What happens when you leave the stable life of academia and do the stupidest thing you could possibly think of started shoot company? Well, we're gonna find out on today's episode of the movement movement the podcast where people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a Happy's healthy strong body starting feet first typically because those things are you know your foundation We break down the propaganda the mythology sometimes Yeah, right lies that you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or play or to yoga across it Whatever it is you like to do and to do that enjoyably and efficiently and I mentioned enjoyably I know I did but that's the important part because if you're not having fun Please do something different until you are and I'm Stephen Sashan from zero issues.com your host really quick If you don't know what we're doing here, it's simple. We're creating a movement around natural movement We're helping people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious better healthy choice the way natural food is and if you want to find out What that's all and the movement part is about you So you are moving this natural movement thing forward if you want to find out how you can help it's easy Just like and share and give us a thumbs up and hit the bell icon on YouTube all those different ways You can interact basically if you want to be part of the tribe Please subscribe and also go to www not join the movement movement.com you'll find previous episodes and all the different ways You can interact with what we're doing here. So let's get started.
I am thrilled to semi introduce Dr. Casey Kerry I'm listening doctor in front of the front of things. I never do that by the way I had a chance we could grow up in a medical family So I don't know why it came out that way. I just talked anyway here we are Casey and Bob who's sitting behind her and I say some introduction because I want you to tell the story of What you're doing and how you got to what you're doing and then I will interject by telling you how silly that was Okay, well, so we went to begin way back when I used to run track in cross-country in high school college and always was fascinated with gate and When and then became a doctor went to Harvard Medical School and Specialized in a field called physical medicine rehabilitation where we like care about the whole body not just a feet But the whole body and learning about gate It's amazing how little we knew back then and here, you know I have lectures with we study the heart the lungs, you know and we knew how those organs were just fine But people really didn't understand the mechanics of basic walking and running and so I was just excited to research it to really dive in and Learn about it.
And so I started doing research in I guess 1991 and then built a couple of gate laboratories First one at Harvard and then I was recruited down to University of Virginia in 2002 to continue my research and build an even better lab So we had all this wonderful equipment I was funded by your friends in Bethesda NIH for many many years literally down on the same street I grow yes And I probably went by your house going to the NIH for meeting all the time So I was funded by the NIH to steady gate to get a better understanding to help with improving people's mobility also to prevent disease and treat disease prevent disease and one of the biggest findings that I discovered back in I think 98 was my first paper published it was in the Lancet that a high-heel shoes increase the I should say it's the joint torx but it's really you can think about it as the loads on the parts of the knee where we get arthritis Right, and it was huge It was like you know 26% and that was significant at the time I was like well shoot, you know that this is pretty big because you know people do surgeries You know on the knee to when someone's got a new arthritis to change that number and if you see like a 5% change you think wow We successful surgery we just reduce that torque by 5% Well, we're saying that the shoes were doing 26% so anyway So I like wow high heels that I dug into all footwear I found out that just wide-based heels also that moderate heels that any heel and then kind of you know I kept doing this research and then really you know boring down on what specific parts of the shoe do this increase these torx and The knee torque people think about you know Well, that's just New York right as well one. Yeah, it's huge because it's more disability physical disability than any other singular disease in the elderly It is huge. It's it just doesn't get the attention that you know other diseases do people live with it Well, people think it's a normal part of aging. It's like bodies wear out and you know, so our fight is I mean that's what you get exactly so and then women women get it, you know Almost twice as much as men and I've always believed the reason for that is because footwear women are wearing higher heels generally than men But there's more it's not just the heel There's other facets of the shoe that are increasing these torx and so it's not just a knee The knee is like you know that the loads that occur in the coronal plane which the side to side plane people think about a movement and everything in the going Forward plane as a sagittal plane, but really there's all this stuff that's going in the side side plane And that's where things happen when you think about all the injuries that occur during running It's all in the side to side plane.
They all with respect to the torx the mechanics not not the motion Not what you can visually see something You know, but what you can measure when you combine your ground reaction forces with motion analysis that you can see what the loads are You know all the joints So the knee joint is just like one indicator of that things are abnormal in that plane But it's abnormal all up and down the plane So where you get stress factors why you get hit pointers really every single injury You can explain in this coronal plane and with respect to the those torx so it's like okay me Yeah, but it was much bigger than that as you were doing this how much of this was making you sort of surprised versus just like confirming What seems so screamingly obvious with you know the bear's amount of thought but it hadn't been You know, I mean, you know, like the high-heel stuff and women's dress shoes a lot of that is like yeah No brainer and thought yeah, I'm confirming I mean, this is you know, this ridiculous course, but it was surprising I think because you know being a runner, you know, I always I just thought okay I'm getting the best pair of you know Nike shoes And I think I have the best and so when finding out that they're not that their aspects of you know The most expensive running shoe that are increasing these torx was that I think that was you know surprising That alone is so interesting to me because it occurs to me the only reason it's surprising is that we grew up I'm 58. How old are you? Oh Oh, please do the share all of the place in the break when I turned 50 my dad called me to try and tease me about being 50 I said are you kidding? I'm entering a new age group in my if erasing I'm gonna be the fastest guy, you know in the 50-54 group.
