What happens when someone who was born and raised in the regular shoe or you know padding much at all our sport that kind of thing Discover is natural movement. We're gonna find out what today's guest on the movement movement podcast the podcast for people who want to know the truth about What it takes to have a happy healthy strong body starting feet first because those things are your foundation You know we break down the mythology to propaganda Sometimes the outright lies that you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or dance or play any those things You do enjoyably and officially and did I mention enjoyably? I know I did that's like to say in that way because you look you're not having fun do something different till you are by the way We call this the movement movement podcast because it is a movement about natural movement We're helping people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious better healthy choice the way natural food is And you are the movement helping spread the word about that So go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com where you can find previous episodes and all the different ways you can interact with this podcast where we are on YouTube and Facebook etc etc And you know what to do like and share and thumbs up and click the bell icon on YouTube And basically if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe more about that later But first let's jump in and I am so so happy to introduce Tony Post Tony I don't like to do interest for people so why don't you just tell people who the hell you are and then I'm gonna ask you some fun questions So I'm just another footwear guy just like you Yeah, this is Tony Post the master of understatement, so please continue I have been doing it a while. I've lived a long time So I have the you know the good fortune of working in this industry and in this business for I guess It's getting starting to get close to 40 years hard to imagine but you started.
Yeah, so I love I'm happy to be here So let me start by saying that you and I've known each other for a while So it's fun to do this and it's fun to do a podcast with somebody that you've known for a while because it's you know You're really comfortable in that in that environment But people may also know me as the founder and CEO of topo athletic So that is a company that I started back around 2013 prior to that I was the president CEO of Vibram USA some people call it vibram We made souls for a lot of different footwear companies and then we also introduced the product called vibram five fingers and then prior to that I spent 15 years where I really learned the footwear industry working at when I started what was a small little family owned shoe company called the rock for company and Old school New England shoemakers really learned about craftsmanship and footwear constructions It was it was really cool But rock board at that time was the only really casual shoe company that was using athletic inspired technology in their casual shoes So they made shoes that were incredibly lightweight. They were very comfortable You know maybe not to the extent that some of the things that you and I do you know today But for their time I think they were an unusual shoe and we used to you know always be told that they were among the ugly issues on the planet So so if you can make my wife has always said, you know, you've kind of made a decent living selling ugly shoes your whole life So I got that going for me. Yeah, no to call rock board ugly compared to five fingers. That's a whole These are not in the same Miss America pageant So I do want to back up Yes, we have known each other for about eight or nine years now And the thrill for me is you were one of the first people who reached out to us when we met at a trade show called after retailer We had this tiny little booth when we were selling our do-it-self Sandal kits We were totally not ready to be there and you couldn't have been more friendly and supportive from the first moment And I'm gonna start crying thinking about it because I really can't Also, I like that neither you nor I shaved today because we forgot we were doing this I'm wearing my glasses just hide the bags under my eyes this morning.
I was Maybe I should do that to I have I'm kind of in that in between range here. Yeah, I'm like Yeah, no, I'm much better this way, but again, you know really baggy this morning So I don't like so the thing I want to ask you I mean, you know rock work while it was at the left I'm fine. And by the way, you were the star of perhaps one of my favorite commercials of all time Thanks to rock board. Would you like now you're dating yourself too?
Well, there's that too I'm gonna find a link for that if you don't already have one will put that in the show notes But do you want to describe what that was because it's awesome So let me just start by saying I went to work at the rock court company in 1984 and I was a runner I ran competitively in college and for a few years after college So I was thinking that I was gonna go to work for a running shoe company But I came upon this little company that I just felt like it was interesting and I could grow my career more quickly learn things faster So I joined rock board But ironically at the time rock board had a spokesperson that some people will know With a gentleman named bill rogers now for those who don't know bill rogers won the new york marathon and the boston marathon four times each So in his day he was you know really a well-known and popular top runner And this little shoot company that made casual shoes somehow managed to get bill is like a spokesperson So that made it all credible and legitimate in my mind and rock board as I said used athletic Technology and the construction of these casual shoes mostly leather shoes dress shoes casual shoes, but not traditional dress shoes You know they were kind of different we use lightweight vebrim soles and and the way the shoes were made They were very light and they had a little bit of cushioning to them But not an exceptional amount of cushion certainly not like you know, but we talk about in today's standards Dude my temper be a matter doesn't pull What they're putting in shoes now? Yeah, but it was you know it was different than a leather sole So you know it was we were the first kind of dress shoe company to to make shoes with EVA soles or you know things like that and so every day at lunchtime I used to take the shoe This is where we finally now get into the story I was a product manager in the company and every day I used to take the different pair of shoes out for a run at lunchtime Partly because I'm cheap and didn't want to buy running shoes and partly because it was a great way to test different products And I always felt like you know if I can run five or six miles or seven miles in the shoes at lunchtime Certainly, you know, you'd be comfortable walking or standing at a trade show or doing a lot of these other things And so we had just made the first dress shoes called the dress sport And I came back after testing these shoes at lunch and I kind of jokingly said, you know, because our marketing director was there He goes, how was it? What would you think? And I said, man, I think I could probably run a marathon And he said I kind of said it tongue in cheek and of course he was like The light goes off it goes if you can we should do that and then so it took a little while before it actually happened But eventually I ran both the New York City marathon and the London marathon and rockwood dress shoes And we made a commercial and the commercial was really kind of instrumental to putting rockport on the map We were lucky because it was you know, it's kind of an old strategy for people who remember brands like timex watches You know, they used to say takes a lick and keeps on tick and and rockwood It was you know here that was this company this guy running in dress shoes running a 26 mile marathon in you know Two hours and 49 minutes So it wasn't like it took all day to get there either So it kind of really drove home the point that these shoes are comfortable enough that you know Somebody could even run a marathon and that kind of launched the brand which was just again just amazing I know I've seen the commercial it's still on youtube, right?
