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33. The Truth About Sustainable Shoes with Steven Sashen

Writer's picture: Meg CarneyMeg Carney


In episode 33 of the Outdoor Minimalist Podcast, we are talking about shoes. This episode was actually born from a listener question!


I had someone message me and ask: “Can you do a post or an episode about shoes?

Specifically tennis shoes for people who are on their feet a lot, like runners or nurses. I find that I want new shoes every 3-6 months as a nurse. Is that the normal lifetime for shoes? Can you tell me which materials are best and what might last longer or be better for the Earth?”


This is a really hard topic honestly, and there isn’t necessarily a cut-and-dry answer. Luckily, I had a chance to talk with Steven Sashen of Xero Shoes about his journey in the shoe industry and what he recommends we look for.


If you remember, Steven joined me in one of my most popular episodes, Greenwashing in the Outdoor Industry.


He had so many great insights and the listener response has been great, which is why I’m happy to welcome him back. For those that haven’t listened to that episode, Steven Sashen is a serial entrepreneur who has never had a job, a former professional stand up comic and award-winning screenwriter, and a competitive sprinter -- one of the fastest men over 55 in the country (maybe the fastest 55+ Jew in the world!). He and his wife, Lena Phoenix, co-founded the footwear company Xero Shoes, creating "a MOVEMENT movement" which has helped hundreds of thousands of people Live Life Feet First with happy, healthy, strong feet in addictively comfortable footwear.


Xero Shoes


Use the code OUTDOORMINIMALIST to get a discount on your next purchase of Xero Shoes.



 

This transcript was edited to remove some filler words and phrases and is not verbatim according to what is spoken in the audio recording.



Meg: Welcome back to the Outdoor Minimalist podcast, Steven. Thank you for being here again. For listeners that have been around for a little while, you'll remember Steven from one of the most popular podcast episodes, Episode 11, Greenwashing in the Outdoor Industry. And even though you’ve been here before, some folks might be tuning in for the first time.


So, can you give a brief introduction to your role and your integration into the outdoor industry?


Steven: Yeah, well, I live—uh, I live for 21 years in Boulder, Colorado, and now I live right outside of it, which means I’m by default in the outdoor industry. And I think, legally, I’m required to. And I do own a Subaru, and I think I got a ticket for not having a golden retriever.


So, that’s my history in the outdoor industry. But more, more relevantly, I’m the co-founder and CEO of Xero Shoes. We make super comfortable, lightweight boots, shoes, and sandals based on this simple idea: your body does a great job working on its own if you just get out of the way and let it do what’s natural.


I want to emphasize, just FYI, some people think that some of the things that I say are just because I’m the co-owner and CEO, et cetera, of a shoe company. But it’s really the other way around. It’s that the things we talk about, that I learned, are what made me think, “I’ve got to start a business to counteract what people are saying that isn’t factually accurate and is potentially harmful.”


Meg: Thank you. So, since we’re specifically talking about shoes and shoe design in this episode, can you give kind of a brief version of the Xero Shoes genesis?


Steven: Yes, and that is a perfect word, because we have a product called The Genesis, which is inspired by the first product that we had before that. So, we started out—this was a hobby of mine. I got back into sprinting when I was 45, and I was getting injured all the time. Getting out of my padded shoes, my motion-controlled, or supporting "normal" shoes is what allowed me to discover why I was getting injured and, more importantly, stop getting injured.


I wanted that natural movement, that barefoot-like experience as much as I could have it.

So, I found some rubber from a shoe repair place, I got some cord from Home Depot, and I made a sandal based on the way humans have been making sandals for at least 10,000 years. Then, people kept asking me to make sandals for them, and it was a goofy little hobby. Then, one day, someone said, “If you had a website for the sandal-making hobby, I could put you in a book that I’m writing.”


So, I rushed home, I pitched this incredible opportunity to my wife, who tells me I’m a complete idiot and that it’s not a good idea, it won’t make any money, and it’s a waste of time. I assured her that I wouldn’t build a website, and then, after she went to bed, I built a website.

So, our first product was that do-it-yourself sandal-making kit. And the evolution of Xero Shoes since then has been predominantly from customers telling us what they wanted next.


“I love this idea of this minimalist sandal, but I’m not going to make my own.” So, we came up with a ready-to-wear version, for which I have a patent, and right now, the closest thing to that is The Genesis. Then, they’d say, “That’s cool, but I don’t want a thong-style sandal.” Even though our thong-style sandals are not like flip-flops, where you get a thing jammed between your toes, because the lacing goes all around your heel.