It'll be awesome So the I mean we grew up in that era when like he's went from being basically just, you know flat really thin Tiny little bit of toast ring in the original waffle trainer But that was really it and then you know We all bought the drink the Kool-Aid as they kept telling us that they were doing things to improve performance and reduce injury despite a lack of evidence What you say about it's like cars in the 1970s? Yeah, yeah, yeah Right and we just friend of mine said something really interesting He went to Mexico and he said the billboards look like they're from the 70s in America because it's the same kind of like very Simplistic messaging that we no longer are you know fault for a two We no longer believe that kind of messaging but they weren't at the messaging there wasn't as quote sophisticated and it's a similar thing It's like you know in the 70s we believe what people told us on television We believe you know and there was no reason not to at all it all made sort of intuitive sense things like oh well You know running as a painful so we need cushioning. It's like okay. Well a bed You know you want cushioning on a bed you want cushioning on a good sofa So it's like they capitalized on some messaging that made quote intuitive sense But wasn't real until they said it long enough that everyone just assumed it was real well It's funny, you know in 1977 I wrote a very long letter to Nike, you know They were a little company and tell me because I had the LDB 1000s and I just went through it I think you know you need to do this and you need to do that.
It's really funny. It's hilarious You know they call me back they talk So on the trajectory from there to so you got down to UVA with a better lab And I'm also just thinking about what you've seen during this time and the improvements of the equipment that you could use to investigate the things That you were looking into I mean my god, there's been just so much change in what's available for research Right. Yeah, so you know we could do the 3D motion analysis where you can see the movement of the joints You know a lot of times you can't like just a video camera You might like you might not be able to see what's happening in the coronal plane versus a sagittal plane So you can really figure out what the motion is but more than the motion is just knowing where the joint centers are So you can figure out where the joint centers are and then with the joint centers You're running over a ground reaction force a force plate the measures of ground reaction force and then we had this sophisticated instrumented treadmill that had three different force plates on it So you can measure the joint locations at the same time that you're measuring the ground reaction force and interestingly So many people they study gate and it's very observation. You know, it's like, oh, you know, this is moving This is like oh, you're pronating like but who cares?
You need to understand where that ground reaction force is with respect to the joints to really get any kind of meaning out of it We see this all the time where people either look at still images and and make assessments about how someone's moving or even looking at video At like, you know 24 frames a second, which doesn't really tell you anything Or you know, of course when people go into a running shoe store and they're getting videotaped on a treadmill from the knees down By you know, it's on 23 year old kid who was trained to identify something that maybe he thinks he can see and then I recommend a shoe in relation I mean I was in Bill Sands lab when he was out here in Colorado And he said I only film it 500 frames a second because there's not enough information Otherwise and the interesting proof of that is my right foot was e-verting turning out in the last frame just before it hit the ground in One five hundredth of a second my right foot was turning out about ten degrees and that pointed to a hand-string issue I had that we would have never found in any other way and but people go Oh, yeah, what do the shoe store and they put me on a trip? Actually, you're gonna love this one of my fantasies is to get like a fake TV film crew saying we're doing a documentary or doing a story about I'm getting the right shoe and go to different stores and have the same runner get on the treadmill and see how many different shoes the different stores recommend based on their treadmill analysis I think it would be hysterical because there's no way they're gonna come up with the same diagnosis a little on the same recommendation Right. Yeah, so there was doing all this research and you know finding the specific things in the shoe that can increase these joint Turks but also finding that there's things that could reduce those joint talks So that was interesting and which was then led to the development of OCH But I did some of the features that you know, we showed that increases joint works one of them was just arch support You know just like a teeny tiny amount of arch support is like very minimal spanko soft cushion arch Yeah, the shelf that increased those parameters and then I guess the last straw was in 2009 I think yeah, we published finally published a paper that just looked at just your traditional running show and didn't matter I forget what brand it was Brooks. Maybe yeah, yeah, only because they had done it.
I feel bad You know, they don't it is all it's fair, but it was we also had Nike and I can freeze you had so Nike some Nike freeze same thing No, but they were increasing the joint talks by upwards of 50% now. This is during running, you know So the high heels was more than high heels is okay. Well, that was in walking we increased 26% But you know running so between running barefoot and running with the shoes It was like you know between 33 50% and again, not just a knee joint or not just a corona New joint talk with the sagittal and the hip torques and ankles So, you know everything and then you know when you know start making a push well So let's pause there and I'll tell this quick story So seven months after Laina and I started zero shoes when we were just telling to do it yourself barefoot running sandal kit basically Here's how you make a sandal that looks like what they did 10,000 years ago And we met some guys who had all started at rebock 35 years earlier in the footwear industry as you know But not everyone does is very incestless people bounce around from company to company So they've been all over the place and they were sitting in our dining room and said, you know We really believe in you guys and we really believe in natural movement of what you're doing and we would start this business with you But we've been in footwear so long. We're not stupid enough to try and start a shoe company So talk to me about that leap from academia and research to you know the stupid thing of starting a shoe company Bob You're leaving on that one conversation so you know talk to me about that moment of I mean I say this only half in jazz You know that moment of stupidity or what I like to say is what when Laina and I we uttered the five dangerous entrepreneurial words How hard could this be and you know and here we are 11 years later, you know And we know the answer so what was your how hard could this be moment or what was the thing that really inspired?