I'm gonna find it if not a file Yeah, I hope you don't find it. Maybe I No, I'm sure it's there. You're a young Yeah, it was fine. It was fun to do it.
It actually was really kind of a fun thing Did you do anything special to get permission to fill the marathons? I don't recall, you know, we had a small advertising agency and I'm sure they did some things that were absolutely legal and you know Maybe some things that I'm sure they couldn't show like the New York City Marathon logo and the and some of those things But well so to go from rockport which again, I mean, you know in my teaser I said normal shoes and they were not quite normal ish But they were still you know, they certainly weren't what we think of as natural movement or natural movement supportive shoes now And certainly not what you and I are doing now But then to go from there to five fingers now at what point in that process did you start getting hip to the whole natural movement thing? So as I mentioned, I was a runner and I you know run competitively, but you know mostly through my 30s I just ran recreationally and for fun and just you know be able to eat and drink as much as I want or you know, Stuff like that, you know, it tempered my gluttonous behaviors. Maybe I don't know, but it's I enjoyed it You know, I still loved it But as you get older, you know, things start to go and you begin to age and I was talking to one of my friends having grown up in Colorado I was talking to a friend of the trade show who said to me and this is before anybody ever talked about this Have you ever tried working out or running barefoot and I thought that's crazy.
What you're was this roughly that would have been when he told me Was probably around 2002 or 2003 Is when that would have been and this is a guy who was a pretty accomplished athlete, you know He'd run to the top of most of the you know, like 30 of the 50 or however many 14,000 foot peaks are in Colorado and and so you know He was a good runner good athlete good trail runner and I've never thought of that You know, I'd never thought anything like that I was experiencing some knee pain and some hip pain and and you know, like a lot of people I didn't make time for doing other forms of exercise or probably didn't stretch or you know Do other things that balance my body a little better and so I thought it was really interesting idea So it clicked in there around 2002 2003 and I tried to start by working out in the gym barefoot And I thought you know my gym didn't want me to be barefoot though They said, you know, you can't for liability reasons health reasons We can't have you in here, you know being barefoot, you know going on to the equipment If you were in the you know, the studio area, maybe that's something different, but you know out here You can't do that so so it's like I kept trying to figure out what I would do and I was working at the Vibram at the time, of course And we were making soles all the company was we designed and produced soul platforms for a lot of other brands Great brands really a lot of terrific brands them well-known brands and some not so well-known brands too But it was fun. I learned a lot and I had this prototype that the team in Italy had bought from a design student Who did this project as like his senior thesis And they literally bought the rights to this product and then you know, kind of we agreed to pay this person a royalty if we turned it into something And so I was introduced to this concept in Italy and I saw it and they weren't really selling it yet And they but they had refined it a little bit more So they asked if we were interested, you know, the team in the US And so I brought it back to the US and started to develop that concept and to be honest All I was thinking about was well now I can train in my gym wearing shoes because you know They told me I couldn't be barefoot and for those who don't know and I've probably got that many people But five fingers was a shoe that was more like a slipper or a glove for your feet It had individual pockets for each toe. So all five toes moved and worked independently They were quite thin and close to the ground So you had a great sensation of feel but you had a little bit of protection So more than if you were barefoot, but you know, certainly not if you dropped a weight on your foot or something You're probably not breaking toe, but so That's true with any shoe which is the whole you know, you have to wait You know, argument is completely ridiculous because yeah, not like, you know, a fraction of a millimeter of nylon From a weight on your foot. Yeah, it's very true And so I was using them in the gym and I started to feel better honestly I mean I just like the sense of being connected I like that feeling and you know, it was a grippy bebrum rubber sole So it had this kind of nice grippy sensation and one day kind of on a whim and thinking about that guy in Colorado I decided you know, my knee was still bothering me that I would take him out for just like a three-mile run And just see what happened and so as soon as I started to run in the shoes I noticed that from you know over the years my form had deteriorated and suddenly I was much more Posture conscious form conscious and because it was a relatively thin sole I had to figure out how my body was figuring out how to land gently how to land softly But as I ran, you know, the miles started to click off and I wasn't experiencing that knee pain You know, not putting a particular brand down but my a6 running shoes I could barely run three miles and you know that pain would start to come but running in these the knee pain didn't come So I kept running and kept running well that day I ended up running seven miles Which you know for a guy who used to run marathons doesn't seem like a lot But I hadn't run seven miles in a long time and I was just kind of in awe that you know I felt like I found this thing that could help me Well, the next day the other part of the story is the next day I woke up and the bottoms of my feet were really sore You know, because you know, they weren't used to that and the soleus muscle which is a muscle just below the calf That muscle was tight and sore and so I thought well, you know, this might work But you know, maybe you shouldn't try to do it all at once You know, maybe this is something you do gradually and so that was kind of the genesis of five fingers That's when it became clear to me.