So, that led to a support sandal—think Chaco or Teva, but it weighs 75% less—our Z-Trail sandal. And then they’d say, “That’s great, but what about winter, or when I have to go to the office?” So, in late 2016, we launched our first closed-toed shoe, and 27 other styles since then. So now, we have a complete line of boots, shoes, and sandals for both casual and performance wear.


Meg: Awesome, yeah, I love that development and really working with what people want because you're selling to them, so it makes sense.


Steven: Yeah, and you know, we’ve done some where we just had a hunch or something we wanted to do, and we've been—it's interesting, we’ve been successful with those products in that people wear them and go, "Oh my God, I love these."


But sometimes, they're not as successful in the market, if you will, because for certain kinds of footwear, people really want to try it on and see what it’s like first. For other customers, they’re more willing to take a little risk and get them based on a use case that they know they need something for.


Meg: Oh, okay. So, I understand that you're a minimalist shoe design, but would you classify yourself as a sustainable shoe design?


Steven: So, sustainable is a really, really loaded word in today's era. In fact, since our first podcast, there was a Harvard Business Review article that came out called The Myth of Sustainability. It’s talking about footwear and apparel, and I’ll send you a link so you can post that. The gist of it is there’s one line they have, which is, "Less unsustainable is not sustainable."


What the article is about is the various ways that footwear and apparel—even more so—things that people are doing that they're calling sustainable, at best, have a nominal impact. And more often than not, have no impact or the reverse. In other words, it may take more energy to produce a "sustainable" product than an unsustainable one, or it may be that even if you can recycle something, so little of that product is actually being recycled that the fact that people are consuming more because they think it’s being recycled ends up with more stuff in the landfill or in the ocean.


So, for us, the biggest thing we can do—well, there are a couple things—but the biggest thing we can do is keep shoes on people’s feet rather than getting them in landfills. We make our shoes with soles that have a 5,000-mile sole warranty. We make them to be more durable than the average shoe by a long shot.


And in part, we also think of what we’re doing as a little more sustainable than most, because as a minimalist brand, we have fewer components and therefore fewer materials going into it, fewer resources going into the product, and less energy to actually make the product because there are fewer materials. So, between the durability and the fewer materials part, those are the two biggest things we can do.


The next thing is that we are starting to use more sustainable materials, like hemp canvas, for example, or when we do use leather, how that leather is sourced and treated. Or we have a shoe coming out on March 1st that has, I think, like 99% recycled or biodegradable materials.


And biodegradable is frankly more interesting to me than recycled because, again, we just don’t know—there’s not a lot of transparency—what the impact of the recycled products are. The biodegradable, that’s a real thing. If you’re making something that does break down faster when it does eventually end up in a landfill—because, let’s be realistic, eventually everything does—then we think that’s a help as well.


So, those are the big things that we're doing. And of course, we are continually researching and looking for other alternatives. And if someone finds out that something we thought was beneficial is not, because of, again, the typical lack of transparency, we’re not going to mislead people. We’re not going to call something a "green" product if 10% of the material is some recycled something or other. So, we’re all about transparency and truth in a way that I do not see in most of the rest of the industry.


In fact, I want to highlight one thing that I see often that just makes me want to scream, which is when people talk about something being recyclable, which, yes, it could be, but—A) most people never take the steps necessary to recycle that product, and B) like I mentioned before, most of the things that are recyclable don’t actually end up being recycled. So, I just want to highlight that one because that’s the biggest sort of bit of greenwashing that I can think of that’s been going on for years, frankly.


Meg: Yeah, that terminology can be really loaded and confusing for the consumer, and easy to manipulate.


Steven: Well, I was going to say, it’s not confusing to the consumer; they think it’s valuable. I mean, that’s the problem. But it’s simply not, and a lot of the stuff—you know, someone—I said this at a big trade show in Germany a few years ago, back when we had trade shows—I said, "Until no one can use green-related and eco-friendly things for marketing, it’s almost all hand-waving and marketing."


We’ve got to get to the point where everyone’s doing it, where everyone’s saying it, so that it’s not marketing spin. And also, we need to be realistic. The amount of stuff that gets put in landfills or thrown into the ocean is so large that what we’re doing in the footwear industry, especially for a small brand or smaller brand, is making such a tiny dent.


I mean, for example, the whole idea of your carbon footprint was invented by the energy industry to make you feel like it’s your responsibility to clean up the world, not theirs.


Meg: I didn't know that.


Steven: Yeah, most people don't.


Meg: So, I am curious about shoe materials in general. You said you used some biodegradable materials, but when I think of shoe materials, I think of things like rubber, maybe sometimes leather, and a lot of times there are types of plastics mixed in there.