Oh, I shouldn't for people who don't know it's your company is oh, yes, oh shoes So talk about that transition. Yeah, so here was you know I was publishing all this stuff and I was like, you know at the top of the academic world So what you know like I had I don't know whatever you are, you know tenured full professor, you know at a young age and Chair and whatever all these awards whatever, but I wasn't helping anyone and especially that the issue was with women because women But where is a lot worse for women than it is from then and you know wanting to help women women's health I wasn't doing enough clinically and in my research. It wasn't getting out there and it's like in the arthritis I should say my specialty or clinic my department the majority of our patients have a new arthritis We were true That's what I was treating and seeing patients with this debilitating disease and seeing that like you know I could we could prevent it and at least help women who already have it so I could get shoe companies to listen I mean ideally I would have just asked to shoot come why don't you guys look at my research and make your shoes differently? That wasn't gonna happen and you know it just I had to learn that it took a number of years to figure that out that my Research was really threatening.
You just nailed it I mean it's not we actually had the CEO to CEOs of major footwear brands say directly to people that we know this whole natural movement thing is real We just can't do it because it would be admitting that everything we said is a lie right right right right You know when you hit them with research There's two things that happen one is they have that like you said they were definitely threatened and the other is there's a lot of true Believers in those companies and in what they're doing with patting in our sport of motion troll and when you give someone data that Interferes with their belief that contradicts what they believe Much to my shock and amazement and horror people don't go Oh, they do the exact opposite and they just you know latch on to what they believe even more strongly They will find some tiny little thing like a typo in your paper and say well see she had a typo so clear Exactly exactly and it's exactly what happened to I mean it was unbelievable people like not only ignored my research I did just credit, you know everything I was doing and that was actually more harming to OSH than anything because you know Is the industry just freaking attacked me? Yeah, and you know and it was so yeah Not only could I not get a big shoe company to do what I wanted to do but then when I do go I'm told my company. I'm now a witch basically I mean you go on the internet and just google my name and it was like oh my god She's you know She's so that was and that I had no idea was coming because I just thought geez, you know I'm gonna I was ten year professor had millions of dollars worth of laboratory equipment and Traded it all in for millions of dollars worth of factory equipment So what was the other than the negative response from being shoe companies? What were some of the surprising things that you discovered or what was what happened differently when you started the company than what you Imagine what's gonna happen?
We started the company. Oh my gosh, so I thought it'd be easier I thought that people would adopt the research or shoes quickly, but you know I'd say a lot of the problems were on my end at that point I wanted to develop this material in the soul. That's just like super springy So some of the things that can reduce those torques even out the Grand Reaction Force reduce those torques I wanted a shoe that's truly compliant and it couldn't be effluent vinyl acetate Yes, so let's pause there to do the science English translation for people So if you're talking about something that's compliant Basically think you know like small trampoline is the basic idea there It's gonna be like you said a little springy But of course as soon as you see this springy people are thinking many people are thinking about what they hear from big shoe companies about How they're using foam and it's got quote energy return and it's springy But what you're doing something very different and the athlete vinyl acetate EDA is the the compound that most companies use for the foam in the midsole of their shoe and by the way I'm gonna side my favorite back to the point of shoe companies telling us stories that were simple that aren't true My all-time favorite is when Adidas came out with their boost foam Which they demonstrated how great it was by taking like a two pounds steel ball and bouncing it off some concrete and barely bounced Then off quote, you know the other companies EDA which know other companies ever used and you know bounces like three or four times And then off the boost phone that bounces like ten times and they go isn't this great and my responses Well, no if you go to the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco Which is gonna hands-on museum they have a display then you can do where you drop a steel ball through a little plexiglass Shelf of the hole in the middle and it bounces off a steel plate and instead of bouncing ten times off the boost phone It bounces about 260 times bouncing a steel ball of steel plate and but no one understands the physics of that So they don't get why that boost from demonstration is completely meaningless ignoring the fact that you know You are not a two pound steel ball, so or in any pound steel ball So anyway, you were doing kind of develop something that actually reduced these impact forces wasn't using EVA and that led you some very interesting places So initially I was making these these carbon fiber springs that were in the shoe that was great But not I could do better, you know and so finding a material that could have the springiness But then also allow all the other attributes of the shoe to not reduce these doors, so you've got to have it's got to be completely Flat so the soil has to be completely flat heal the toe, but side to side and I don't know if you know You know we cut open shoes all the time. Yeah, we have a water jet side Because they're fun.
