Episode 200: Secrets of the Barefoot Shoe Industry

If you want to know the inner secrets about what's happening in the barefoot shoe or minimal shoe world, there's no one better that I could think of to talk to than the person we're going to be talking to on today's episode of the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who know want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet versus you know those things are your foundation. And here we break down the propaganda mythology, the sometimes myths and lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or cross or whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably, efficiently, effectively and I say enjoyably trick question, of course I know I did because you know, look, if you're not having fun, you're not going to keep doing whatever it is. So make sure you're having fun.

I am Stephen Sashan, co CEO co founder of Zero Shoes, I have the teacher to prove it. And we make of course, you know, shoes that let you have the comfort and benefits, both performance and health benefits of letting you feed to us natural. We call this the movement movement, because we that includes all of you more about that in a second, that can take any effort. We're creating a movement around natural movement, letting your body do what it's made to do.

And the part that you need to do, pretty easy, if you want to head over to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There's nothing you need to do to join. There's no secret handshake. There's no money involved.

That's just where you'll find all the previous episodes, the ways you can engage with us on social media, and where all those different places where you can, you know, leave a review or a thumbs up or give us five stars or hit the bell icon on YouTube. You know, the drill, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right, that's all the intro stuff. Let's have some fun on Jensen.

Tell people who you are and what you're doing here. Hello, my name is Anya and I have a blog that is meant to be like the complete guy to everything on the barefoot shoe spectrum. So helping you just find your footing, pun definitely intended. I also have an online retail store where we stock minimal shoes primarily from overseas.

So we're trying to increase access to these brands that are from overseas here in the US. And then I also have other fun projects that I like to do on the side like designing some special shoes and hosting events and little things like that. First of all, thank you. Secondly, people who are watching this, I know you're asking the same question that I asked Anya when we got on the call, which is either a do you have the world's largest tallest door in the world?

Or have you suddenly become the smallest woman in the world? And neither of those, it turns out were true. Yeah, I'm just sitting on the floor. This.

So I don't have a proper office. I work from home. And my big, my computer is in my bedroom. This is my bathroom.

I'm sitting on the ground because it's the only place where I have like a remotely neutral background. So rather than have you stare at my bed or my dresser, I figure you can stare at the handle. Well, the other thing, there are people who created, you know, these AI generated back wraps that they're using, you know, which makes your hair look all weird when you move your head off. But nonetheless, you know, some of those with proper lighting can look pretty wacky.

You could be on the enterprise or in where else you would want to be. So, so let's go to the very beginning. Actually, no, I want to go to the very end. How long you been doing this now?

I started at the end of 2018. So it's been five years. In those five years, thinking about what's happening now versus when you started, what's the biggest change you've seen both for what you're doing? And I have some ideas about that.

But just the whole sort of, you know, barefoot footwear, I'm going to use that term loosely, the whole barefoot footwear universe. Oh, man, things have changed so much. And I started my blog at the end of 2018, but I've been exploring minimal issues for longer than that. And the reason why I started my work was because at the time, it was, it was this dearth of information online.

And the stuff that I could find was not very good for a lot of it. So there were very few sources to go to to find information about natural footwear, which just really unknown or kind of fringe. And also the options were really limited for lifestyle. So if you wanted to be able to wear natural footwear, or going to work or out in the snow, and things like that, there just weren't options.

So the reason why I started my blog was because I wanted to for myself really, because I was searching for myself, I wanted to figure out what I could find. And I did all this online research, you know, it's like compromise options that weren't necessarily marketed as barefoot shoes, but they fit into the category. And then fast forward to today, it is just a completely different world that you can wear minimal issues that have a white toe box and a flat sole for almost everything. And so many sizes and color, I mean, it's like, it's a totally different world.

And sometimes people say things like, Oh, I followed you for years, and it's so great to see what you're doing now. You know, you've got all these models in your shop. And I'm like, you realize that these didn't even exist when I started like basically everything that we sell in our retail store didn't exist five years ago. So I feel like I grew up kind of in this world, like we all kind of grew up.

Together, you know, these brands that I have been following for so long, I sort of became interested in them when they were so much smaller. Zero, you've been around since early days. So you already had a pretty good footing in the industry when I became aware of you. In fact, you were one of the only options in 2018, 2017.

But even still, the growth of your company has changed so much in five years. So it's been really rewarding to see how much the industry has changed. Are you noticing anything different about the, both the types of people that are interested in what we're doing? I mean, we, I mean, we collected we and and trying to kind of ask this, I'm going to have to do as a statement and you're going to have to figure out what the question is.

So I've noticed a dramatic change in the types of people that are coming to us and frankly, just the behavior of people in general are both who are into what we're doing and the critics of what we're doing and everyone in between. But I'm dying to hear your perspective because, you know, seeing it from the brand side is different than seeing it from your side. Yeah. So when I first was looking at Barefoot shoes, I noticed that they were primarily sports athletic, like kind of running focus after the born to run book, which sparked a really In a lot of interest in natural running.

And I came into it saying you are missing a huge opportunity, all of these people who are interested in producing barefoot shoes to market to everyday people because you only have one pair of running shoes, but we have all these other types of shoes in our closet where we actually spend more time in them. And also, it just makes more intuitive sense to walk before you run. You know, there's a lot more stress on your feet when you're running in minimal issues. So if we can't get everybody immediately into barefoot running shoes, why aren't we targeting walking shoes and lifestyle shoes.

So that for me is the biggest change in the types of people who are interested in it. Is it felt exclusive to me when I first started? I was trying to find I was trying to find myself in it. So rather, since I couldn't, I just created that space for people like me.

People who I was also struggling quite a bit with my feet. I was an injured person. I was a non active person at the time. And how can I use these tools and these footwear to sort of complement where I was at because I was not going to go run a marathon in five fingers.

That's my way. This is a bit of a tangent. You said, you know, doing it for people like me. I heard the most NPR thing I've ever heard on NPR the other day.