Okay. Here's this kind of cool natural product that allows your foot to be a foot You know quite fond of saying and you know, it allows you to move and work in a more natural way And if you think about this is around 2005 so around 2005 shoes were getting built up I mean more and more stuff was coming on, you know, plastic hearts and you know more this more that you know Every shoe had five acronyms on it for you know, all the different special things they were doing And this was about kind of stripping a lot of that stuff away Which I loved that idea as well. And so that was that was kind of the luncheon But as you say, you know, it was an odd looking shoe It certainly was not a shoe that actually stayed a little differently. I say it's the shoe that initiated a million divorces It is The thing actually I'll tell you this so I can my thing I first saw up here in 2006 There's a store out here on the boulder the pro-street mall called cesarene shops and they were one of the first stores that carried the product And so I went go ahead exactly that 24 dealers that first year and the gentleman who owns that store Richard you may know him Had been in the footway industry for a long time And I had sold a lot of rockboards for Richard and I was like Richard just helped me out I mean, I got nobody who'll buy this stuff Listen if it doesn't sell I'll take it back which you never do, you know, you never can say that to people and he was like, okay All right, we'll give it a try, you know, because he's kind of a free thinking guy And he was one of the first people like that Yeah, he was one of the first people sell crocs I mean, he's been at the forefront of a lot of things So I went over there and when were you guys were in Wired was that also 2006?
I think that's how I made a first to heard about the Yeah, probably I mean the real launch of the brand happened at the well to kind of repeat myself again I was going to run the Boston Marathon in 2006 in the shoes But I didn't feel like I was really ready to run a marathon I mean I just started running, you know more than five miles And so I found somebody who could do it, you know, and they came out and did it and as soon as that happened A lot of people wrote about it. So, you know a few days later It was in the Wall Street Journal on the front page of the Wall Street Journal It was in Wired magazine, you know, shortly thereafter it was a time product of the year Yeah, nobody even heard of it, you know, it was a it was a weird thing Well, I mean I went and tried to pair on and I talked about it It was kind of like when it's late at night you go to the fridge and you open it up You know, see anything and you open it up five minutes later as if it's a psychic replicator I kept going and trying them on every couple months, but they never really fit my feet So I've you know more than a lot and my joke has had they fit my feet I would never start a zero shoes But the thing that I used to say to people and since you're no longer with the company you will take this in the matter in which I intend it I used to say that they're running in five fingers I say well two questions how long did they last because there were some production issues in the early versions of work having you know whatever and I said and how bad do they smell and And it was a couple and you know one of the people like he typically he was wearing them She was not when I asked the second question that started the argument I don't let them in the house And so I wanted to say if you want to look like a realtor to really it's a perfect shoe for you So Well, you know you used to make videos that made fun of us And we would sit around like a group of eight or ten of us and crowd around and put the video up on the TV in the conference room And just laugh, you know, I mean Oh, my god, great Stand up skills were coming through in those days Well, I'm glad So, well, I'm gonna dive into that in a second I want to highlight something you said that I really love which is you know that after that first run You had done too much too soon And of course the problem was too much too soon as you don't know you did too much too soon until you do too much too soon But you did something that's actually similar to what happened for me because after my first barefoot run I never really blissed around the ball My left foot and unlike many people I did not think what's wrong with this unlike many people you did not think what's wrong I got sore we both thought oh wait there's something else going on here And maybe you know maybe there's for me It was like it was why is my right foot fine and my left foot not that's interesting to me What was my right foot doing correctly that my left foot wasn't for you It was that more obvious thing of you know too much too soon and what happens if so that experimental mindset is frankly unusual And that's it were not for that you know things would not have moved forward I imagine Yeah, I think that's very true and for me That's the way I need to experience things to learn and see what I think is right I'm not saying just like I think you said I would never say that that product is for everybody I used to say it all the time And you know when you get a product and it becomes popular for whatever reasons You know There were probably a lot of people that were using it that maybe shouldn't have been or maybe should have used it a little less or Maybe not done the things they did it I think that's a different and I just remembered one of the first things I said to you and I think one of the reasons that I instantly adored you Was the way you responded to this comment I've often said seemingly obnoxious things to people within minutes of meeting them Sometimes but mostly because it's a thought that I'm having and I just got to get it out of my face And sometimes it's a test to see you know can someone handle it That was not the case in this in this situation It was really just because I was having this thought as we were getting into this natural movement idea This is now 2010 11 and I said you something along the lines of you know The biggest problem is well, let me back up The fundamental problem is that human beings have been especially in America have been trained that the product is just a solution instantly Just you have a problem here's a product fixes it right away And what you and I were talking about and what we've already alluded to is that what we're doing is getting out of the way to allow for a more natural Youth of the human body that that's what creates the effects and just so I say it's not about the footwear It's about the form it's just some footwear informs the form So but because everyone has this problem solution mindset What happened is people got the idea for whatever reason that all they had to do is put on pair five fingers or in our case No, it doesn't make a difference all they had to do is wear them instantly everything would get better And that's not the case and I said to you something like you guys are really dropping the ball on education And it's not like you could have really done anything about it because it was moving faster than anything you could have done And I said you're dropping the ball on education and something along the lines of you know This is the thing that's gonna bite us of the butt or it's like killing the golden goose or something along those lines And your response was yeah, I know and so you know You were it seemed in these early days you were very aware that it had a life of its own to a certain extent And you know, how do you stop a moving train? Yeah, I mean we did try to do a lot in education After I left the company the company was actually sued about some of these things because you know We've made a lot of materials that said like every product for example had a hang tag on it that said among other things You know if this hurts stop, you know Don't continue to try to push yourself through something as runners But probably as athletes and general human beings often try to push themselves and keep pushing themselves and think that you know Things will get better. That's not always the case, you know And I think we did do a lot to try to help people become more aware of their form conscious of that We did a fair amount of research with Harvard University, right?