So I'm just curious, what would be a movement towards a more sustainable shoe design?


Steven: Oh boy, oh boy. Well, when I say biodegradable, what's happening for a bunch of the biodegradable materials is they're being infused, if you will, with things that help them break down more and better and faster.


So that's one thing. Leather is, of course, a natural material, and you want to make sure that the tanning process is not using heavy metals or various things that, when they do break down, cause more problems than they created to begin with, or solutions that they seem to create to begin with.


The recycled materials, like recycled PET (rPET), is kind of a step in the right direction, but frankly, to make something that is a performance material with performance characteristics, right now, it's still mostly synthetics because you're just not going to get that same kind of durability, at the very least, that you do from something like hemp canvas or even leather.


If you look at like old running shoes that were made of leather, they were amazing, but they stretched to the point where they had to be replaced pretty quickly, or wore out to the point where they had to be replaced pretty quickly.


So synthetics are kind of the way of it. People are looking at doing things to make synthetics use less petroleum or less plastic product by infusing them with something like an algae-based plastic, or there are a couple of other things that people are using right now—graphene, not so much—but the big push seems to be about adding things that mean we're using less synthetic material but still getting the benefits of synthetics.


Meg: Yeah, synthetics are just so durable. So, I think when I'm looking at shoes—and also your shoes are very durable—and so you're wanting them to last you longer. And the main reason why I was interested in doing this episode is because a listener asked me about the durability of shoes and how to find shoes that are, I guess, more eco-friendly but also would last long enough for them to wear, like for at least six months or longer because they're on their feet all of the time. And so I think that can be kind of hard for people to navigate, and if they're looking at synthetics as well as sustainability.


Steven: True. Now, let's back up to something I said a moment ago: eventually, everything lands and ends up in a landfill. I mean, we've got to start there and just fess up to the facts. At some point, you're going to throw away a product, because even if you've worn it to death—if you've worn out the upper and you just strap the sole to your foot—eventually even that's not going to work, and there's going to be something that gets thrown away that ends up in a landfill, or possibly in the ocean.


So, we need to address that. And so then we, if that's the case, then the question is, what can slow that process down or make that process more eco-friendly?


One big thing to look at is just the construction of the shoe. So, the thing that's different between Xero Shoes and quote, normal performance shoes is we don't have a foam midsole. Now, we do use a very thin amount of EVA in a couple of our products, like our trail running shoes, our trail sandals, just to give that little bit of extra cushioning that many people need on those surfaces, but it's like, you know, two millimeters thick, and it's a small amount versus—I mean, my God, look at the foam that's used in these new maximal shoes.


Like, you know, two inches high. The thing with that foam is—and with the foam, the midsole foam in any shoe—is that stuff starts breaking down the moment you wear it. And the reason that big shoe companies—performance companies—and I say "big shoe" with like capital B, capital S, the way people think of big pharma or big tobacco—is that midsole foam. They say that you have to replace your shoes every two to three hundred, or two to five hundred miles because of the breakdown of the foam.


And, in fact, I think some companies say 300 miles, but the research shows that after about 150, things are starting to break down in a way that could affect the alignment of your bones and joints in a problematic way. And so then they started making the outsoles, designed to—the rubber part at the bottom—designed to wear out at around the time the midsole foam is getting so compromised that you shouldn't be wearing it.


So if you just look at some of those pieces, it's giving you a hint about how quickly something's going to end up in a landfill. And by the way, those new maximal shoes, they're saying they last even less time. So, some of it should be pretty self-evident when you see a whole bunch of stuff, and they're saying replace it every couple hundred miles.


You know things are getting in a landfill faster than you would like. And when they're saying you need to replace those pieces so often, are they able to take one part and then put it back into the shoe, or are you throwing the whole shoe away?


Well, yeah, that is the thing. So, I think it was Chaco who famously said, "If you wear out just the bottom layer of our sandal, then we can stick a new one on. Send it back, we'll replace it." I don't remember if there was a charge or not for doing that, but when it comes to running shoes, it's highly unlikely that you can actually resole them in some way. I


mean, you could, but to find someone to do that would be ridiculously expensive. More often than not, I literally can't think of a time where, if you started to wear out the EVA and the outsole, the EVA midsole and the outsole, finding someone who could remove those and put something new on would be something that anybody would even bother doing, let alone whether you could find someone who could do it in a reliable way.


Meg: Right, yeah, because you could probably go buy a new pair of shoes, you'd have it faster, and you wouldn't have to go through that process. It might even be cheaper.


Steven: Yeah, it might—probably would be. That's unfortunate. A lot of larger companies—I mean, a lot of shoe companies in general—have reasonable prices for consumers.