It was it was a woman who said, look, I'm, you know, I'm just a half black half Chinese by woman just trying to create my business for people like me. I think it's you and your sister. Well, it turned out for at least in my case that there were a lot of people who wanted this and that it was not as niche as I thought. No, no.

In fact, this is the biggest thing that I think we're all still trying to overcome. And I don't know. I don't know what it's going to take for it to happen. But people still think this is really, really nitchy in a number of ways.

Some people think that it's just about running still. Some people think that we just make sandals still, even though that's been not true for 10 years. And and the I'm trying to think there's one other part of it. I mean, there's a big deal industry analyst company.

That just came out the whole thing about barefoot shoes. And they said the entire industry is only going to be generating $650 million in sales by 2026, which is absurd. But the way we're thinking, it's like, we're not a quote barefoot shoe company. We're a company that does natural comfort, performance and health by basing what we do on natural principles.

And that applies to people who know nothing about barefoot running. They're not, you know, whatever it is. But you also brought up the whole idea of walking first, which is a really interesting one. It was an argument that I had with our team, our development team where they said, we need to make a walking shoe.

I went every shoe we make as a walking shoe. What you're talking about a walking shoes is a category. But what everybody in that category thinks they need is a lot of even more padding than in a running shoe, even more motion control than in running shoe, even more art support than in typical running shoe. It's like, that's you can't, you can't just say this is a walking shoe because it won't be any different than anything else that we already have.

And of course, the flip side, you know, our quote casual shoes, there's a, I don't know, I don't know if I'm allowed to mention it. So I want to mention his name. Very, very, very, very, very, very good NBA basketball player. That's what some people don't know NBA is.

So I figured I'd say we're done. So we gave him one of our, actually, we didn't give it to him. He bought one of our casual shoes. He wears it for everything other than playing when he warms up, when he's in the gym, when I mean for everything.

And this is what we can't get people to understand outside of the industry that no, no, no, you're still locked on the 28, 28, 29, early 2010 when it was all just a bunch of crazy runners and a pair of five fingers or in our sandals whole different world now and they don't get that. Yeah, it is a whole different world. And I really have always tried to just speak to the people who wanted to hear. So I don't, I kind of run in different circles then.

Like I'm not really in butting up against these people who are trying to define the game. They're trying to define our movement but aren't a part of it. From inside what I see is that many, many people are just looking for comfort and they are looking for shoes that fit them because so many people are like, I can't find shoes. And then they find my blog and they're like, Oh my gosh, I didn't even do shoes like this existed.

And they're not necessarily, Oh, I want to be able to pronate and in my shoes. You know, they're not thinking about these technical terms. They're not thinking about medical stuff or even really longevity. They just want to be comfortable.

And they're thinking more like, or maybe it's immediate. Like I have a foot problem now. I just can't find anything I can wear that's comfortable. And so people just come to me.

They're just there waiting because the shoe industry is so messed up and shoes are so problematic for so many people. Well, it's an interesting point that, well, there were a couple you made and I had two thoughts about them. I had one of them fell out. So let me see if I can start on the second one to come back to the first.

I'm curious what you have. I want to ask this. One of the things that I bump into is a bunch of mythology. Let me just say again, I have to start with a statement before I get to the question because I haven't bought some questions in advance.

So, you know, there's a bunch of mythology that has grown up around this. Things like the magic cadence in the number of steps from minute is has to be 180 steps from minute. And matter of who you are, matter of how fast you're running, whatever it is, just 180 is a magic number. Not true.

Or, you know, there's various things like that. But some of the things that are going on in terms of me, I know what it was. Comfort is the number one thing people are always looking for when it comes to footwear. The problem is that they have now been taught that what comfort means is a bunch of padding or sport and motion at all that don't actually deliver their goods.

And one of my ways that I point that out is if that worked, why is there a multi-billion dollar industry, frankly an industry that's not even a fraction of the total foot industry, a significant portion of the size of the foot industry for making products to make those things more comfortable about its insults, you know, whatever it is, all these different things. Why is Dr. Schulls in business, if you guys, big shoe companies are so smart about making things that are comfortable for people, clearly, you know, that's a problem. But it's also, I think in the search for comfort and fit, the other thing you brought up.

I'm seeing things that I refer to as mythological in that regard as well. And before I tell you what I see about that, I'm curious what you see about how people are trying to in the internet age in particular find things that are comfortable and will fit that either may or may not be a smart path to take to answer that question for themselves. Do you know where I'm going? I actually know.

Okay. I'll give you one. It's become a bit of a meme in a way that the way to tell if a shoe is going to fit is by taking out the insult and stepping on it. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That was an interesting one. Because for one, lots of shoes don't have insults and a lot of shoes use the same insult for different sizes of shoes. So then it's then you're asked and I have some questions about that because if one insult fits into multiple sizes and it's not reliably indicating how your foot is getting inside them.

Well, there's another point. The insult has to fit inside the shoe. So depending on the design of the shoe, it is by definition more narrow in a different shape than the shoe. And since fit is a three dimensional thing, it's about the volume of the foot, the volume of the shoe, the materials, the construction, it's just not telling you what you think what people think it is.

And yet it's such an easy heuristic, such an easy thing to imagine is giving you the information you want that it's spread like wildfire and could be less valuable. No, I've always resisted reducing it down to that. I understand why people like to have these easy tools, but and people do always want me to give them easy answers to like, okay, does this is going to fit my foot type? Is this going to do this for me?

And I feel like my my MO has been to let me give you as much practical information as I can and I can answer some of these specific questions for you. Let's like make information available. But at the end of the day, fit is highly personal. Like you said, it's three.

It's preference and it also is a 3D phenomenon. You know, you're not just lengthened with you've got the way that the shoe attaches to the upper attaches to the outsole and whether it's laced and whether all these different things, whether it's a boot or a low top is all going to affect how it fits. So you really kind of have to try it to find out and that width charts are really problematic. Useless.