That you know really helped us to understand what was going on Biomechanically what was going on ergonomically what was going on and and how people could engage with the product better and and everybody's different There's some people that are very used to being barefoot and there are a lot of people that are not you know We put people in shoes at a young age and they're in shoes, you know most of the time It's like wearing a cast on your arm and if you cast that arm every day for you know 20 years or 30 years and even if you take it off at night, you know that arm is going to atrophy The muscles are are going to become weak You're never going to have the same range of motion that you would if you use it all the time So it just depended on the person's adaptability to a more natural condition Well, I've done I mean I talked about that I have this whole theory about the brain plasticity component of that one is it that makes some person able to adapt very quickly and another person not And from my research has not read you know I've got some whole theories about that that's not the important part But the thing that I just noticed was that salespeople and people people just had this idea that all I needed to do is wear these And now you know the early barefoot days that was sort of while none of us were saying that that was the message that was Expanding faster than we were yeah, well, I think you know there was a book that came out of course that probably helped promote that concept a little So and I love kris mcdole he's a phenomenal human being and I love everything about him He's a great guy but in reading born to run I think a lot of people got the idea that they could do things that maybe they could do but they needed to work up to it Yeah, and so you know the idea that anybody can go run 50 miles barefoot Well, probably not if you haven't you know been To that well you said it this is a kind of an assignment. I have our dear friend dr Irene davis at harvard which where I say I mean I think almost anybody could Isch there's nothing preventing someone if you can run if you have the idea that you possibly run 50 miles in a pair She was you could learn to run 50 miles barefoot. That's not an issue But this is another western thing where we have the idea that anybody can do anything that they said their mind to or that they believe in or whatever It is which is patley false. I mean I'm a sprinter the idea of running 50 miles I don't like driving 50 miles So, you know, that's not gonna happen and I actually said to leave him the first time I met Dan Lieberman was at the New York City barefoot run And he was proposing his theory that we're all persistence and turns athletes We all just you know learn to run long slow distances so that we can hunt down animals and I said I'm not that guy And he goes well you didn't train that way.
I said that's what all you slow people say so The difference between sprinters and distance runners It's all different physiology like your guys might have chased the envelope down my guys are the ones who showed up put it over their shoulders And walk at home because me and my friends we did live three times our body weight and you guys can't do a push up So that said while you can't do anything in the range of the things you can do There's a lot that you can change and again the adaptability the neuroplasticity necessary Especially to learn new movement patterns because we are our identity is locked in with some of the ways that we move Some of the ways we hold our body in very subtle ways So learning to to deal with the what we experience is frustration of laying down new neural pathways to learn new different different moving things It's challenging. I spent I'm what I'm 58 years old. I spent 40 years trying what I do called trying to get the gymnast out of my body So I was an all-American gymnast and gymnast all have the same posture You know chest a little caved in because you're super super strong in that direction I mean it couldn't be more standard I mean you live a bunch of gymnasts next to much of anybody else and you could pick them out without blinking I mean it's taking me a long time to deal with that but so anyway blah blah blah This is a we took attention here. I'm curious I want to say talk about two things really quick So when the five fingers and the whole barefoot movement was really blowing up 2010 moving forward What was that like just being part of that being at the top of that apex if you will?
It was a lot of fun. It really was a lot of fun and for a variety of reasons It's always fun to see I mean I think everybody roots for we weren't a big company You know and yet we had kind of taken the industry by storm And I think a lot of people like that when that kind of thing happens when a smaller You know less known less resourced company comes along and takes on some of the goal bias And so I enjoyed that part and at the same time I wanted to I think the biggest challenge for me was I wanted to advance the concept You know I wanted to move the concept on to frankly other types of shoes You know shoes that didn't necessarily have five pockets for your toes And as I said the company vibram had been around since the late 30s Right and the founder of the company was a gentleman named Vitale Bermani And so you know in a sense I worked for the grandson of the founder in Italy And when I talked to him about extending this concept He just didn't he couldn't get behind that he's he was too afraid that and probably for good reason I think he made the right decision He would rather stay focused on the soul business It was nice that the five fingers thing happened It was all good and it was great that it brought creativity You know freshness to the market kind of maybe a little bit of what you said where you know created a lot of divorces It got people to think about things differently And they loved that at Vibram you know they loved that kind of concept But at its core the company was still a company that made soul platforms Right for a lot of other footwear brands and that's what he really wanted to advance So he said you know if you want to do it you can take the concept to other folks What you saw we did of course we we you know Merrill was a great customer at the time and we made the Merrill barefoot shoes and helped them to create that whole concept We worked with new balance and helped them to create the minimus and that platform And so we kind of took somebody from the outdoor somebody from the run industry our own you know Vibram five fingers and that was that was kind of how we built it out But it was frustrating to me because I wanted to do other things that would advance the concept And I always feel like there's a wide scale You know there are some people that are going to be the purest You know most natural the people who really are barefoot all the time You know regardless of the weather the conditions whatever There are people that go a little bit past that and that there are there are some people that need a little more help You know to get there and that was kind of where my interest was with topo and topo of course It comes from my name tony post so topo athletic is how we got there I wanted to create footwear that would help you transition probably to shoes that are a little more natural product like you make But I saw a big market opportunity for you know Many people to be able to move towards something that was a little a little more natural Well, you know the guys at ultra have said a similar thing that they think of themselves as a gateway to zero shoes And to which I say why don't you put any ads in your boxes for me? But i'm curious and by the way one more story about that all for up, you know I said we had 24 customers They were golden harpers dad hawker on zasore in utah and he was one of those first 24 They fully embraced the concept and even golden when they were starting ultra, you know came and showed me the original prototypes And yeah said I promise we won't put you know toes in them You're kind of doing what I would love to do but see I just want to know I don't know if you saw all the emails that people were sending to be even I just want to know if you ever got emails from people saying Can't you make one for six-hod people? I mean why are you discriminating against us?