I got to get a bunch of old. It's just kind of in half and it's just so surprising all the junkie that you see in it And there's all these contours that run front to back but also side to side so you have the arch support You've got like the equivalent of medial posting you've got the contours that you know the toe spring all of this stuff That's just nasty so yeah, like a canoe I like to say Well, it's like if you look at a lot of money She's especially spring spikes if you cut them open laterally said longitudinally you see it's literally You know this big curve this concave thing with the idea that that'll help you roll your foot But what it does is it the bones of your foot together and makes it useless You know this is one of these things where I'm just always amazed that somebody actually I was about to say it It's not true. I was about to say that I'm amazed by some of these ideas But what it really is it's like there's not a lot of people who can think through the Implications of something that they're somebody that they have it's like the initial the initial idea is like this makes sense We're gonna have something that helps you roll, you know roll across your foot That sounds like a great idea and then people run with it because but no one ever goes wait wait Hold on what what could that be doing other than just this? I'd simple idea and people get you know They sort of get stuck on something that feels right and this is what our brains are wired to do if it feels right We're done thinking it's easy, but you know going at one layer or two or ten layers underneath is what most people don't do I think that's always been one of our truly an advantage We have is obviously it comes from Casey and what it is is she can think globally about the human body Right, and I think that's where all these things get stopped out It's exactly the example you just relay and it's one small issue But the actual the real problem is the entire concept of wellness, which is individually arrived at it's not one size fits all And you know just as you can kind of get it's like this What's the thing about you know that you make an elephant, you know with the little parts right all the three parts in and that's that's really not what we're doing We're not making an elephant.
We're trying to make a shoe that's that is healthy and long-term good for you And all these little tiny things example cushioning which feels so good when you're in a shoe store. Oh that that feel Oh, that's what I need I've got you know XYZ issue or I have no issue and it'll just help me run faster You know the whole gamut right over your new buyer, but they're buying a shoe with cushioning and cushion is awful for your joints Awful and we go back to the EVA and all the other stuff So to your point, it's that's something that's always really enabled us to be Consistent with our messaging from the beginning is we're about you. We're about your total wellness long-term wellness I guess why our customer base is so incredibly loyal because once they turn it on to it And I know you experience this zero once they realize that a lot of small victories for that person has made zero shoes successful I think there can those concerns are so loyal because they know how they feel now versus how they felt half a dozen years ago Well, the thing that really sells it I'm sure you've had this experience too is not just that experience of getting out of a padded motion All etc. Shew, but after they get used to something that allows their foot to move naturally then putting on one of those shoes again We've done surveys of people who come to our website and ask them questions and the number of them who end up using language that I You know coined 12 years ago or something is very high.
It's kind of funny But before we run I just want to do this really quickly So for people who are just listening you can't see but Casey's has been bodice sitting behind her and so as the man behind the woman What do you do? You know, are we allowed to cuss on the site? Absolutely. Yeah, so I do all the shit It's been a great team and you know Casey is obviously the thinker the designer the person that puts us How do you say Casey looks through the card she looks through the windshield and my job's a little bit more of the review mirror You know, I can share this Laina my wife and co-founder and CFO her line is Stephen gets to do the fun stuff about thinking of all the cool things That he will look and go right and I had to tell him that we don't have the money to do it My job is to build a car her job is to make sure it has wheels and gas I mean I know you do too every time I talk you have a smile on it's some is the drugs.
It's only I think we have probably had in this is now our 11th year selling motion We've probably had more arguments about the way you loaded dishwasher So we have had Laina and I have basically the same argument every three years where we just get you know, so overtired I become just sort of short tempered douche and she gets a little micromanagey and as soon as we identify that that's what's happening Then it takes about 20 minutes till you know, we get over it and then I go what do you think? I'm same time three years from now. Should we just do this again? Yeah?
I mean, I know you guys have the same thing working together has been the most literally the most satisfying thing in my life is working with my life Yeah, it's fun for me. It has since you know, I can't paint I can't sing Right, it's really businesses to us, you know, it begins with an art form to make us We love the David Goliath thing, you know, that's that's always fun to root for the underdog Which we as you know lived it as well. It's very very satisfying to bring health and wellness to people in such a This case he said think about that, you know, you're whole growing up to become a doctor to help people Then you decide oh, well, of course I'll do research because that's the way we help the people the most and again completely stopped out on that yet having the guts in Casey's instance, I mean, she's you know, the first female department chair at the University of Virginia School of Medicine Oh, this crap, you know, which is wonderful, but awesome crap. It's only for Casey, right?
