Welcome to the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember, your body was meant to move. Now here's your host, Stephen Sashin. You just spent $50 or $100 on a pair of shoes, you get your credit card bill, it says $50 or $100 or $200.
Is that what you really paid? I know that's a weird sounding question, but we're going to find out what the real cost and value of shoes is on today's episode of the Movement Movement podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting with the first because those things are your foundation, where we break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat out lies that people tell you about what it takes to run or walk or hike or dance or play or do yoga, a cross-fed or powerlift, whatever it is you do in a way that's efficient, effective, enjoyable, having fun. That's the most important part. Speaking of having fun, if you want to find previous episodes of the Movement Movement podcast or interact with us in other ways, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.
That's where you'll find previous episodes. You'll find all the places that we're spreading out this content, all the places podcasts are found, and also YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and all those other social channels where you can find us. If you have any questions, drop an email to move at jointhemovementmovement.com. I will answer it.
That's also for recommendations. If you have anyone that you think should be on the show or, well, you know, anything. You know how to find me now. All right.
So, oh, but more importantly, if you don't know, if you're new here, why is this the Movement Movement? Because we're creating a movement about movement. So our goal at Zero Shoes, I'm Stephen Sashan, the CEO of Zero Shoes.com. Our goal is to make natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice the way natural food is, and that's our goal because, well, it is better.
I mean, just think about it normally. Your body is meant to bend and move and flex and feel. If you don't let your body do what it's supposed to do, then everything can go haywire. So think about your foot.
If you don't let it bend and flex and move and feel, then all that function tries to move upstream to your ankle, your knee, your hip, your back, which aren't wired for those functions. So if you let your body do what's natural, it can take all the pressure off those upstream joints to let your foot do its job of balance and agility and giving your brain the information that it needs to effectively work with the rest of your body. So that's the big movement part. And the other movement part is that any movement happens because of people who make it move.
The grounds well, the uprising of people who realize the fun and benefits of natural movement. That's what's going to make this actually turn into a thing. So it is a movement about movement. The movement movement.
And here we are. All right. Let's talk about the cost of shoes. So you can buy shoes at all different prices, obviously, anything from just a couple of bucks at Walmart or Target to hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
I'm not going to be talking about the kind of collectible shoes, the way people line up for our days to get the newest pair of Air Jordans and trade them and have a secondary market for it's like investing practically. I'm going to talk about things that you wear every day, all day, every day, or maybe just for races or special events. You wear those too. So I want to do a little bit of history about 15 years ago.
And don't hold me to the date because I'm sure I'm not getting it right because I've got a case of COVID brain. By the way, I don't know if you do, but doing math really gone right now. And also I'm not sure about you, but to me, every day feels like a Saturday that I have to work. I literally in fact, today I don't even know what that is.
It doesn't matter. Point being if you want to have fun actually do that with friends. I'm not going to say, all right, answer this question as quickly as you can. Don't think about it.
Really, here we go. What days it and watch how long it takes them. All right, back to the cost of shoes. 15 years ago, a company right down the street in Boulder, Colorado called Newton came out with a shoe that they were using targeting triathletes with the shoe.
The idea was that it would be you help you run better, help you run faster. The actual idea that they claimed is it helped you run with a four foot landing. It didn't and doesn't, but that was one of their original ideas was to help you run better with a natural movement stride landing on your four foot or ball of your foot and had a little trampoline pods that were kind of built in the soul. But the important part is not that.
The important part is that shoe was about $175. Again, this is 15 years ago. And by targeting triathletes, that was really a smart move because triathletes in general are willing to spend a lot of money on gear because a little change can make a big difference when you're doing a triathlon. Well, what happened is the big shoe companies, the multi-billion dollar shoe companies saw this and saw the initial, I don't want to use the word success, it's a horrible word, but the initial uptake, the initial response, that's a better one, that Newton was getting to this $175 shoe and they suddenly realized, we are not charging nearly enough for shoes.
And they started just raising the prices on existing products. They come out with something new and it really wasn't anything different, but suddenly it was at a much higher price point. Now granted, over time there have been some newer materials that have come out and those are more expensive to use, but nothing to justify the incredible increase in the cost of shoes between then and now. And now things are crazy because if you haven't noticed some of these super maximal shoes like the Nike Vaporfly and some from Brooks and everyone suddenly doing things that are massively, massively padded, giant stilts with foam and the cost on those is between $200 and $400, unbelievable.