Meg: How are you defining reasonable?


Steven: I guess what most people look at is the price first. They don't necessarily gravitate toward the durability right away. It's kind of a price point.


Meg: Yeah, I like to say that Xero shoes are maybe more expensive than you want, but they cost less. So I'm factoring in the durability. And of course, our shoes are actually much less expensive than most of our competitors.


I mean, our running shoes range between $90 and about $120, where I think it was, I think it was Newton, a local company here in Colorado, who they were the first ones to make something like a $175 running shoe.


And they sold a ton of them at first, and it basically said to the industry, "Oh, we can like raise our prices by 50% and people will pay it." And now people are used to these much higher prices, which is somewhat shocking to me.


Meg: Yeah, and a lot of times you are paying for quality and durability if you're paying...


Steven: No. Alright, hold that thought. Okay, there's actually research on that: a more expensive shoe is not higher quality, higher durability, or higher performance.


Meg: Oh, okay. I love that.


Steven: Yeah, total fake-out.


Meg: That's so interesting because that is often—when we're talking about outdoor gear, the price is core to the quality.


Steven: Yeah, this is not just limited to outdoor gear. It's something that people think in general, and there are many marketers who use this to their advantage, where they raise the price because people will think that it's somehow a better product at a higher price. But I wish I had the research at my fingertips, but that's been looked into, and a more expensive shoe is not a better shoe.


So really, we should be looking at shoe design, the materials, overall durability, and just construction.


Meg: Yeah, you're asking a lot of a human being to... what you were talking about a little bit, about the planned obsolescence of some of the shoes, because this is intentional in a lot of industries. I don't want to ask too much of consumers because I feel like we already are. So, what shoe companies, other than yourself, would not necessarily be planning that obsolescence?


Steven: I don’t know.


Simply because I don't pay a lot of attention to other companies. For a lot of reasons: a, we're really busy doing what we're doing, and also, the major shoe companies, they're all doing basically the same thing. So it's just, frankly, just not worth my time to look.


But I'll give you a funny story related to this, and back to the maximal shoes, is that many of them—and certainly the first ones that came out—have a layer of carbon fiber in the middle of, you know, this big thick foam. And there's been a lot of speculation about why, and the shoe companies have never come out and said why, which allows for more speculation.


So, one quote shoe expert said, "It's because they act like a spring." It's like, no, that's not how springs work. And another one said, "Oh, it acts like a lever." No, that's not how levers work either.


The reason that that carbon fiber is in there is, if you just had that massive amount of foam without anything in the middle to support it, the foam would just shear and fall apart almost instantly. So it was totally structural, as far as I've been able to see, and it's being played as some high-performance component.


Meg: Yeah, I think a lot of times the companies can manipulate that type of explanation of materials and things. One thing that I noticed recently from Nike is they put out some type of hemp shoe, but my question when companies do that type of thing — since you're kind of the master of greenwashing — why don't they just make all of their shoes more sustainable?


Steven: You want to hear a funnier version of that same kind of idea?


Meg: Yes!


Steven: So that same company did what they called "reported on" what they called an independent study. They paid for their design, and an independent organization actually conducted the study. This is about a little over two years ago, and it was looking at their best-selling shoe, the Zoom Structure 22 at that time, and a new shoe that they said was "designed to reduce injury" — as if any shoe was ever designed to increase injury, which is a funny thing.


They define an injury, I think, appropriately, as anything that kept you out of at least three running sessions in a row during a 12-week program. In the Zoom Structure 22, over 30% of the people wearing that shoe got injured in that 12-week period.


In the new shoe, the React Infinity, only 15% did. "Quote, only 15%." The way Nike published this was, "New shoe reduces injury by 52%." If you look at the math, though, if you think about 15 being roughly one out of seven and 30% — let's call it two out of seven — so seven days in a week, I want to buy you dinner every night this week at a restaurant. Which one do you want to go to? The one where you get food poisoning twice, or the one where you only get it once?


Meg: That spin is incredible!


Steven: Right? And the same question: my response is, if this shoe is so much better, why aren't you taking the principles that made it better — which, by the way, were making it more minimalist — and use that for all your shoes?


They can't, of course, because that would be changing their story completely, and they just can't do that. So, this is a common thing. Or another example — actually, my favorite one on the material side: Adidas.


Sorry, I'm being pretentious when I say Adidas, or European, because that's "adidasler." But Americans, we call it Adidas. So, you know... Adidas, Adidas — whichever one you like.


Right. They, when they announced their Boost foam — their incredible, magic new foam — they showed how if you bounce a two-pound steel ball off of concrete, it barely bounces off of "quote the other company's foam," but it bounces a little.