But her reach and her, you know, if you know her, you know, it's about helping people Yeah, letting people have a better life and to actually now do it when you look back at all the shoes that we've sold and all these customers And how loyal they are that's profound and it really is more than those spectacular Academic papers which she wrote. Yeah, by the way, none of them have ever been refuted Well, you know, I've made this comment to a number of people that the problem with the research that backs up what those of us in the natural Movement world know to be true is that it's not presented in a way that's either a sexy enough or Confrontational enough and none of us have the PR resources where we can the way the big shoe companies do where we can present this to A sack of reporters who basically just print whatever we say because they don't question it. They assume that it's true I mean my latest example of this there's actually an article I'm quoted in about the Nike react infinity runs you which they say Reduces injury by 52 percent. It's like well, okay Technically according to that study that hasn't been published yet that react infinity run did reduce injury by over 50% compared to their best Selling motion control running shoe, but when you look at the numbers the best selling shoe the zoom structure in a 12-week study injured over 30% of the runners And the react infinity only injured 15% now if you take this into Yeah, so here's where it gets more fun So this is the other thing that we have not done well is present stories in a way that people grasp intuitively more quickly So what I say is so that first number it injured about one and three and the second number injured about one and seven This is kind of like me saying I'm gonna buy you dinner at a restaurant every night this week Which one do you rest around you want the one where you're likely to get food poisoning twice or only once?
No, and this is the best they could do now of course No one when they reprinted the Nike's press release about this no one said if that shoe is so good Why are you still selling any of the others? I'm sorry more They said the reason they think that the shoe improved reduce injury rates is they reduced some of the protective features that were in the zoom Structure and my question is why didn't you eliminate them and see what that did which is of course what you and I are basically doing So you know no one questions the whole you know fill in the blank because they just assume that whatever they're reporting is well documented It's like every couple of years whenever there's an olympics There is a news story about how athletes are wearing Nike products that they're paid to wear Nice news, you know It's this is the part that sort of amazes me and is the David and Goliath bit is how do we get the kind of attention? To show that we're the one with the slingshot and there's no there there on the other end of that rock Yeah, and you know what it is it's I've always thought of it, you know Maybe because I ran a lot of marathons that this is a marathon race On the sprinter At the end of the track there's things called turns is that what they're called? But it's having this you know that like patients I guess and researchers say my right, you know you study something But you don't you know you have to do this study you got to publish it before you get your next grant It's like it takes years Right and so I'm kind of used to that that pace and being able to grow organically And you know that we have the thousands of o-shirs we call them where I choose that are just thrilled and that's sustaining You know that keeps us going and you know I just gave up long time ago on you know the idea that you know that that we'd be an overnight sensation people like oh my gosh This is it you know and I got this is shoes have to be this way and nothing else So but it's slow and I but I see it every year It's you know what it gains a little bit more traction and it's fun It's fun to be on that movement we're able to do something that the major companies aren't able to do which is and lainis has it best Which is you know there's enough to companies in the world?
There's no reason to start another unless what you're doing changes people's lives and when our customers yours and ours talk about how it's changed Their lives they tell people in a way that you know no one who buys a pair of Brooks adrenaline or whatever says Oh my god You got to buy these shoes And so the interesting thing in the evolution of a movement like what we're doing is that there will come assuming that continues to move The way it is there will come a point where we get critical mass where there's enough awareness of what we're doing and the value of it Where everything will accelerate dramatically? Yeah, it's sort of like this is gonna be a weird analogy I invented a piece of computer software for film intelligence writers 30 years ago And I thought you know as soon as people experience this it's all over we're gonna dominate the universe And it actually took two and a half television seasons So the first season the early adopters tried it the second season a second group kind of tried it But they're anxious because in Hollywood if you slow down a production by not being able to print out a page of a script For example that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and you lose your job So it took like a year and a half two years for enough people to be able to say this really changed my life There's not people that everyone else suddenly had confidence that they were taking from the early adopters They sort of absorbed their confidence and then it took off But it's a similar thing here. It's just there I was dealing with a limited number of human beings who were writing a producing film and television now we're dealing with Everybody on the planet who wears shoes Slightly steeper hill if you will or bigger hill So what else do you want to say about just what you've been doing at OSHA that is breaking the mold or doing different things Do you want to talk about you mentioned 3D printing before do you want to talk about the fun that happened with that? Yeah, so it turns out the material that you know, let me just interrupt first of all describe what you mean when you say 3D printing Because it's not what most people think of right Right, so you know one was figuring out this magic material for the soul And then once I figured that out and at the time the only way we could make shoes with it was with injection molding in a very Specific way of injection molding which we were doing here in Charlottesville and by the way along I was doing everything like you I mean you wouldn't believe I couldn't just have somebody make this in China Which is you know where all shoes are made I had to figure it out here and basically with this sort of R&D factory Figure everything out learn out all this stuff, you know I didn't even know which way you turn a wrench and I'm doing everything It's so funny because when you say you know Bob everyone just assumes Bob's the one You know doing all the machine stuff right or something he has no idea what goes on in there no idea You know, I'm you know in there got all this like equipment that could 480 volts just fry me if I didn't know exactly what I was doing So we were injecting molding the stuff and then it dawned on me that oh my gosh We could 3D print this and but not just with like a regular 3D printer Right would have to be this like special 3D printer that didn't exist that could print directly from the material from raw pellets and Produce it and do it very cost-effectively and all of this good stuff And it is it's the configuration of the soul which for us is one piece It's there's no distinguishing feature between a midsole and in the outsole right?