I think the average person doesn't know how to use a size chart correctly. Oh, no, wait, I'm going to interrupt and tell you something even worse. I'm not trying to be a douche when I say this. But people always ask me, why don't you just give me, especially for length?

They want you to just tell me the inside length of the shoe. As well. Two things. One, if I'm being, if I'm not being, if it's not the end of the day when I'm tired, what I will say is, well, we've tested a number of different ways of giving you our recommendation for how to find the right size.

And what we're currently using is the one that has worked the best for everybody. But what I say if I'm less politically correct and if I'm exhausted, I go, you would not be, you would be amazed at the number of people who don't know how to use a goddamn ruler. Well, the ruler, the pencil, the time of day you measure, like how you measure whether you trace or whether we call the wall method where you don't go tracing, but you put your foot up against the wall. And even just doing the same thing multiple times, you can get different measurements.

And so I, from, in my experience, the best thing that I can distill for customers or for potential customers or even if they're just readers on my blog is, okay, I've literally tried thousands of barefoot shoes. So let me tell you how I'm feeling in the shoe compared to in the, in my experience. So it's not specific. I'm not saying like, here's the numbers.

It's like, okay, these fit generally true to size, but they are high over the midfoot or, you know, narrow in the heel, like things like that where it's like more like I'm just going to just do it. And it's like more like I'm just going to describe it in a narrative way, like experiences in the shoe. And that has been way more effective. People get so lost in the numbers.

Yeah. To your point, everybody, we're humans. We want a simple solution. We want something to pay by numbers.

We want, you know, step by step, but it just doesn't work that way. I mean, I try to remind people, you know, you go into a shoe store and you get five shoes and the same size and they fit completely differently, right? They go, yeah, I go, well, why are you expecting it to, you know, how could that be reduced to a set of numbers? And I'm being glib when I say that because frankly, I've got a patent pending on a way to solve this problem, but that's a whole other story so that I can't get into for legal reasons.

But what you just said also made me think of another thing. When I, again, I have to start with a statement, unfortunately, when I think of the number of things that I now know with 14 years in this business, it's kind of shocking, frankly. And there's certain things that I know from being inside the footwear world that normal human beings don't know. Some of which I can communicate and they understand many of them are again too complicated.

What are some of the things that you're aware of now or know now that you never imagined in a million years to be part of, you know, filling up space in your brain? And if you have anywhere, you go, yeah, I just don't know how to communicate this. I'd love to hear it. There's a lot of things.

And it's funny because when I first started blogging, I was way more final in my assessments of things, you know, like I would try something and I'm like, okay, this shoe is like this. And then how I'm five years in and also have a shoe store. So I have a lot of, and so I'm also weighing on, I'm pulling from my customer's experiences too. And I just can't, I'm not, I can't put the period on the end of statements as easily as I used to because I realized how open-ended things are.

So one thing is that often it's not uncommon for a shoe to fit differently in the small size of the spectrum than in the large size of the spectrum. So something might be more true to size in my size, but then my husband, I were a 37 or a seven, women seven, and my husband was a men's 13 or a 47, EU 47. So now we both try them because sometimes he has a totally different experience, like it doesn't scale proportionally. And so they fit slimmer in his size and they're quite wide in my size.

So I've seen some of that where there's some, some manufacturing inconsistencies. And I don't know if that's because brands don't want it to look so wide in that. I can actually, I can answer that one for you because it's a statistical thing statistically as for men, I'll speak for men in particular, as men's foot sizes increase in length, they don't increase in width proportionally. So they increase more in length than they do in width statistically.

Of course, everything's on a bell curve, some kind of curve, not initially a perfect doctor, of course. But in a similar vein, the reason most shoe companies don't make half sizes over 12, they go from 12 to 13 to 14, 15, and usually they stop at 13 is because, again, it's a statistical thing. The difference in half size is a little less than 4 millimeters. So if your foot is already really large, if your size is 13, the difference between a 13 and a 14 is percentage wise, very small.

So there's just, and also the number of people who are buying the 14, 15, et cetera is so small that to do this half size makes no sense for those brands. But part of it is just the stance of it. Similarly, like just all, there are people who often say to me, why don't you just do things and call them narrow versus why instead of men versus women? They go because it's not that simple.

Because again, statistically, women's feet have a different shape than men's feet. And where people don't like to go because it sounds racist, but it's not, is European feet statistically, different shape than American feet, Asian feet statistically, different feet than European. I mean, you can literally, there are some larger companies who have completely different shapes of their shoes for Asia, for Africa, for South America, for Europe, for America, which, from my perspective, is really cool. It's also a logistical nightmare that I hope I never have to be the one thinking about.

If we get to be that big, that'd be really great. At that point, I will not be the one making those decisions. But again, we're all a little myopic. And so, so some of this is literally just based on SaaS.

But there's another weird one. The sample size, when people are developing shoes, you're lucky. Women's size seven is a sample size. Men's size nine is a sample size.

It used to be because those were the median size for men and women. They're not anymore. But they still use nine seven because when they are doing the grading for how to change the design going smaller from women seven going bigger from women seven and again, smaller and bigger from women nine, because that was the mill, you could do it that way. It doesn't work that way anymore.

So it's, and I think in our world, the median size is different than quote the rest of the world. I don't know why I put quote right now. But like our average size, I think 10 and a half, not the same for a company that is not in the barefoot space. Yeah, that is true.

But, and also, we have noticed that the European companies that we work with, they often stop at a 46 and Americans do, we have a lot more people, it seems just anecdotally from our experience who are into 47 and 48. And they just don't have customers who are buying shoes in that size in Central Europe. So how that alone, I mean, we've come up against that and women's feet in the US tend to be bigger too. It seems like, or maybe it's barefoot shoe buyers.

Yeah, I don't know which. I'm not sure which it is. We haven't been able to do that diagnostic and get that data. But it's another thing where everyone thinks that they're normal.