But that's not the actual cost. In fact, like I said, if you go and buy parachutes for $50 or $100 or $200 and you see that on your credit card statement, that's not really what you're paying. What does that mean? Well, most people when they're buying shoes don't think about the lifetime, what's the lifetime?
That's like for a word after lifetime, but couldn't find it. How long are these things going to last when you use them the way you use them? People don't typically factor that into when they're buying. They just look at the number and leave it at that.
But boy, that number can be really deceiving. The new Brooks maximal shoe, they advertise it as lasting approximately 100 miles plus or minus depending on how you run. Think about that. If you're a marathoner, you're not going to take a brand new shoe out, put it on your foot for the first time and go do a race.
That's just the surest way to end up with a bunch of blisters at the very, very least. If you're not used to a shoe, you don't want to just put it on and go for a run or go for a long run or a race, definitely. So let's say you put in, let's just say three, 10 mile training runs before you use that shoe for a race. Well, that's over 50 miles.
Three training runs in one race, you've just worn out half the lifetime of that shoe. So what's it really going to cost you? Assuming you like it, what's it really going to cost you to own those shoes for your, let's pick a year for your running year. It's not $200.
It's way more than that. Conversely, let's look at the other end of the spectrum, something that's $20, $50. Let's use $20. It's super, super inexpensive shoe.
What's the real cost of a $20 shoe? It's not $20 because anything that's a $20 shoe, it's just not going to last very long. The materials they're using undeniably not a high performance materials. Even if you're just walking around, they might not last long enough.
And it's not just a soul. It's going to be the upper as well. And the other components that comprise that shoe, man, do I need a nap? Okay.
So you got a $20 shoe. Is it more or less expensive than a $200 shoe? Don't know. Depends on that shoe.
But suffice it to say, it's not a $20 shoe. If you factor in how many pairs of those you need to make up the difference, it may be that that $20 shoe even costs more than the $200 shoe. Now in the middle of that is where things get a little dicier and harder to do the math. But it's still the same basic idea as you want to factor in the lifetime of the product.
Now keep in mind for performance shoes, the big shoe companies say you want to replace your shoes every three to 500 miles. And research done by our friend Brian Heitershite a number of years ago about why that is shows that they may not be telling you the truth. So the reason they say you want to replace your shoes every three to 500 miles is mostly because of how the foam in the midsole wears out. All foam breaks down from the moment you start wearing it.
And the question is when does it break down to the point where it's not good? Now way back when our friend Dr. Phil Maffetone, great endurance running coach, used to say go get the cheapest shoe you can buy with like no cushioning or padding. If you can find something, if it has cushioning or padding, once you've really worn that down so it's practically flat, that's when the shoe gets good.
Because he was looking for something that was as close to barefoot as you could find when you couldn't find something as close to barefoot as something like zero shoes. Well, the shoe company's kind of got smart over the years, smart for them, not for you. By the time that foam breaks down to the point where it's kind of flat and they think it's not doing anything, when the shoe is actually getting good, they've made it so the rubber underneath that midsole, the outsole, has started to wear out too. It's planned obsolescence.
So there's that middle ground where you've got shoes that are, well, sorry. So the whole point of this is three to 500 miles because that's how they're built, except for, like I said, some of these new super thick shoes where it's even less. Everything's built to fall apart around the same time so that you buy another pair. But Brian's research showed that this idea of 300 to 500 miles isn't necessarily accurate.
A lot of the shoes that he tested, the foam had started to break down, you know, the difference between 200 miles and 300 miles wasn't very much different. So basically at 200 miles, the shoe was starting to fall apart. And for some shoes, even less. So even shoes that advertise 300 to 500 miles and they seem like they're going to last a long time, they may not last a whole lot longer than those $200, super expensive, super thick, super et cetera, et cetera shoes.
So what's the real cost? Don't know. Depends on how you're running. Depends on what you do or walking or hiking or whatever you're doing in them and the kind of force you put on that shoe and how the materials of that shoe react.
Now, I'm not going to make this a commercial for zero shoes, but many of you know, we built our shoes, first of all, with no midsole. I'm going to grab one for those of you who are watching. This is the kid's version of our pre-o. There's no rubber or foam midsole on the inside of this or right above the outsole, the rubber part.