And off of the Boost foam, the first bounce is like 30% of the height from which you dropped it. It bounced back one-third of the way from where you dropped it. Well, that's an amazing misuse of physics because, and I immediately knew of an exhibit at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco — it's a hands-on museum where they do something similar.


They drop a steel ball through a Plexiglas plate with a hole in it, and what it bounces on is a piece of steel on top of concrete. The first bounce hits the Plexiglas that you dropped it through. So, if you really want "quote energy return," you need a steel shoe running on a steel surface.


Meg: That sounds like an amazing misuse of physics!


Steven: It is! There's a guy from Adidas in a video that I have on YouTube where he acknowledged that the concept of "energy return" is complete hand-waving. It's completely fake. There's no such thing as energy return. You don't get more energy back; everything sucks energy, and how much it sucks is a combination of the material itself and the design of that material, how much you weigh, how fast you run, for example. So, if a material can be really bouncy if you're a two-pound steel ball, but complete crap if you're a 200-pound jogger...


Meg: Interesting! So much shoe knowledge.


Steven: Oh my gosh, I've been doing this for over 12 years, and it's amazing the stuff that's in my brain that didn't exist here a dozen years ago.


Meg: Right, I feel like that happens when it comes to shoes. What, in the industry, do you want to change? As an industry as a whole, with regard to sustainable story — or in general?


Steven: Well, let's just do the simple thing: when people hear about minimalist or barefoot, they think that we're some new invention and we need to prove the validity of what we're doing. The reality is that what we're doing is what human beings have done for 99 — at least 99.5% — of human history.


And I say 99.5% because the oldest archaeological recovery of a piece of footwear is 10,000 years old, and footwear stayed basically the same: something to protect the bottom of your foot, something to hold that on your foot, maybe some insulation if you're somewhere cold. That technology stayed fundamentally the same until about 1970, 9950 years.


And then, the modern athletic shoe was developed. Most people don't know that a lot of the components of a modern athletic shoe were made up with no research, no evidence behind them — in fact, evidence that it wasn't a good idea — and then accommodations to fix the bad design to begin with. But we can go into that later if we have time. People can feel free to reach out; I've talked about this a lot.


Irene Davis from Harvard used to love — still loves — pointing out that prior to roughly 1970, if you look in the medical literature and the scientific literature about running injuries and their cause or prevention, you just don't find it because it just wasn't really happening.


We were running in thin-soled running shoes; we were playing basketball in Chuck Taylors, and we weren't seeing the number of injuries, the kind of injuries, or severity of injuries we've seen since. Irene has asked the people at big shoe companies, "What problem were you trying to solve, and why didn't it work?" to which they have no answer.


Now conversely, there's a bunch of research demonstrating the benefits of natural movement. Let me say it this way: it's really easy to think that some new technology is going to be better than whatever's natural, but more often than not, you know, natural outperforms new technology.


In fact, thinking about running shoes, there's a guy — Alva Meriwether — who set the world record on the 100-yard dash, and it's maintained at nine seconds because they stopped doing yards and started doing meters soon after he set that record.


This is 1971. If you look at the shoes he was wearing, they look like ours now. If you extrapolate a nine-second hundred yards, it's kind of like a 9.7 or 9.8-second 100 meters, and he was doing this on a cinder track. This guy was arguably faster than Usain Bolt.


Meg: That's wild!


Steven: The shoes did not make the difference. Eliud Kipchoge, the guy who ran the sub-2-hour marathon under perfect conditions about a year ago, was quoted in an article that didn't get very much attention, where he was saying, "It wasn't the shoes, it was my legs." Nike did not want him saying that, so it got kind of quashed.


Meg: Interesting.


Steven: So, the research on natural movement is, in my mind, unequivocal. There's research that shows — I'll do one that's actually not even about natural movement or minimal shoes.


Dr. Isabel Sacco showed that doing a foot strengthening exercise program over the course of maybe it was an eight or twelve-week program (don't hold me to it because I'm not remembering that) reduced injuries in runners over the course of a year by two and a half times.


Two and a half times fewer injuries in the people who did the foot strengthening program than the ones who just ran, and they were all wearing "quote normal shoes."


Meg: That's a big deal.


Steven: Yeah. There's a study from Katrina Protopropus and others showing that when you put arch support in shoes, it makes your feet weaker, which you could argue, while there's not research to back this up, but you put those two together and one could argue that getting weaker could increase your chance of injury.