It's if you would it's that engine of the shoe it gives us this unique spring So it's got like it's all one one material which has basically the insole the midsole Which is just bunch of springs and then the outside which cannot be molded you know It cannot be made with traditional manufacturing and so you got this like incredible So I in my head I had this idea right from when I was you know doing the research But there was no way I could make it and then 3D printing is like oh my gosh And then so but I couldn't 3D printed at the time This was like 2014 so I had to invent and then build 3D printers that could do this so then I shifted from my funding the National Science Foundation funded development of those 3D printers and so I was getting these grants to develop that and that was just It was pretty cool because you know now like the technology coming you know that I could do stuff that I couldn't I couldn't imagine You know I was making these carbon fiber things, you know So many years ago and this is like a billion times better So that was really fun It's really pretty and then combining that with really understanding shoe manufacturing as you know You understand so many things about how shoes are made you know like that side to side contour which is ridiculous You know going back I believe it's done for aesthetics It's not going to talk about but it's basically and especially women women have you know wider forefeet wider toe boxes Then men do we have a very narrow heel wide forefoot so you know creating that that flat shape But that's challenging in some ways for shoe manufacturing. It's easier to criticize you that have a so Had to like refigure out a lot of the manufacturing stuff So the 3D printing if you look at our 3D print and soul It's pretty neat and that you can really stitch any upper to it and knitting came along right and knitting is just tremendous You know that you can make a comfortable upper that you know go well with with a soul so just and we have an industrial knitting machine in the factory and can Program it and do all the code and stuff and it's just fun to be able to develop in tune with all this sort of developing technologies In other parts of your life you have an equal fondness for cool toys I'm not really I did a Facebook live last night and someone asked me you're tired about talking about shoes It's like no, I get a little bored talking about how big shoe companies make crappy shoes That's getting a little I wish I didn't have to do that But you know what we're all doing the basic idea of what we're doing is endlessly fascinating. Yeah, definitely So yeah, like I don't know we have a water jet saw that makes at the time We got it so the thing is just cuts just with water I know yeah people don't you can't even imagine that the first time you see water to basically for people who've never seen one It just shoots water in such a thin stream at such high pressure It just cuts through anything like butter and they are fun But yeah, so we had this to cut the carbon fiber and then it's like we have this thing and so we build all around 3d printers And the water jet saws part of that and we also have a CNC milling machine So I can operate because who else you can who knows how to maintain a water jet saw, you know So I have to I do everything I've been running the thing I maintain it, you know I had to do a major pump rebuild I was the one doing the pump rebuild because it couldn't get a technician during covid But I know every single thing about this like complex piece of machinery Yeah, but I couldn't tell you like my car when it break. I have no idea.
I don't know what why it needs oil I don't know yeah So anything outside of it has to do with making shoes and but it's okay It can be you know the machines that we use to make the machines that make the shoes That's okay as long as it's like the end the end is to make a shoe. I'm good I think about simultaneously think about the number of things that we've all learned from having to figure it out by because We're doing it differently even with us where our manufacturing is let's say It's a bit more traditional when we work with the factory It takes us at least two years to get them to understand how to make our shoes because it's so different than what they're what they're used to doing And they just can't wrap their brain around it. Right. There's just so many subtle little things that make it work or not work 99% of all the major made footwear is done is very specific exactly the same way Yeah, so it's wonderful to be able to be that 1% and have it right, right?
Yes, yeah What's fun is we started out arguing with people so we we were making our first out soles And we were introduced to an household manufacturer in Korea and they couldn't make them consistently the weights of the left and the right were different The larger ones which should have had more materials than how we'd less than the smaller ones We couldn't get the quality we needed and we said, you know, can you guess what we need? And they said no and then they told every other out so manufacturing Korea not to work with us And so that was pretty entertaining So so in the early days being that fraction of a fraction of 1% was challenging now as we've continued to grow and they see that we're growing significantly Every year they're paying attention to us But it's still to get people over the hump of doing things the way they've been doing it to now to an hour way Because most of what happens with Nate with normal shoes is there's so many layers that you can hide your mistakes Yeah, exactly. There's everything's visible. You can't like exactly.
Yep. Yep. Yep. And it's it's harder to make It's um, and you know, you're using more expensive materials and but it's funny You know, I think about you know, you look at our shoes, you know So will somebody say well, you know, they feel like they're getting their money's worth if they get, you know, like all this questioning and arch support You know, like that's why we can never sell on Amazon Or I think we get for a little bit but like, you know, the reviews are like how much arch support you It's like oh, yeah, zero so but yeah the more junk that's you know, you know, that gives value But it's very similar Bob always says it's like Whole Foods It's like, you know, you're gonna pay more for food that doesn't have those preservatives and Grown without all this stuff and it's the same thing.