That's the one that I found. It's like, you know, why doesn't your shoe fit me? It's like, have you ever found a shoe that fit you? No.

Well, we're doing that. That's another thing that I've had to, when I first started, it was easy for me to sort of pass judgment on how other brands did things because of the fact that they were doing that. You guys need to expand your size range, or you need to do this, then you can serve more people. You should have a wide option.

And then you realize that the economics of it, the number of people who are buying a size women's five or a men's 50, that these are very small categories of people and then the cost that it occurs to produce them or having a narrow and a wide. So we carry as many shoes as we can in these peripheral sizes and also in wide, but we have to like, man it. We have to like mitigate our costs with them because we know that there's a good chance that they will never move. So we want to have it because we want to serve people and given our size and the fact that we are wholesale, we're not necessarily producing these.

So we're not fronting the cost of like the last and all the molds of these sizes. So whenever we can, we want to like have that as an option. But the reality is that it costs us to be able to provide that. And then people ask for things and then they're there.

Or there's not very many people. Yeah. No, no. What's so funny is you're we say the exact same thing.

And we had to do the math. I mean, it took us till. So we've been a business just 14 years or 14th anniversary coming up in a few weeks. And I don't know when this is airing, but anyway, and in November, and we finally got tools in place within the last year to be able to analyze what our sales are for every style, every size, every color.

And I'm like you, I want to be able to give everybody what they want. But we ordered X number of pairs of women's five men's 15 and we still have them. And then we get some money. Because there's four of you guys.

So, and again, it cost money to make them the cost money to store them the cost money to sit on them and so it's so, you know, so that's again one of those things that I imagine you never in a million years thought you would have to learn, understand and deal with is just that level of inventory management. And all these things about the reality of where biz that now I imagine keep you up at night sometimes. Another thing that is really interesting to me is that the way that shoes get produced, especially if they're produced in a factory and brands don't just live at the factory where their shoes are produced. So sometimes they come and there's some details that get lost along the way.

And so then the final product comes and you're like, that's a little different than what we talked about. And there's aspects of it that might not even be known to the brand owner. And so you do the best you can, but that also results in slight fit differences. So the ability to be completely meticulous and have complete continuity is really not possible.

You just do the best you can to streamline things and then things inevitably happen. And you know, like the understand, I feel like everybody could kind of be a little more understanding about the fact that shoes are difficult to make exactly right. Well, the idea that they could be is a fairy tale because that's just not how human minds were. We wish they were.

I mean, it's the thing that I say often, it's like, so human beings are involved. And human beings don't do things perfectly every time. And in fact, like, let's say we have a men's not in half in one particular color that got weird and somebody asked for another one. If I haven't sold another men's not in half in that particular color right away, there's a high probability that the next shoe was made by the same guy who messed up the first shoe.

And yeah, you know, when I explain things like that, people sometimes say, there's being defenses like, no, I'm trying to explain how this industry works. This is a crazy town, where if we have some issue and I'll say this and this is going to sound totally defensive. And I'm okay with it if it does. People will give people will not care or they will write it off if they buy a shoe from a multibillion dollar company that has some manufacturing defect.

But if we have it, they assume that everything we've ever done is problematic and that we're trying to rip them off. And it's like, but I can just show you the same, but this problem you're showing on our shoe, it happens to these big companies too. Here's the videos, here's the pictures. You know, it's not the same.

No, no, it's exactly the same. So, you know, it's so back to the, you know, wish they could understand or hope they could understand. I would love that, but I don't know, harbor that what I think it was a fantasy now. It's just, it's just the way, which actually brings me to another question.

This one I can do is a question. I don't know how active you are on social media. But what have you noticed about the way people engage with all of us on social media? Not just about, you know, kind of across the board, people who are anti people who are pro, people who are curious, people who are having some issue.

I mean, what do you notice about the way social media has impacted this whole sphere of everything? It does seem like social media has played a big part in it. Social media is always polarizing, right? And so it's hard to find people who are nuanced on there.

And so sometimes I get a little frustrated about that with the discussion on minimal issues is it's like, it's either going to solve all your problems or it's going to be the cause of all your problems. And there's, there's just this very fertile middle ground that people are not really occupying very well yet. And so, even though I'm glad that there's a lot more discussion about it, which it was not there when I first joined. Yeah.

No, you can, you can end up a low point of certifying effect. There were hardly any accounts talking about barefoot shoes. And now it's very trendy. You got all these like bio hackers and wellness people who are jumping on this as a kind of a general life optimization, but it does feel kind of like a trend.

And so I worry sometimes about the nuance of the fact that you can find a way to make this work for you and you don't have to be kind of like really zealous about it that you can adopt it. Because here's the thing, because people do have a real positive experience, which happens way, way, way more often than not. That's what people do get overzealous. Well, I don't even know.

But that's what humans do. Like out of context, I used to do a lot of long term meditation courses, you know, 10 days sitting under a bunch of 16 hours a day kind of thing, and or 20 days or long time sitting under a button, and that was super glib for die hard meditators, huge apologies. But bottom line, the number times where I would meet someone who just came back from doing their first long course and go, Oh my God, this changed my life. I go, hey, do me a favor, shut up for two weeks.

Don't tell anyone for two weeks. Like what? Well, because you're going to be sounding really obnoxious for the next two weeks. And in two weeks, a lot of what you're feeling now will have faded, frankly.

So you know, you want to see where it really lands, rather than where you're in the throes of your love story. Yes. And I love when I hear people who are so excited, saying I, you know, this changed my life. And like, I'm so I'm so happy about what you're doing and like what is available now.

And I absolutely love that. But I also feel like you where come back to me in five years, and for 10 years. And let's see where have we landed and how like what nuance have we gathered that we didn't have at the beginning. And I myself, at the beginning, I was like, okay, I am like all in on these super thin souls.

And I live in Iowa and the winter came and I was miserable. And I also was in a lot of pain because I have really flat feet and I'm hypermobile. So I have some fat tissue, fat on the bottom of my foot. It kind of moves around.