There's research from Dr. Sarah Ridge showing that just walking in a pair of minimalist shoes builds foot muscle strength, just like doing a foot exercise program. Again, there isn't a study showing that walking in minimalist shoes for recovery or when you're not running, if you're wearing regular shoes, that building strength would reduce injury. That study doesn't exist yet.


But again, if you want to put two and two together and go, "Getting stronger reduces injuries. Walking in minimalist shoes makes you stronger." You know, it's a good argument to be made for, hey, let's do that study.


Meg: It seems kind of logical.


Steven: Basically, there's a lot of research about "use it or lose it," which I call the dumbest research in the world because we know using it is better than losing it. There's other studies like — oh, back to Isabel Sacco — she put minimalist footwear on the feet of elderly women 65+ who had knee osteoarthritis determined by x-rays, not just them reporting, "Hey, my knees hurt," and in six months, many of them had that osteoarthritis reduced or eliminated by just getting out of regular shoes because they were using their muscles, tendons, and posture more naturally, which took the stress off their joints.


Meg: Wow, that's powerful.


Steven: So, this is a long way of saying — and there's many more studies that back up the barefoot/minimalist/last-most-importantly natural idea. FYI, many of the studies that arguably disprove that are not well done.


As a quick example, one study about VO2 max, whether you're barefoot or in padded shoes, said your VO2 max is not as good when you're running barefoot. Well, A: no one ever said that your VO2 max would be improved. B: the study used "quote accomplished barefoot runners," but I know who was not in that study: every accomplished barefoot runner in the Boulder-Denver area.


The people they used in that study did not run barefoot regularly at all. So, naturally, your VO2 max won't be as good if you don't practice it as much.


Yeah, it's really easy. It's a combination of two things: fiction and people who have no creativity. So the fiction part is this: back in the early days when Nike was sharing a building with some, I think— I can't remember if they were sports podiatrists or orthopedic podiatrists— Bill Bowerman says, "I'm getting new runners who are getting Achilles tendinitis. What do you recommend we do?"


And these doctors said, "Well, clearly their Achilles have shortened from wearing higher-heel dress shoes while they're walking, so you might want to make a higher-heel running shoe to accommodate the shortened Achilles by putting a wedge of foam in there to accommodate the extra force as well."


And so that's what Nike did. If you actually look at the first Nike shoe, it was pretty flat, pretty minimalist, like 10 millimeters of foam, had a little bit of not even toe spring on the front end. I remember that shoe vividly from like 1974. So I put it on, and it was just amazing.


But then they added this, you know, big wedge heel thing. Now, cut to, by the way, 30 years later, when one of these doctors was at a track meet with a friend of mine— someone who was at Nike working directly with Bill Bowerman for decades— and my friend said, "What do you think about the fact that your idea has become ubiquitous in footwear?


Like every shoe company is making shoes that look like this." The doctor's response was, "Biggest mistake we ever made. We were seeing everything with a prosthetic lens because we were making prosthetics, and we didn't have any evidence for this supposition— their Achilles have shortened while walking, which is different than running, or what the treatment should be, what the intervention should be."


Well, there's a story that I was told by someone who ran under the coach Arthur Lydiard, who was from New Zealand and one of the most successful running coaches in history— more world champions, medalists, and Olympic champions and medalists than anyone else from a tiny, tiny little country— and Lydiard made footwear.


That was his day job, and it looked a lot like ours. And the story that I was told is that Lydiard said to Bill Bowerman, "That design is going to kill people." And Bowerman's response was, "We're selling a crapload of them." Footwear industry is a bunch of people with a nominal amount of creativity and a lot to lose if some company comes out with something demonstrably better than what you're doing.


So whenever there's some new idea that seems to catch hold, other shoe companies copy it as fast as they can. If you went to an event, a trade show called "The Running Event" back in this past December, almost every shoe on every wall from every company except for ours looked exactly the same. You could literally replace the logos on most of them, and nobody would know the difference.


They're all super maximalist, highly padded, motion-controlled, cushioned, arch-supporting shoes. Basically, they've all become Hoka— is the fun way of putting it— because they get terrified when they see someone else making money on some quote, "new thing." And the irony is, there's been nothing new. Everything that's happened since roughly 1972 is some new form of cushioning, some new form of padding, some new way to, arguably— well, let me say it differently— some new way where they claim they're reducing the impact forces of running because running is hard, which is not the case, even though the research shows that all that cushioning does not reduce impact forces and often increases it, which I know sounds paradoxical.


But basically, the other thing that all that padding does is it makes it so the 200,000 nerve endings in each one of your soles can't get the feedback that your brain is looking for about how to control your body well. So sometimes, it's landing harder to try to get information, and sometimes it's landing harder because the form that you adopt with a highly padded shoe just puts force into your body in a less efficient way.