I know I mean we get requests that are like completely wacky From people who think that they're somehow normal. I mean I've seen people and I'm not trying to you know be foot shaming anyone I've seen people whose feet are practically square There's why does they are long and you know complain to us that our shoes don't work for them It's like dude no she was ever worked for you But I find it kind of entertaining we all think that we're not unusual in certain ways when we are all unusual in certain ways all unique Unique is a good way to say it. Okay, that work That's my favorite verbal pet peeve is when people say very unique it makes me crazy It's like you can't be very one of a kind that makes me nuts anyway So you know we mentioned something before the lawsuit for against vbrom a class action suit Is one of the most misrepresented things that I've ever heard of in my life and you were no longer CEO of the company when that happened But you told me that had you been CEO you would have handled it very differently Yeah, I would have definitely handled it differently So for those who you know now we're really getting into the minutiae But what happened was after I left the company the company was sued for making false claims and marketing and advertising Among the claims were that you you know muscles in the feet could grow stronger, right? You know wearing five fingers versus conventional Shoes that cast the foot and at the time of course, you know We had two pieces of information one was going back to I think it was around 2003 or something Somebody could look at that, but there was a gentleman named broogerman who presented a paper at the I can't remember what it's called it like the american biomechanics conference or the worldwide biomechanics conference And this paper that he presented was a paper that showed wearing shoes with less structure and with less protection and you know Conventionality that we think of in in traditional footwear If you strip that away that the muscles the foot would grow stronger and he actually had proved it He had measured the muscle fiber against the control group and it was a pretty large sample set And so you know there was this research that was accepted by the american biomechanics institute that said, you know That is a fact.
Yes. We accept this conclusion and you know I always wondered should we prove it and a lot of our people on the scientific advisory board said, you know I think it's kind of pointless to prove it because it's pretty obvious You know, I mean you're just using the muscles in the foot in a different way when you strip all that stuff away So if I was there I would have fought the suit I think the company didn't really want the confrontation And so they just agreed to settle the lawsuit they had done pretty well financially and they agreed to make a donation to Some organization, you know to effectively how ironic that a bunch of italian's didn't want to fight something I'm amazed like, uh, you know, I think we can take care of this out of cool up. Maybe I think I know I know I know it's a guy He'll make it all go away. Yeah I have a theory.
I don't know if it's true. Well, first of all, the thing that amazes me about a lawsuit is that you described it exactly the way it went down But what people the way it was framed is that this proves that barefoot is bullshit and that running barefoot or running these things will injure you Which is not good for you. I think that's what people thought that was what they got out of that was it's not good for you It's not helping me. It was an amazing gap and I have two theories one actually I don't know if I ever told you this I talked to someone who was the VP of marketing at one of the well a company that you mentioned I'm not gonna say which one we'll leave it that big and I said correct me if I'm wrong But you found out that the lawsuit settled for three point and seven five million dollars And you spun that story and put that out into your media contacts about how barefoot isn't good for you is that correct?