So sometimes I will actually like it will move away from my heel. Oh, wow. The heel bone will be really exposed and it can be pretty painful. So I'm just thinking, well, no, it's thin, flexible souls.

That's like, I got to do it. And now I'm like, okay, if you're in pain is something that you're doing is causing you a lot of pain, then let's dial it back. Let's rethink about it. Let's like think of it as a spectrum of what can I take that is going to be useful to me?

And what can I let go? And it's not an all or nothing. And it's not, you know, it's not a sin to maybe put in a tiny little support or like a little bit of cushion or immobilize the foot a little bit so it can heal because it's been working too hard, things like that that I have more space for now. Well, you're highlighting again, another human phenomenon that is particularly prevalent in the West where we have been trained for the last 50 years from brilliant and evil marketers that ate whatever the product is is the instant solution for whatever your problem is.

And I say to people, things like if you haven't made the gym for a few years and you go back and try and do the work out you did when you were 20, what's going to happen? And they're like, oh, well, it's going to be hard. Like, well, yeah, so why would you expect something different? Now granted, some people have an instantaneous thing goes for everything.

It's totally fine. But yeah, being again, being circumspect, being a little, you know, not I don't want to say do your research because that's been tainted. It's almost like you live your life and what life is going to take you. Yeah, exactly.

Well, you know, and this is this is actually a line that we use often and I think laying it was the first person I said, it's just our shoes are just a coach. They're telling you what you need to pay attention to next and you need to figure out what to do with that information. But the idea that you will become your own best coach is more valuable than anyone telling you anything because you'll know how to assess that information based on your own experience. And I think that's a good one.

And injuries happen, you know, you can do everything that you need to your feet like you can totally take care of them. And you will probably still be injured at some point in your life. I'm going to do the butt on that one because this is one of those things that really annoys me. There's nothing I like less than bad thinking and bad logic.

And one of my best friends calls me 20 something years ago and says, you know what your biggest problem is? I want this to be good. He said, you like to tell people when they're logically inconsistent or in some, you know, cognitive bias or have some factual error or basically if they're wrong about something because you like hearing it because it makes you think about what you were just saying and you'll reconsider it. And so it's valuable for you.

But I'm here to let you know that when you do that to people, they think you're a total asshole. And I said, holy crap, you just explained my whole life to me and I never figured that out before. That's exactly what you're doing right now. So there's things like people say, well, if you switch your barefoot, you're going to get injured.

I go, you may, but the question is not whether you get injured. There's two questions. One is, is whatever the injury you get, more or less valuable than whatever you get from the other time that you're doing this natural movement thing, but more importantly, compare the injury rate and the types of injuries when you're doing this to people in regular shoes. And no one has done that level of study yet, although I can tell you the closest thing to it, I don't know if you've heard me say this one, but I was saying a lot.

So I'm going to say it again on the Nike website and I can point you to the link. They finally published a portion of the abstract of a study that they designed and they paid for comparing two of their shoes. And I'm not going to get into all the details. I'll just say that one of the shoes in a 12 week study that they developed injured over 30% of the people wearing it and the better shoe only injured only in putting an air close 14 and a half percent.

Now they didn't, they defined an injury as anything that kept you from running for at least three training sessions in a row. So probably at least a week. But again, they didn't publish all the data. So it could have been that some people got knocked out on day one and never came back.

So that's one of the reasons they didn't publish all the data. But the kicker is this. If, and now injury rates don't stay consistent over time. So over time they tend to raise.

So that 30% and 14 and a half percent kind of most likely gets to what we've been all saying somewhat anecdotally, but also somewhat backed by research that on average 50% of runners and 80% of marathons get injured every year. Well, here's the kick. Let's just go back to the 14 and a half percent, 30%. If we injured that percentage of people from the time they got into our shoes over the next 12 weeks, we just shut down and I'd be in jail.

Yeah. So it's something's different. And we also know we don't even like taking away shoes. We know that having big toe strength and intrinsic foot strength and calf strength, reduced injury, prevent injury, prevent balls and seniors or prevent, I should say, reduce the risk of, you know, that they help with all kinds of life, overall well-being function metrics.

So to me, that's enough. Like I don't question what I do. I just always feel bad when people come to me and say, I tried to do everything right. But now I'm having foot pain.

And it's like, well, you know, sometimes foot pain happens. And it might not be the shoes, like maybe it's other things. Well, I'll say two things about that. I responded to someone on social media today who said they switched our shoes and they had plantar fasciitis like flare up or I don't know if it's start or flare it up.

And I could tell from a couple of comments something which I didn't say explicitly, only because it was too early on. Too many things to do, which was that, well, let me back up. When I was in the lab with Dr. Bill Sands, who used to be the head of biomechanics and engineering for the US Olympic Committee, what I saw in his lab is that if people would come in with every shoe that they wore and he put them on a big treadmill, film them at like 500 frames a second from the side of the back to look at their gate.

And what we saw, what he showed me, is that from almost everybody, when they put on a different shoe, their gate changes. And here's the kick. As the shoe changes, if it's a shoe with a big thick midsole, as the midsole changes, their gate changes can menstruate with that in some way. Here's the kicker.

They never noticed. They put on different shoes and they didn't notice that their gate had changed. They couldn't feel it. And so that's thing number one.

So thing number two, with this person about plantar fasciitis, I could tell from the comments, she didn't have plantar fasciitis. She had tight calves. And plantar fasciitis is perhaps the most common injury among runners and just humans, it seems humans wearing shoes. But it's also from my experience, most misdiagnosed.

The number of times where I've seen someone who said they had plantar fasciitis and I could tell it was just tight calves and I prove it to them, just massage the crap out of that or let me do it. And then see if that's any better after five minutes. And they go, hold the crap. It's like 90% better on it.

You're on a plantar fasciitis. You have tight calves. It's pulling on the plantar fasciitis. Sorry, the plantar fasciitis.

