Alphabet/Google, Amazon, IBM, Palantir, and various financial and academic institutions - with no mention of Skechers in the secondary source reviewed ²⁰. The OHCHR’s Business and Human Rights settlement database, most recently updated in September 2025 and covering 158 enterprises from 11 countries, likewise does not identify Skechers in any source reviewed describing its contents ²¹²²²³. The AFSC Investigate database (covering 200+ companies) surfaced no Skechers-specific page or listing in searches of investigate.afsc.org ²⁴.

AI, Algorithmic & Autonomous Systems

Skechers’s only identified AI/ML adoption is the o9 Solutions “Digital Brain” supply-chain planning platform, adopted in 2024, an internal demand-planning tool with no state or military nexus identified ⁴. No public evidence identified of Skechers providing AI/ML, computer vision, or autonomous decision-support systems to Israeli state, military, or security bodies. No public evidence identified that any Skechers system was trained on or given access to civilian population data, intercepted communications, or surveillance-derived datasets from Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories. No public evidence identified of Skechers providing autonomous target-generation, threat-detection, or tracking systems to Israeli military or security forces.

Technology Ecosystem & R&D Footprint

No public evidence identified of Skechers operating an R&D centre, engineering office, innovation lab, or accelerator programme in Israel; a direct search for “Skechers Israel R&D Technion” surfaced only an unrelated PTC Inc.–Technion R&D investment, confirming the absence of a Skechers-specific result. No public evidence identified of Skechers acquiring any Israeli-origin technology company or making strategic investments in Israeli tech startups or venture funds. No public evidence identified of patent portfolios, licensing agreements, or co-development arrangements between Skechers and Israeli-domiciled entities or research institutions such as Technion, Hebrew University, or the Weizmann Institute.

Civil Society Scrutiny & Regulatory History

Skechers is named as a boycott target by multiple BDS-aligned campaign pages, including Boikotisrael.com ²⁵, The Witness boycott guide ²⁶, and the Masjid Al-Aqsa BDS list ²⁷. Across these sources and secondary summaries published by Brussels Morning (updated October 28, 2025) ²⁸ and, in a subsequent expansion round, A Luxury Lifestyle ²⁹, the stated grounds are consistently company president Michael S. Greenberg’s personally stated “pro-Israel”/“Zionist” social-media posts and views, rather than any documented technology-provision relationship. A separate, uncited source repeats a similar characterization of Greenberg as “a Zionist” ³⁰. None of the sources reviewed - including this expansion round - ground the boycott campaigns in a technology-specific allegation such as surveillance, cloud, or AI provision; Brussels Morning further assesses that these boycott efforts “have not had a major effect on the global sales of Skechers and its brand reputation” ²⁸. No sales-impact data specific to the post-October 2024 period was identified in this expansion round; the only available assessment remains the undated Brussels Morning finding, without period-specific breakdown. No public evidence identified of a documented Skechers company statement responding to the boycott calls.

The only identified regulatory or enforcement action against Skechers is unrelated to Israel or technology: in March 2024 the SEC charged Skechers with making undisclosed payments to executives’ family members between 2019 and 2022, settled for a $1.25 million civil penalty ³¹. No public evidence identified of any export-control, sanctions, or regulatory action tied to Skechers’s technology sales or services to Israeli state entities.

Separately, Skechers was taken private by 3G Capital in a $9.4 billion transaction announced May 5, 2025 ³²³³ and completed in September 2025 ³⁴. 3G Capital was founded by Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupira, and Marcel Herrmann Telles, and is currently led by Alex Behring (Co-Founder/Co-Managing Partner) and Daniel Schwartz (Co-Managing Partner); the firm’s disclosed investment focus is consumer/retail (Burger King, Kraft Heinz, Hunter Douglas, Skechers) ³⁵³⁶. No public evidence identified of 3G Capital or its named principals holding investments in Wiz, Cellebrite, Palantir, or other Israeli surveillance/cyber/AI firms - targeted searches pairing “3G Capital” with each named vendor, including a review of Cellebrite’s 2021 SPAC merger filing ³⁷ and reporting on the 2025 Wiz acquisition ³⁸, returned no connecting results. This is characterized as a genuine evidence gap given 3G Capital’s limited public disclosure of its full LP register and portfolio structure as a private investment firm, rather than a confirmed negative.

Skechers’s 2025 DEF 14A proxy statement (filed April 8, 2025) confirms the post-acquisition board composition includes independent directors Katherine J. Blair and Yolanda Macias (joined 2022), among others ³⁹⁴⁰⁴¹. Full biographical detail for all directors, including any personal investment disclosures, was not fully extractable from available search snippets; a full document read would be required to fully confirm or refute personal holdings in Israeli surveillance/cyber/AI firms. No public evidence identified of any Skechers director or named executive (Robert Greenberg, Michael Greenberg, David Weinberg, or the identified independent directors) holding equity, board seats, or personal investment in Israeli surveillance/cyber/AI/SIGINT firms (NSO, Cellebrite, Carbyne, AnyVision/Oosto, Wiz, Palantir, Check Point, SentinelOne, Verint, NICE). No research on 3G Capital’s own principals, limited partners, or portfolio companies beyond the searches described above was conducted as part of this audit.

End Notes