Yeah, it is more expensive. It's more you to make a shoe that doesn't have all this stuff is Actually harder. Yeah, and the point you made about material costs people don't understand they go So like what does it cost more? It's like well, first of all our shoes don't cost more if issues that you're looking at the cost less It's because they've been making that exact same shoe for 20 years and just they've been able to bring the cost down and because they make So many of them and they own their own factory and you know, those materials are cheap and I go Go ultra like backpacking year that stuff costs three times what regular backpacking your costs because the ultra light materials are more high tech and more expensive The place where I'm so fascinated is in all of the sustainable quote sustainable stuff where a lot of those materials are a more expensive There's a lot of greenwashing going on There's a lot of stuff where the net carbon benefit is negative in other words It costs the amount of effort that it takes an energy that it takes to pull water bottles out of the ocean bring them somewhere recycled And turn them into something, you know, it's not better for the environment Yeah, we always go this.
Yeah, it's like yeah, it's like yeah taking taking hard plastic and putting it right into our water stream No, that's right. That's right. But to your point It's like you know more stuff equals better green even if it's not green equals better I mean all these again, it's all the I mean speaking as a guy who sells shoes It's anyway point being that brilliant but evil marketers versus brilliant but good marketers are able to convince people of things that are just patently false But make them feel good and when you have billions of dollars to spend to do that you can build a successful business I mean the thing that I'm frankly worried about is there's gonna be a certain point where what you and I are doing Starts to get close to that critical mass level where the shoe companies who already know what we're doing is legit But when they're gonna feel really threatened not just philosophically threatened I literally can't imagine what they're gonna do to try and save themselves and hurt us at the same time because no one just Go as an individual sport athlete. I realized well into my fifties I realized that I have a psychological problem that I would argue either came from or is consistent with being an individual Visual sport athlete which is the idea that the best man or best woman or best thing wins But I've learned the hard way that that's not the way it works in business Especially when you're about to let go let loose that rock in slingshot pointed right at Goliath And you know have you given any thought to what might happen if we are Successful at what we're trying to accomplish will be a better place and it will happen it's gonna happen It's gonna take a little more time.
But every year we get there right? I mean it's a little bit more and along the way. I'm just thrilled, you know, like it is a doctor Right you do the research you do as a doctor, you know, you see patients you feel good about just helping You know some people right you can't help everybody and so I feel great about our people that we do help the people that do by our shoes I feel I just feel so great about there's so much satisfaction and so I feel like I have the patience to get there I like the fight I look I say I'm not competitive. I just want to beat everybody else who's doing things that are not what I want them to do I biggest hope is that that we live to see the effect of this and I think it's possible because Things can move faster now than they ever did before thanks to the magic of the intertubes and this is a long-term play I mean the reality is this is a multi-generational play and I have you know if we live well, we've got two more generations in us And so I'm hoping that we're around to see the effect of it I don't personally care if anyone knows that I had anything to do with it That's not my thing I mean if the big shoe companies started to suddenly do what you and I are doing I would still view that as a success and in fact perhaps an even bigger one than you know us becoming the next film in the Blank so you know here's to hoping that we continue to provide well We don't hope that we're gonna continue to provide the benefits We're riding but that those benefits are profound enough for enough people that things really do hit that critical mass point and accelerate dramatically So that we get to see the effect of that for everyone on the planet as well as just you know the personal satisfaction I mean, I don't know about you, but did you see the big short?
It's basically about the guys who predicted the crash and the real estate market crash in 2008 Which Layna and I predicted in 2006, but we didn't know how to capitalize on it We were involved in real estate in 2006 and suddenly we saw the writing on the walls like this is all going to fall apart You know everyone who can breathe is getting if they can breathe They're getting a mortgage at crazy rates, you know, this isn't sustainable But we didn't know what to do about it And when I saw that movie it hit me that one of my fantasies for my whole life I hadn't really thought of it was to be that kind of right the same kind of right that those guys who said this is gonna crash were But in watching that movie they were so ahead of the curve that it nearly killed them I mean just the stress of it all over the two years between like 2007 and 2009 it nearly killed them because everyone was telling They were crazy. It wasn't working the way they thought and so, you know I think we're that kind of right and I just hope that we don't go through that kind of crazy Yeah, yeah, I feel like it was it was crazy like 2009 10 11 Well, that was when they were basically just directly coming out and saying that what we were doing was dangerous And then by 2010 is when they started selling their own version of what they called minimalist shoes So now they had a dog in that fight and they couldn't make that same argument ignoring that their their quote minimalist shoes were worse than anything else They'd ever been produced so but they couldn't argue and then by like 2013 2014 is when they realized they couldn't sell that story the minimalist story And their maximum story at the same time and they pulled out of the minimalist side So while knowing that it was actually the one thing they did that was useful I mean it's boy someday I hope someone really documents what went down in the last 11 years and beyond because there's so many stories that we all know that Are hiding in the closet somewhere that if people had any idea my line is it's too bad that shoes don't kill people the way cigarettes did because then there'd be a Congressional right right right, but it's a slow death and your fredis is not good. I know no no absolutely But again, people think that's just what happens when you get old you lose your balance because you're old You can't move as well because you're old and speaking as an aging athlete who hangs out with older athletes It's complete nonsense. That is right.