And so again, there's these subtle things. And this goes back into the mythology component to it. So it's really wild. And there's another thing related to this.

If somebody buys a shoe from, I'm going to name a company already named Nike. So now I'll say under a rumor, and they get it and it feels weird. In some way, they're much more likely to go back over to Target and buy something to try to fix it, then to get online and complain that it doesn't work and that shoes suck. But in our world, someone feels like a little something and they're off it, not everyone, of course.

But the first move for a lot of people, in part because the social media algorithms give you bonus points for complaining and it's there. But it seems that they're much more likely to just say, hey, it doesn't work than some other conclusion or my favorite thing ever is my left foot feels wearing your shoe and shoes and my left foot is having a problem. Like a cool, how's your right foot? Like what?

I mean, they literally never even thought of it that way. It's like, I say, how's your right foot? Seems okay. I say, cool, pay attention to your right foot the next time you go for a walk and see what happens.

And invariably, they come back and go, huh, my left foot got better somehow. There's a whole bodywork style that's based on that idea. Pay attention to the good side to bad side, you know, the quote, bad side will figure it out. Interesting.

I could use some of that. I got good and bad sides. Everybody does. I mean, look, the joke is part of my origin story.

If I wasn't the weird kind of person who after my first barefoot run got a big blister on my left foot, if I wasn't weird enough to think, huh, how come my right foot's fine? This would have never happened. If I had the normal thought of like, hey, I got a blister, this is clear with bullshit, none of this would have happened. And I must confess something and I hope it doesn't sound like a humble brag.

It was really more of a comical realization in my brain. You know, the number of people looking for barefoot shoes now, according to Google Trends data, is higher than it's ever been. And I was saying this for a couple months, so I went, oh, right. I've been helping make that happen.

Well, I feel like I played a small part in that too. Absolutely. That's why I brought it up. No, I mean, there's, you know, there are a select number of people who are getting the majority who are really driving that, and you're one of them.

It's one of the reasons we're having this conversation and one of the reasons I adore you. So one of the many, which brings me to another thing, not really, but it made me have another thought. At what point did you decide to take the blog and say, you know, I think I need to get into the actual selling of shoes biz and wait, hold on. For people who didn't see the look of how would you describe the look that just washed across your face when I say it.

I have a very good eye roll. Your whole face eye roll is what it was. Yeah, that was brilliant. So actually, the truth is, is that I never wanted to sell shoes.

I love blogging. I love being able to be more neutral player and to be able to talk about all the options. So the shop actually runs separately, but together kind of. So it's like, I treat it as a different thing.

And it was my husband, Justin, who really wanted to start the shop. And I resisted for a while. And finally, we had an agreement that as long as I was not going to be taken away from the blog, then I would throw my name on behind the shop. And I mean, I'm pretty heavily involved.

Like I choose what we carry. I help the guy run the marketing and all kinds of stuff. But I am very adamant that the blog is my job. And that way I can write reviews on zero shoes and I can do I can write about brand new startup companies that have no marketing budget that might not be seen.

And I think they're doing great work. And I want to give them a space. We're never going to carry them. But I still feel like I'm able to amplify.

Yeah, I want people to know. So or researching work boot stuff that it's more about finding compromise options that are going to be the best given the limitations of the industry. So I love doing that. I love breaking down these barriers and kind of covering all of it in a white tent.

So that is like where where I live. Yeah, so back to the eye roll. Also, it's it's it's so much work to run a shop. Like, I was like just thinking I was telling my husband all the reasons why I'm like, okay, well, then we have to get them in every size, you know that right?

And then we have to figure out what how many of each size and then we have to figure out what colors and it's like, where are they all going to go? I'm coming up with all these excuses for why not to and he just really wanted to give it a try because he had been sort of following along and kind of sensing that there was a space for this in the US. And so we it was in 2020. So it was about two, two years after I started the blog where he gave it a go built the website.

I was like, okay, here's what you need to carry because these are the ones that are going to do the best here. And and it really grew pretty fast. So it's been three years now and we started out in our basement and he had another full time job. And so he would we would come home.

He come home, I'd been blogging and, you know, doing that kind of stuff all day. And then we would pack orders, process returns, answer customer service emails at like nine o'clock every night after the kids have gone to bed. Then we moved from the garage, sorry, we moved from the basement into the garage and then we would be doing it in the garage. And then we moved to a storage unit where we had to like rig up lights and stuff, you know, like, and bring in like electricity to a generator to print labels.

And then we moved to a warehouse and then we moved to a bigger warehouse in August. So it has been nonstop. And it's kind of one of these things where we ask ourselves like almost every month what the hell we're doing and why we keep doing this to ourselves. But both of us are too ambitious.

And we just keep seeing we keep seeing things like I hear so much and where we know what's going on. You know, we have all of our customer feedback. I have all the blog feedback. I got this Facebook community group that is like a very thriving message board where I can see what people are talking about.

And I just have a good sense of what people want next. Like what's the next step? And so then I just can't help it. I got into it.

You were obviously preaching the choir look at about two and a half years in I said to Laina wouldn't it be nice to have a little internet business to a couple hours a day, you know, make enough money that we could live off that. She goes that's what we have. Yeah, can't stay that way though. And I just walked in.

I just walked through the 15,000 square foot office that we're moving into next week. And I nearly started crying. I mean, it's so not what we ever imagined. And it's so amazing.

And and you know, couldn't have been predicted in any possible way. But yes, the number of times where I've called one of my best friends on a Friday evening at seven o'clock when I'm just forcing myself to go home and I go, you know, by a shoe company for $9.38 because no one. Exactly. You know, and we have the added bonus of the production side.

So just add that challenge. It's really, this is, I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say I literally can't think of more difficult industry for myriad reasons. It's, you know, from the design development production, the time that it takes to do things, the macroeconomic situations that you have no control over. The fact what you're doing is like, it's, and we were warned.