And he goes, yeah, of course So the story was being controlled not by the people who knew what was going on which was an amazing thing to discover But I have another theory and it was a class action lawsuit I have a my theory my suspicion is that it was sponsored surreptitiously by a larger shoe company And I say that in part because in early barefoot days if you will 2009 early 2010 the big shoe companies were freaking out I mean they were doing massive massive PR well There was an article that came out Let me say differently people were pointing to something on the web that looked like an article about how barefoot was gonna kill you And you needed motion for all stability shoes And I seem to be the only one that noticed it was a native ad because there was a tiny little thing said sponsored by Brooks running Which is ironic for a number reason not for Lisa Which being that you and I both know the guy who's the CEO of Brooks and he knows that now from movements a real thing So but his business was doing very different things So from that and all the companies that were coming out saying if you take off your big shoes You're gonna kill yourself. That's one of the reason why I have this completely unproven theory about the sponsorship of the lawsuit because The person who was the lead in the class was talking about how she got injured is my memory So pardon me if it's inaccurate she got injured wearing these shoes But that had nothing to do with the suit which was about false medical claim So the conflation of these things seems so deliberate in my mind that I hope some data find out I could be wrong and I'd be happy to be wrong, but I'm done I think people know that there are law firms out that that specialize in this kind of thing anyway And so they basically it's like a patent rolls or you know It's very similar with all just try and seek out an opportunity regardless of whether or not It's credible or legitimate in hopes that they'll achieve some kind of a settlement So you're saying the simpler explanation is to do Do you do a lawyer? I'm sure there's some good lawyers out there, but this one probably wasn't one of them Well, you just raised another point So one of the other things that happened with five fingers is just people ripping off that idea like there was no tomorrow What was that like what did you guys do or not do or what did you learn from that? And by the way I asked because I'm starting to see it happen to us I'm seeing design elements of ours suddenly being used by large companies I won't mention names like Mikey or Adidas Well, you know, there's a couple different things we did obviously within the trade journals We advertised about our patents and you mentioned, you know, we've been I've been involved in some funny ads We actually did a very funny ads so I would encourage you to search it I know this is on Google and if you searched out vibram patent infringement advertising and something like that You would uncover a very fun image You know, we took the foot of the five toes of the vibram five fingers and did something Which some people probably would consider slightly profane I loved this ad It was just to warn people that you know, we we have patents and we try to protect our patents And you know, we have a responsibility to protect our patents, you know, for shareholders and everybody else, so You know, you were quoted somewhere saying that perhaps your money may have been better spent building more relationship with the customers than infringing or dealing with the patents because What a tough money hole that is We're in a situation now You know, we don't have patents on a couple of things because we didn't get them because we didn't have the money way back when and we didn't know if we could Anyway, and and now we're watching people take some of our design ideas and some of our utility ideas as well We do have a number of patents but on some of the things that are being taken now not so much and it's the foot where industry is just incredible The first lesson I got guys who we met who'd been in footwear for 35 years We were at a one of the footwear related trade shows and the first booth we stopped in was someone who had the exact product that they were making and looking to license And we're I was just kind of dumbstruck by that phenomenon.
He was once it exists. Everybody knows it And you know, it's just so hard to protect what you're doing footwear And there I believe in a certain amount of that too that you just got to keep moving You've just got to always keep inventing always keep advancing always keep, you know, trying to improve the customer experience And if you do that and don't just rest on your patents or your laurels, you know, I think it'll be a better company So it's interesting the Bruderman study is saying, you know, just getting doing less is better for you less is more Ironically, that's exactly the point that Nike is now making about their new shoes that they say reduces injury They say we got rid of a lot of the protective features since our best selling motion control padded shoe The zoom structure and that seemed to reduce injury. It's like, uh, yeah, um, and of course if you just went even farther in fact There was an article that showed up on like Yahoo Finance where they quoted me about this And it's like well, yeah, we just got rid of even more of the protective features and we're, you know, seeing one of the people who experienced that And of course, you know, they're thinking with the protective features. It's um, so yes That new shoe reduced injuries by 50 percent a little over 50 Compared to the control shoe but still during their 12 week study Almost one in three people got injured in the control and one in seven got injured in the new shoe Which is like to say it's like me saying i'm gonna buy you dinner at a restaurant every night this week You want to go to the one where you get food poisoning twice on average or once on average?
Neither one of those makes sense to me. So anyway, that's a neither here or there Let's move on to topo then because there's an interesting evolutionary things that you did there You came in with one idea that evolved into something new. I'd love to hear just, you know, what were you thinking? Actually, what were you thinking when you were starting a shoe company?
I say that These guys that I just mentioned when we met them, they said we believe in you and later and what you guys are doing And we would start the shoe company with you, but we've been in footwear for 35 years And we're not stupid enough to start a shoe company So what made you stupid enough to start a shoe company and talk to me about the evolution of it I think you know from the time I worked at rockord I saw how the owner of that company really was able to express itself in footwear and do, you know, a lot of good things And I saw that company grow and I had a similar kind of experience where I had probably more of the controls in my hand at vibram And so maybe I had a little too much Arrogance about it or not arrogance, but it maybe I was over confident about, you know How you could build a company and I have a lot of respect for you and anybody who has ever tried to build a company It's really really hard I've been a part of these two companies that succeeded became, you know, multi hundred million dollar companies And when you go through that experience you feel like well, you know, I've been a part of this a couple of times But to start it again, it's really hard And so I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs and people who try to build businesses and who try to Create things and make things from scratch and fill a need and deliver an experience At the end of the day it comes down to am I going to make something that's going to improve the quality of people's lives? You know, I mean, that's what you believe, you know, and that's what I have to believe or I wouldn't do it You know, that's really the reason to do it and then work with a group of people who share that belief who share that passion And there are people with all different needs all different tastes all different attitudes out there So there's a wide range of people that you can help And so I've always in my life tried to you know kind of have this narrow vision of who my customer is You know, not appealing to everybody because clearly I've never made shoes that appeal to everybody But I try to make shoes, you know, what that I think for a particular person that I have in mind is really going to benefit that person is really going to Improve the experience and deliver a better value And so that's what I wanted to do with Topo and with Topo for me it started with the fit And so the fit had to be you know, obviously I wanted that sensation of allowing your toes to spread in sway So roomy toe box for sure that had been done there shoes that are you could buy in wides? But I wanted the last to have more of a contoured shape So it felt a little more snug and secure in the waist secure in the heels so that you felt more nimble more agile You're using all of those muscles in the toes You're using all the sensitivity that you have there But the shoe still has to feel like it's more a part of your body I wanted to put some protection not massive amounts of protection But a little more protection underfoot and I would bury it You know, I wanted to be able to transition people having come from the five fingers experience where I saw some people get injured You know really quickly I wanted to make shoes that would allow somebody to transition to the most natural experience eventually So we would offer different levels of cushioning nothing that would be considered cushioned heavily or you know by today's standard certainly But you know with a little more protection than what I was making clearly at the brim And then I think the last thing is we wanted I believe in shoes that are on a level plane You know people use the term zero drop or you know, it's where the heel and the forefoot are on the same plane But I also you know as I described in that first run when I had that sore soleus muscle is because I wasn't quite used to running On issue with a level plane. So I said well, I'm gonna add a little bit of stack height in the back a little more So there would be a five millimeter drop or a three millimeter drop or a zero drop now for anybody who knows their metrics You know five millimeters is like, you know quarter of an inch.