Yeah, I mean trivial slower, but you know whatever Now you're not a sprinter I was at the senior games once I hang out with so I just turned 50 or 55 Which everyone it is 50 I guess and I'm hanging out with these 60 year old guys And they're saying you know when you turn 60 man you start really slowing down and a bunch of 80 year old guys We're standing there and you guys have no idea what you're talking about just wait And so for sprinting now here's the fun part I mean you definitely there is a significant drop off in speed for sprinters as we cross 60 But what's really fun is there's an age-graded table based on how old you are well on how much slower you're gonna get essentially You can do the math in reverse to create an age-graded hundred meters in other words the older you are the less you have to run So at when I did this a couple years ago I think I was running 82 meters instead of 100 my friend who was a training partner who's just turned 70 She was running like you know 60 meters and but what's so amazing about the age-grading is it so good that if you have good runners It's a photo finish no matter who's in the race and so we have eight people from 20 to 80 And it's a photo finish not to see who won to see every single place because we're all crossing the line at the same time It's super super cool. So you know even though you're getting slower with something like that you can have just as much fun racing against You know 20 year old Olympians into blast Anything you can think that we left out or anything that you want to debunk about the reality of the foot where world or movement or Gate or anything else. I don't know. Let's talk again Yeah, we can have a whole thing on ethylene vinyl acetate and how awful is you know for the mechanic the body But you know I think when we talk about you know green EVA is gonna be the worst thing for our planet like anything with vinyl You know it doesn't be composed never will and it's the vinyl that's evil so EVA oh my gosh So if you don't want to just and of course you've learned that you know I've learned how awful too manufacturing is You know traditional I should say traditional all the traditional manufacturing is Yeah, and one of the points about that I mean it took a while until the shoe companies figured out to make their outsoles design the outsoles So they wore out at the same time EVA did That was a really again evil brilliant move yeah awful when we approached a rubber manufacturer about making our Outsoles and we said here's a characteristic we're looking forward we won't be long lasting and still be flexible You know give them all the things that we wanted they said but that's not how they make outsoles for shoes Yeah, no shit.
That's why we want to do it this way. Okay, right? Well, so tell people who want to find out more about what you're doing and what's happening at OSHA They can find out more and see what you're doing. Yeah go to OSHA's you might want to spell that for humans Oh, so it's OSH.
So shosh is the word shoe, you know reinvented upside down inside out Yep, so it's oh shoes and you know we it's educational you can dig through like all these blog posts that are I think still out on the internet That we're very you know controversial There's the first one yeah the first one I mean went out Yeah, oh my gosh and that the ones the ones that you know people just would love to attack me on you can still hunt them down Find them. Oh, there's even a subcategory and oh shoes calm. That's O E SH SH O B S calm but go to our blogs and Investive Casey is a spectacular. It's and it's all all the stuff that I was talking about I would that very early and I don't really see a need to like keep rehashing it But I do the last thing I did was in 2019 at like six videos where I'm just talking and talking about art support And you know the cradle and all that kind of stuff.
So it's all in there if you want to yeah like four minute videos Yes, I've seen I've seen all of them now that I think I remember like two or three off the top of my head They were I'm gonna say they're great because either great and be of course, you know, I agree with you So how would I say anything otherwise so and again? One of the things that I have a fantasy about is that we can Tony post and I were on a panel discussion They've earned college sports medicine the other two people in the panel one was from Brooks and one is from Adidas And I have this fantasy that we can post more of those events at various conferences with more people on our side of the equation It's super super fun because they have no evidence for anything They've ever said other than misrepresenting people like Beno Nigg and saying things like well Beno says you have a preferred movement pattern There's almost impossible to change like well Beno actually says that's only if you're wearing basically the same shoe Which all your shoes are but if you switch to something like what you and I are doing you're gay definitely changes So you misrepresented what he said and they go But there's literally no evidence behind it other than misrepresenting studies like when Nike says this you make you four percent faster And the research just showed that it made some people's view to max four percent better but had no relationship to performance But anyway, so please do go check out stuff at oshoes.com and see what Casey and Bob are up to I'm gonna Include you and that Bob, you know, why not? And yeah, we'll definitely have to have another chat and get deeper into the weeds There's a couple different neat ways to think about kind of maybe today We went a little bit backwards just to explain who we are to your audience But going forward I'm more excited this year than I've ever been about what tomorrow looks like what 2021 looks like and so on So we have some pretty fun ideas regarding that. I'm sure you do too.
So be fun to sure audience Absolutely happy to dive into that. So we'll call this part one and let's look out in the not too distant future and do part two Awesome. See you. Thank you.
Hey, thank you. Be don't go anywhere yet while I say goodbye to everyone else for everyone listening Thanks for being part of the movement movement podcast again go to www.join the movement movement calm so you can help What Casey and I and all the other people who are supporting natural movement are doing creating this movement about natural movement If you have any questions or recommendations people you think should be on the show or complaints whatever you want to share You can also drop your email move at join the movement movement calm But most importantly go out have fun and live life feet first