There's people that we met very early on who told us, you know, we would do this with you because we believe in you and what you're doing. But we've been in footwear for 35 years. And so we're not stupid enough to start a shoe company. And we said, well, we're hyperoptimistic naive.

That's the way things get done. So there you go. Yeah. I was warned about starting a retail store too.

I mean, I'm so glad that we mostly don't deal with production. I do have some shoes that I produced on a small scale. It's inevitable. I can't help it.

See them. I can't. I know. You know, there's two things.

One, you see, you see a whole, you see an opportunity that needs to be addressed. You know, someone's got to do it. I mean, my joke is, I love it when I have an idea. And so, and then someone else does it.

It's like, Oh, thank God, I don't have to go into that business. So, and it's frankly, it's one of the most frustrating things for me in our business is that it's just not possible to do everything you want as fast as you want to do it. Oh, but that's not just our business, right? That's like, that is life.

It's true. It's true for any business, especially any rapidly growing business. But this is one that I think there's just a different flavor to it because you know what it takes. It's not like it's re-inventing something.

You're just adding on something, but you can't do it. Like in the early days, that was the joke. Laina would say, it's your job to think about the cool stuff to do. And it's my job to tell you we don't have the money for it.

And that hasn't changed. Even though it's now my CFO telling me that instead of Laina telling me that. I mean, that's the balancing act. But again, it's because part of it is also, and I know you hear this, is people asking for it.

And in people's minds, well, I can imagine you doing it. So it must be easy to do. And so there's that, you know, think about human beings as well, if we can think of it, even if we haven't thought of it very clearly, we imagine that it's as easy to do as it was to think of it. And that's just not the way this thing works.

I don't know what you do before this. What were you doing for income? So I went to school to be an elementary school teacher. And I did that for just a few years.

And then when my oldest son was born, he's 10, I didn't want to go back. We also moved states and I didn't want to get a new class. How did you have a 10 year old baby? That's amazing.

That's a good idea. I understand the logic of that sense. 10 years ago, I had a big number. So I don't like sitting still.

So I just have an active mind. So we started a home business. My husband was kind of working a traditional nine to five job. And I did some, you know, snattered of smatterings of things.

I was tutoring, keeping up the teaching a little bit. And then we started an audio visual rental company. So we rented. That's what it does.

Yeah. That's honestly, it was a great little business. And there is a holder of anybody wants a good business idea because we stopped doing it, but having projectors and screens for like birthday parties, movie, you know, showing at the park. And we would run it out of our home.

So it's very little overhead. And I could do it with the kids at home. So we did that for a long time. I mostly did that, but I don't know, six.

I did it concurrently with the blog for a while. So I was blogging for like 20 hours a week. And at the beginning, I wasn't making anything because I just had this well of like, okay, I just have so much to say. Didn't know why, but I just wanted to get it all out there.

And then I was doing this other thing. And that was the only thing that was making money. And then after a while, Justin, again, who he's the one who's prodded me more in the making it official side, like, you know, getting me to tighten up a little bit. And he was like, you know, if you just learned basic SEO, and you applied for affiliate programs, then you probably could make money off of what you're already wanting to write and talk about.

So I did. And it made a huge difference. And so then by 2020, I we sold the other business and I've just been full time ever since. The reason the reason I asked to be to be just for fun saying is that my whole life, everything I ever did was a simply transactional thing.

I do something you hand me money and it's done as a performer, mostly. And or I did some coaching kind of therapy things as well. But the same idea is like, I do a thing. There's an exchange of resources and that's the end of it.

To now have to be thinking 18 to 24 months in advance and have things that we're paying for now that we won't see the results of for years makes that head explode. That is a challenge. And we have that less compound, like we have to have less of a degree, but we're we've already put in all of our orders for spring. I mean, you did that like a year ago, but we're doing that, we know in fall comes and we're barely getting fall inventory and we have to decide what we're going to carry next year.

And I don't I don't love that. But it's the way it works. It's the way it works. But as long as I get my healthy dose of in the my blogging world where I I am in complete control, I decide exactly what I do with my time.

Then that kind of evens me out a little bit. So since it's just you and me, Justin's not on the call. Do you work for him or see work for you? He works for you.

Totally works for you. You know, people ask me, they say, what's it like working with your wife? I go, I love being part of a woman owned business, especially that woman. So I while we are definitely partners in every possible way, I love the thing that I work for her.

He grounds me. He grounds everything. But it's definitely me who's sort of guiding it. But it really I mean, it's like 50 50.

There's just no it's hard to find it because I can't like I need someone to make sure that the logistics logistical things happen and like these technical things happen. And I can't just live in my dream world of all the things that we want to do all the time. So it's yeah, it's it's a good it's a good team. And he also likes to be behind the scenes too.

No, I think from my perspective, I wonder I imagine this is probably true for you. It literally couldn't happen if it was if it weren't Lena and me because there's no way I could hire someone to do what she does. We put up with all just the trials and tribulations of all this. I mean, first of all, because she's just really good at what she does.

But all and so just finding someone like that would be next to impossible. But again, adding on to that, just what it's taken for 14 years, who put up with that? No, it's it's totally true. When you're a founder, when it's your baby, when you do things for it that nobody else is willing to do it.

Yeah. It's never it's never it's always always there. So we're off. What do you mean off?

Are you referring to what's that word people use sometimes? The cadent? I could back it to you. What the hell is that one?

Yeah, Mr. me. So I'm going to ask you to do something that's completely impossible to do. But what the hell?

What do you see as the future for you and what you're doing and or this whole space and what we're all doing? Well, I do see it growing. I see it continuing to grow with more people interested. I foresee that I will continue to write because that's what I love to do.

I will probably write a book one day. Who knows? But that's I wanted to write a book since I was a kid. So that's on my bucket list.

I'm going to do it. We are this wait. Hold on. This is going to sound completely crazy and I'm pulling it out of my butt.

But this is a conversation that Laina and I as well. Laina is an award-winning writer. And that was her thing. And of course, we've lived part of this story.