And so there's no foam that's going to break down and then we don't have an outsole that's going to break down around the same time the foam does. In fact, our outsole is made with a rubber that we developed called Field True Rubber. We came up with that name. We designed it to give the right combination of flexibility, durability and feedback.
When we first approached our rubber manufacturers and told them about the characteristics that we wanted for the rubber in our outsole was actually for the rubber in our do-it-yourself sandal kits. Their response was, yeah, but that's not how running shoes make rubber for their outsole and our response was, yeah, no joke. That's why we want to do it this way. So we made something that was the first and foremost going to be durable.
Now it's durable for two reasons. One is that we use a slightly thicker outsole then they use on most running shoes, most running shoes. They'll have like a millimeter and a half, two millimeters of rubber than the foam. So this is our do-it-yourself sandal kit.
Our connect to only four millimeters thick on the pre-o. The rubber is about 5.5 millimeters thick. And so because it's a little thicker, it's going to last longer. But also we made it more abrasion resistant than most rubber.
And so that means it lasts longer as well, which is why we say our shoes have a 5,000 miles sole warranty. Actually, the reason we say that is a couple of years into selling our do-it-yourself sandal kits, people would email and call and say, how long are these things going to last? And we would say, I don't know, no one's worn out of here yet. So since we are inspired by sandals made from tires that the Tata Mara Indians in Mexico do, we thought, let's just do a tire inspired warranty as well.
So we say it's got a 5,000 mile warranty. Now, does that mean you're always going to get more than 5,000 miles out of a pair? No, because I don't know what you do. If you're starting and stopping your car like Fred Flintstone, you're not going to get 5,000 miles out of a pair.
But what happens is if you do wear them out faster than that, then we have a great program where you can get a replacement pair at a nominal nominal cost. Now, some people go, well, how do I have to pay? It's like, well, if you wore out your other shoes from one of the big companies, are they going to give you that deal? And the answer is no.
They're going to make you pay full price to get a new shoe versus us helping out because we stand behind our products. So again, what's the real effect of cost of owning something, even if you have to replace it a couple of times at a discount versus at full price? I know there's algebra involved here and you might not want to do algebra, but you can just kind of think about these things conceptually. That's really the goal here.
So all that said, when you put these things together into one giant semi-mathematical equation, I hope you consider all of the factors that involve the lifetime of the shoe and then what you're going to do after that shoe has reached its lifetime and has died. And it's time to resurrect it or find some new shoe that's going to replace it. Hopefully that'll be helpful. I had one other thought that went along with it.
Ah, here it is. The other thought that goes along with this is the cost of buying the shoe at all. So if the shoe costs $100, $200 doesn't make really make a difference. There's a difference between paying it all up front and paying on a plan that lets you spread your payments out over three months or four months.
It's not a real difference. I mean, $100 is $100, but maybe it's easier to do when you split up the payment. Now I'm not suggesting you do this. I'm not selling this as an idea, but it's something that we make available to our customers to make it easier to not necessarily have to pay all up front.
Ultimately, Laina and I, when we started Zero Shoes, our goal was to sell things that were affordable, effective, durable. They did what they did with a, well, do the job when it comes to natural movement and at a price that frankly would be the price that we would expect to pay or want to pay if we were buying something from another company. We also said it as our mission to have really, really good customer service because we know how easy it is to bridge the gap between bad customer service and great customer service. That doesn't mean we get it right perfectly every time there are human beings and our customer happiness team, but we do everything we can whenever possible to do the right thing and always help out.
That's partly why we also have that payment program. So all of these things factor in to the real cost of footwear and I hope that helps you so that when you buy your next pair of shoes or sandals, whether it's from us or from anybody else, you end up paying the right price, the best price for what you're doing in the best shoe for what you're doing. All right. That'll wrap it up for now.
I want to thank you very much again. Take a ride, take a jaunt, take a hop, take a go over to www.join the movement. .com and share and like and subscribe on all the greatest channels where we're disseminating this content. Like I said, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
And if you have any questions, comments, et cetera, recommendations, you name it, just drop an email to move at join the movement movement.com. But more importantly, during these times, this is COVID-19 time, please be safe. And I hope that you and your family and loved ones and friends are safe. And as always, live life, feet first.
You've been listening to the Movement Movement podcast with host Stephen Sashan. Remember to join the tribe and subscribe at jointhemovementmovement.com.