It's not a very big heel It's amazing. It's amazing how much you can feel that I mean what people forget It's like the difference in walking on polished cement versus being on a sidewalk You know, we're so sensitive to those little things and we take it for granted We don't even notice how sensitive we are to those little variations until they're put in front of our face or on our feet So I really wanted to take those three ingredients the idea of the fit the idea of this, you know below heel to toe drop You know different amounts slightly different amounts of cushioning And I wanted to kind of package that into athletic footwear running footwear that also brought a certain craftsmanship You know learn working at rockport where we literally made our own last you know in a shop in the It was you learn a level of craftsmanship that doesn't exist as much in our industry today And I wanted to bring some of that concept of craftsmanship and shoe making into this While still combining it with you know modern materials where you can and a modern approach So that was the concept behind the development of the brand But you you overlook my favorite part on dining? I know I know I know so the favorite part that you The punch line to the story is when we launched the brand it had all of those ingredients Which I loved but it had one other ingredient Which is that the we made if five fingers were like a glove for the feet We made a mitten and so we had a pocket for the big toe and then another pocket for the other four toes And the reason we did that as you well know the big toe is really a key stabilizer in the body So important for balance agility, you know, whether you're standing running moving walking and anyway And so I wanted that to be isolated independent so that it could move a little more freely And so we launched the brand Cause and just add this is not like it's a new idea for people who know in japan and in many parts of Asia This is happy shoes on top of shoes. Yeah, this has been around for a long long time So this wasn't you pulling it out of your butt No, not at all.
It's been around for like you said hundreds of years and you can still see tabby shoes a lot If you go to japan and so I loved that concept and when we launched we launched with three styles all made that way And people said, you know, we like these shoes that they're lightweight. We like some of the characteristics and whatnot But you know people just don't want this mitten construction. This is where it's really hard when you talk about launching a company So here I've hired people created something brought it to market and it's not working Right, and you know, you ask yourself a hundred questions. No better.
No better. It's a good idea and it's not working Yeah, but you ask yourself, well, why didn't I test this more? Why didn't I do, you know, one or two shoes without the tabby fit? You know, I mean there's time for that after the fact you kind of second guess yourself But in the moment the deal is done.
You took a stand it didn't work and it took us about two years to correct that issue So we literally had to help people sell them through or if they couldn't and to avoid destroying relationships We brought shoes back sold them off in channels where it wouldn't you know damage the brand retooled the company put more money into it You know, so this is the other thing of course is you know, there's a as you well Know I admire how you've been able to you know, you basically bootstrap the company from nothing This is a very capital intensive business. We're in and you got to build inventory and tooling and all these things It's got a high barrier to entry, which is great, but it's hard when you're in the process So to do it twice in two years because we had to redo everything that was very hard But when we did come out the second time people were like, oh, okay, you know, I mean this is better We like this better. It's still you know, we're a lot of things we could improve So trust me, but there's things we can improve today all over but always but it was enough to be able to get it up and off the ground So I felt good about that and instead it's on a path that we're on today And again, you know, congrats on that as well because from one to another, you know, it is this is a tough road Ho and it's you and I come from different backgrounds So you come from a wholesale background not come from a digital direct background Now we're both in this phase of how that's blending and what that's doing And so watching what you've done has been really inspiring because you know that hasn't been the direction that our company has taken Up until recently which by the way as a result of that I could have had this conversation offline I'm gonna do it now for the fun but congratulations on getting some rep groups that we were trying to get Oh, well, you know, we're all competing for good people Yeah, so we all have the same idea There's a finite number of good people and so congratulations on that damn you man But no, I'm super happy for you. Oh, thanks We need more help than you do so we need everybody needs help Well, you know, look my wife says it best her line is there's enough to your companies in the world There's no reason to ever have another unless what you're doing changes people's lives And that's what we're doing in our slightly different ways And that's you know, that's the important part Getting people moving as thing number one getting people moving well as thing number two And getting people moving as naturally as possible is all underneath or on top however you want to have every image you want to use on relas or foundations And so that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on and frankly as I said in email to reach out to you about this I was remiss in not having this conversation ages ago with you and some of the other people We mentioned golden harbor from altar and some of our other friends who are in the business I'm still trying to get some out here who thinks I might had totally on my ass That's my goal is have that conversation because that would be a lot of fun And I know exactly who I want to but he said no, so I don't know why you know actually I want to leave on this one idea and because I got a bounce in a couple minutes anyway You and I were on a panel discussion at the American college of sports medicine It was you me and a guy from Brooks and I got from Adidas talking about footwear and healthy feet, etc It was the most well attended event they I think ever had it was beyond standing room only and I have a lot of entertaining memories from that I'm just wondering what was your kind of takeaway from that conversation with two guys who were totally on the pat emotional art sport blah blah blah Versus us on the other side of the fence.