You've lived part of the story. I don't know if there's any there there for the two of you doing something together, whether it's a book or anything else. But I imagine I mean, knowing both of you as I do one more than the other, my wife being one, I know much more. I have a sneaky suspicion you get a kick out of having that conversation.

Sure. You know, I've never met Laina actually. Oh, God. We'll have to do something about that.

But anyway, you were saying. So that's somewhere in there. And I do plan on designing more shoes. I got I guess now that I've made some things happen, it kind of like goes to your head a little bit.

And you're like, well, now I can just do everything that I want. Like maybe it will take a lot of work. But I'm like, if I want to do it, then I'm just going to put it on there and I will get to it. So I want to design some more shoes.

And I we plan on doing more events. So that's an exciting thing. Got to figure out how that's going to work though, because I might need a clone for that. People ask me what's next for your business.

Like, well, I need a clone and a clone of my assistant and assistant for my clone. I do have an amazing assistant, but she can only put in part-time hours. And I'm like, really need her cloned. Yeah.

Yeah. It helps me with keeping track of a lot of moving parts. Here's the problem with cloning. A friend of mine says, we're never going to have human cloning because no one's going to ever want to be have this experience.

You're walking out the street and you see someone in front of you and go, Oh my God, who's the idiot with the fat ass and white shorts and that's me. Oh, man. So we're going to avoid that one. Yeah.

I think you describe the classic founder's journey and happily, frankly, happily we are in a space that does, from every indication, look like it's growing significantly. And a point that I was going to bring up earlier riffing on something you said is because we're expanding so much beyond what started this, the whole barefoot running idea, there are going to be some things that are going to drive that moving forward. And actually it was really also doing that whole transition thing, not thinking that it's just an instant solution, which again, annoyingly it is for some people. I mean, for a lot of people, frankly, but for some, it's not the better way of saying it.

There are people who recognize the necessity for paying attention to your body and knowing how to listen to that, hey, that term, how to pay attention to what's, you know, feedback you're getting to know how to make the transition in an intelligent way who also have enough clout and credibility and visibility that it could change everything for all of us really fast. And that's a bunch of professional athletes. There's more and more pro athletes who are getting hit to the importance of natural movement of foot strength and ankle strength that you get from letting your feet do as natural. And we're seeing more of them want to participate.

And many of them are realizing, oh, yeah, I've got to just walk around these things for a while first. And then I'm going to just, you know, warm up in them, or then I'm going to just do go to the gym. And then I'm going to, like maybe do some my scrimmages or drills or whatever it is they do until I feel comfortable. And then, you know, maybe I'll just play five minutes in a game.

And then I mean, they're really, because these guys, they're livelihood, a significant livelihood depends on them staying healthy, of course. And so, you know, they want to titrate it. But the other thing is that, I mean, I talked to the agent for a couple of athletes recently, and I said the moment one of your guys, you know, like, does five minutes on the quarter on the field in one of our shoes, we're going to hear about it. And he goes, oh, somebody from Nike called last week to find out what you're up to.

Sorry, what? So, you know, I think that we're not at the tipping point, or really more accurately, the critical mass point, tipping points, I just misused it in a way that I hate. But we're at that inflection point is what I want to say. We're not there yet.

But it feels like we are getting exponentially or asymptotically closer. Yeah. I think that the kids, there's been a lot more discussion and focus on it for kids. So, when these kids are grown up, it's tricky.

Here's my counter-regnant to that one. For younger kids, undeniably. And, you know, it's something that we're looking at very aggressively. And the challenge for, again, people don't understand how the metrics work and how the economics work is making stuff for kids cost about the same as what it takes to make stuff for adults, but you can't sell stuff for kids at that same price.

That's the tricky part. So, you know, what do you mean? Right. Because it's harder to make.

Right. Exactly. So, there's that component. But the other component is the trickier one.

And the one that I'm most interested about giving that sort of top down thing from celebrity level people is that once kids are in junior high school, they're so influenced by what their friends are doing and what their friends are doing is influenced by what's happening from the people they look up to, whether it's musicians or athletes or whomever. And so, I've seen in some cases kids who are totally into what we're doing once they get into junior high and they're putting on something that screws up their feet and they know it and they admit it. And they go, but this is what everyone's wearing. I got to fit in.

And so, that's the part where, now the flip side is, there's certain kids. I mean, our CFO, his kids are as socially conscious as the next, but they finally went, I can't do it. And, you know, they won't wear anything else. So, there's going to be an interesting shakeout in that 12 to 17, 18 range, maybe 12 to 16 range that I'm very, very curious about.

Because we're going to have to overcome the strongest thing that happens for, you know, people in that age range is just all that social pressure. Yeah. But I feel like if you have been raised with this foundation, then if you want to, I mean, even if you're an adult and you take care of your feet, but you still want to wear whatever on whatever, whatever day, then that's not completely undue everything else. That's true.

And look, it's a thing that I'm pitching very actually, wrestling now, when I talk to people who are committed to running and running, it's like, great, get out of them as soon as you can and wear ours for recovering building foot strength. Because as you said, it's proven to reduce your risk of injury. And it'll also make your expensive shoes last month. So, you know, I don't want to argue with them.

I mean, I do, but I try not to because it doesn't work. But I want to give people, I want to meet people where they are and show them that we're not trying to convince them to switch from Democrat to Republican or vice versa, that we're trying to show them that that's a completely different conversation, that has nothing to do with keeping your feet happy, healthy and supporting the rest of your body. It's a compliment. Yeah, it's like it's an ad, adding not being reductivist or polarized about it.

How can we make it better without forcing you into ultimatums? And it's tricky, from my perspective, at least, or at least for my personality, because when people go, well, you know, there's, you know, everybody's different, I go, no, they're not human beings are fundamentally the same with a few edge cases that are not as edgy as you think most of the time. That's it. That's an interesting thing that I kind of grapple with in my own mind is this that everybody wants to exclude themselves from advice.