The one thing it does— this is a weird physics thing— there's a difference between pressure and force. Your feet have pressure sensors, and so the foam does reduce the pressure that you feel, so your feet feel like it's better. But it doesn't reduce the force going into your body, which often goes through your joints instead of using your muscles, ligaments, and tendons— and sort of the natural shock absorbers and springs that they are.


So the combination of this bad idea and an industry that, once something starts to get popular, gets terrified and then copies it, and then there's a wave of things doing it, is what led us to where we are today. Seems about right.


Meg: Cool. Um, I wouldn't say "cool." That's not a bad word choice.


Okay, so I might do a little bit of a hard switch here for a second. You talked a little bit about recyclability of shoes at the beginning, and so I'm just a little curious about— we want our shoes to last a long time, so we want them not to wear out in a couple of months, right? So what about shoes— how do I phrase this— what makes them wear out or not wear out?


Steven: Yes, it's a combination of a number of factors that are often confused, which is basically all about the construction, the formula within that's used for the parts that could wear out, and how much of that stuff there is. In other words, you can make products that are more durable, but I don't want to say— this is a weird one— so the rubber that we used, we call it "FeelTrue" rubber.


We developed it when we approached our first rubber manufacturer and said, "Here's the performance characteristics that we're looking for," the biggest one being higher durability. His response was, "But that's not how they make the outsoles for running shoes," to which we said, "Yeah, no joke, that's why we're doing it this way."


So it's a— I'll be technical— it's a slightly higher durometer, slightly harder rubber that allows it to be more durable. The second thing about it that factors in is thickness. And like I mentioned before, for shoes that have big, thick foam midsoles that wear out, they often use a thinner rubber layer that wears out around the same time as the midsole does. So the thickness makes a difference as well— more stuff, more time it takes to work through it. One of our shoes— it's a new shoe we have called the "360," which we designed for like CrossFit and parkour and lateral motion sports like tennis or pickleball or basketball— it's a slightly thicker sole in part because we wanted to make it a little more durable, give the tread pattern, which is another thing.


Tread pattern makes a difference as well. And the way you move... I mean, the bottom line is we can't violate the laws of physics. So if you're running the way Fred Flintstone starts his car or stops his car, then you're gonna wear stuff out faster.


If you're over-striding and heel-striking and pulling along the ground, you're going to wear stuff out faster. If you're landing with your foot underneath you and kind of placing it and lifting it instead of clawing across the ground, it's going to last longer than if you have some form that's applying excessive horizontal force.


So way back when, just a bit of a tangent, someone emailed me and said, "There's something wrong with the rubber on your shoes. Look, here's a picture. I wore out the heel on the outside edge." And I said, "You're over-striding and heel-striking." And the guy says, "No, I don't do that." I go, "Yeah, send me a video." So he sends me a video, and I show him frame by frame that, in fact, he's over-striding and heel-striking.


It took 20 minutes till he acknowledged that was the case. And then he said again, "Yeah, but I don't do that." Alan, dude, it's a video of you made by you, sent to me. So this is seems to be what you do. And if you look at the wear pattern in your shoes, it's going to tell you quite a bit about where you are applying what I would argue is excessive horizontal force.


When we came up with the idea for our soles having a 5,000-mile sole warranty, it happened when we had our do-it-yourself sandal kit, and people would say, "How long do these things last?" It was just four millimeters of rubber, and we would say, "I don't know, after two years we haven't had anyone say they wore out a pair."


And we've had people wear those sandals for five, six, seven years, sometimes more, because of the combination of the characteristics that we built into the rubber and having good running form, which many of them developed because they were wearing the sandals and getting the feedback, which led to those natural form changes.


Meg: Yeah, I have a pair of the sandals, and I think I've had them for like four or more years. I wear them anytime that it's warm enough and for hiking, all the trail stuff. And really, I don't think they've worn out in any spots, so they are very durable.


Steven: Yeah, there are people who've told us that that's a horrible thing to do as a business. To which we say, "Yeah, we're not here to extract money from people for no reason. We're here to change the world and give people the experience of natural movement." Lena and I—my wife and co-founder—find this whole idea of planned obsolescence, when it's not necessary, really morally repugnant.


This was a decision we made very early on—literally within the first day or two of deciding to start this business. We wanted to make things that last a long time and are affordable. I mean, why would you not want that? I wish more companies shared that mindset.


They think it would make them less money—and arguably it does—if you have a company where someone buys one of your shoes and then doesn’t need to buy another for a few years because all they’re doing is replacing the one they already bought.