So, you know, it's funny I thought about that from time to time and I think one of the things you mentioned earlier how when you first started how you know Hopefully I said some things that were encouraging because you know, it's not about just creating your own company and building this thing You're trying to as you were doing right now You're trying to build a movement and it happens with having multiple companies It was nice to be in that situation where there was somebody else on my team, you know And you and frankly, you know, you're even a little further on my team, you know a little further I wasn't literally stopped yourself. Yes. And so it was kind of cool It was kind of reassuring, you know, and it was I think it was interesting for everybody who got a chance to hear different perspectives and different points of view Maybe it's a little like politics which I almost hate to bring up But some people come into those sessions and they've already got their mind made up and they're not going to change No matter what you say no matter what you do But there's always a percentage of people that come to those things that do have a willingness to listen And those are the ones that you're hoping to touch. Yeah, you know, and that you can gradually bit by bit start to we can grow this Understanding and awareness, you know after that event I said if any large company was smart They would acquire you or me I mean one of us or both of us and keep us all in the same roof because that conversation Like you said 20% of people were never gonna switch from being patter our sport shoes 20% were all on our team and there's you know, 60% in the middle who were really they're curious and the best thing that we can do for any of them Is highlight their own experience of the times they've been barefoot the times they've been doing something natural The times that you know that they understand if you put a joint in a cast against weaker all those things that are basically what we're looking for Contrary to what they've been sold because if their own experience is more powerful than a marketing message That's what's gonna get people to change But fundamentally if some bigger company could put on that event if they put us on the road just doing that conversation because people want to hear They're looking for solutions They want to be able to run and walk and play and have fun and do that healthily and enjoyably for the rest of their life If the end result of that conversation benefited that umbrella company no matter which direction people landed That would be the best possible solution because then we would have the bonus of all this You know the extra marketing and distribution and all those things that we're now trying to build And we'd have a bigger audience to draw from when we you know created these large events where people want to hear what's going on The problem I think though is that for a larger company like that The people they would have to put on the road with us would have to have you know ego strength like narcissus because you and I just we point out the obvious And they have no response and so you know I heard from a couple of guys I said to the two guys from the US I came up for the math course and it was the most evil Psychologically manipulative thing I think I've ever done in my life.
I came up to them and I said very late hearted like Sorry, I was so obnoxious out there. I didn't really mean to be and they went Okay, and I did it just to make them laugh because otherwise I knew they were gonna walk away very upset I mean they had no response to anything that we said in fact. I have a link I have the video hard quality I'm gonna put a link to it in the show notes because I mean we didn't get to respond to this one One of the guys open they both open by saying they're trying to reduce injuries improve performance And I think was the guy from Audi who said you know we don't have any proof that we can do this because doing that study would be very Time-consuming and very expensive and have a lot of compounds and I'm thinking dude if you could make a shoot Amosrally better than the guy sitting next to you it's worth billions of dollars a year and you're telling me you haven't done it because it's difficult Give me a break. You know why you haven't done it.
You know the research you know what's going on or you're completely oblivious to it Suffice it to say you know I think that would be in creating a movement the thing that you need is eyeballs You need attention you need something to make people engage in the conversation and like you said We're not gonna get everyone not everything's for everybody But the bigger the arena the more impact you can have and you know that's really everything I'm doing is trying to just You know make the conversation bigger to be beneficial like you said also for all the companies that are doing this in the various ways That we're trying to when I first started this I emailed one of my now competitors And I said just want to let you know what I'm doing and he says I don't know if I should be happier cry I said oh you should be ecstatic because I'm a much better marketer than you are So I'm gonna make the conversation much bigger than you ever thought possible and you're gonna make more money than you ever thought possible And years later when I met him personally for the first time I said what I write he goes yes He was very upset that I was correct and we since become good friends though So I think it's the real reason to do it is because it all comes back to that thing if you can make people's life Better if you can make the experience better because that's the most gratifying and I think that's got to be at the heart of it It's just about making money or you know trying to be a big company There's no, you know, there's nothing really lasting in that it doesn't get me up to work in the morning But if you feel like what you're doing is really helping people and we're lucky you know during this time of the pandemic a lot of people Started looking probably, you know started running walking hiking that weren't before and it's great It brought a lot of new people in and a lot of those people ended up in your shoes or my shoes because they were open-minded They didn't have this you know preconception that they needed this other thing So yeah, it created a lot of opportunity Well, then let's end it on that note here's to changing the world and get how do people be happier and healthier? And I just want to thank you for everything you've done in doing that Thank you for all of your kind words and support over the years as I said It's been a treat and anyway, I gotta sign off and get out of here and go talk to someone who might help me get from more people Okay, so thank you Tony post but have people want to find you how they do that So they can find us at Topo Athletic is the name of the company and Start at the website you learn a lot about the company and see the products we make I apologize our stock is a little devastated right at the moment We got a pretty good run, but it's gonna be a lot better here in the next 30 days So you don't see what you want right off the bat, you know, it'll be there soon awesome fingers crossed We're having the same issues. So anyway, thank you all for being part of the movement movement podcast like I said find out more at www.jointhemovementvomot.com Where you can find previous episodes and you learn where you can interact with all this content and you know share and like and thumbs up etc etc etc Like I said if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe But also if you have any comments or questions or recommendations people you want on the show or things you want us to cover Drop me an email I'll just then send it to move at join the movement movement calm But most importantly, please go out have fun and live life feet first