But we have a different strategy. Natural movement is so important, so we have a broad range of products. We get customers who say, "That running shoe is great, but now I need something for the office," or, "That office shoe was great, but now I need something for hiking up Kilimanjaro." When you get used to using your body naturally, anything else just feels so wrong.


We don’t have people waiting for years to replace a product—they do replace them eventually—but the biggest thing is that they expand their lineup and buy additional products. I don’t know other footwear brands that get emails from people saying, "Our whole family wears nothing but your shoes, and we own 55 pairs."


Meg: Wait, you’ve actually gotten that email?


Steven: Yes, repeatedly. In fact, I toned down the number because we’ve gotten emails with much higher numbers. But people think it’s crazy when I say it, so I pulled it back.


Meg: I think I just have one last question. You may have kind of answered this, but I’m looking for a more concise response. If someone asked, "How can I find a shoe that will last me more than six months?"—and they’re a nurse, so they’re on their feet all the time and want something sustainable—how would you answer that?


Steven: Other than saying, "Buy Xero Shoes"? That really is my answer.


FYI, we have nurses, doctors, warehouse workers, and restaurant workers who are on their feet all day, every day, in our shoes. They report things like, "Oh my God, it’s the first time I feel fine at the end of the day."


We do have a new shoe coming out March 1st, 2022, which is a leather version of our Prio—our running, fitness, and all-around shoe—with a slip-resistant sole. We’re expecting and hoping that this shoe will really take off, especially for people who are on their feet all day and in situations where a slip-resistant sole is important. Leather, of course, is a biodegradable material that also lasts a long time.


Put it all together, and again, since I don’t pay exquisite attention to every other company’s products (because I don’t know if you know, but there are a lot of shoe companies out there), all I know is what we’re doing. And that’s what we’re doing to try to help.


Meg: Awesome! Well, I’m excited to see those.


Steven: Oh, they’re awesome.


Meg: I know I said that was my last question, but now I’m wondering—if someone has been wearing standard shoes for a long time, you mentioned it’s not a great idea to switch hard over to Xero Shoes or a minimalist design. How do you recommend people transition?


Steven: The first thing is, there’s no such thing as a "transition shoe." If you’ve been wearing something with a big, thick heel, you don’t need to step down gradually—that doesn’t work. You want to switch cold turkey, but then take your time and build up slowly.


For example, if you haven’t been to the gym in a while, you’re not going to go and do eight hours of bicep curls. You’ll do one set, see how you feel the next day—you’ll probably be surprisingly sore—then wait until you’re not sore. Then, go back and do that same set again. When you can do it without being sore, you add a rep, or a set, or a little more weight, based on the feedback from your body.


You want to do the same thing here. Start simple—just walk. Walk around. Do as little as you can get away with and see how you feel the next day. Use that feedback as your guide to increase the time you spend doing what’s natural.


Another thing is to just kick off your shoes when you’re inside. Spend more time barefoot. You can even take short jaunts outside—walk to the mailbox and back, assuming you have a mailbox. Find a comfortable surface where you have to pay attention to how you’re putting your feet down, instead of slamming them without thinking.


You don’t need to stick to soft surfaces—you want to wake up the connection between the soles of your feet and your brain. There’s a reason you have more nerve endings in your soles than almost anywhere else. Clearly, we’re designed to get and use that feedback, so do that too.


If you’re running, start with a 20-second run. Really—20 seconds. See how you feel the next day. If it’s just a little muscular soreness (like that first gym set), wait until you’re better, do it again, and when it feels good, add 10 seconds. Factor that into your running routine—start one day a week, then two days, and build it up.


The challenge is, you don’t want to do too much too soon. But the problem is, you don’t know you’ve done too much until it’s too late. That’s a mistake we all make—it’s human nature.

We have more feedback on our website to help with this process. But the gist is, there’s no one-size-fits-all method because we’re all neurologically different. Some people are better at picking up new movement patterns, some are better at feeling and using feedback.


I know humans love simple, step-by-step guides. But the ultimate goal is to become your own best coach. That will always be better than someone external telling you what to do—they’ll never know you as well as you know yourself.


Meg: Awesome. I always learn a lot from talking with you. Thank you for joining me again! I’ll include a link to your website so people can find more information or check out your shoes. Are there other ways people can contact Xero Shoes or learn more about you?


Steven: That’s pretty much it—our website is xeroshoes.com, and in the EU, it’s xeroshoes.eu. We have retailers worldwide. If you go to either site and click the store locator link in the upper right, you can find those. And of course, you can find us on social media—pretty much @xeroshoes wherever you’re looking.


Meg: Awesome, thanks!


Steven: My pleasure.




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