Those of us in the shoe biz find ourselves continually walking a tightrope of figuring out what the customer might want to actually spend money on versus what we might want to be able to recommend to help the feet/ankles/knees etc. And in what color. Its not easy to do so even in a stable environment, and the current shoe selling market is anything but. There are move versions of shoes and colors and designs on the horizon than ever before, and more corresponding confusion than ever before.
Take Asics, which has had the guts to take a stand when it comes to exactly how far they’re going to follow the minimalistic trend. They’ve even produced a video or two explaining it.
Key to what they're designing is in this line:
We find it interesting that this definition has traditionally described racing flats, a product not traditionally associated with every-day training for the average runner.
And I certainly enjoyed finally seeing this line in "print" by one of the shoe companies. I've been using this same line to customers for a year a half now, and even bringing out old racing flats to show that the minimalist shoe really isn't a new thing. All in the way to bringing the conversation around to what the customer hopes to gain by going to the vastly thinner and lighter shoe. That means that Asics is going to go lightweight and flexible but still with a 20mm high heel/10mm high forefoot on the whole 33 line. I have two of the 33 line, what i think are the very best two, one for the road and for the trail, coming in the spring.
Asics has their 33 collection coming out now and continuing into the spring, and has taken, for better or worse depending how you feel about it, a principled stand on what they think is safe and can sell to their customers and still go home and sleep well at night.
And one wonders how the makers of MBT and Reebok and other toning shoes can do the same. At this point, I suspect that they’re going home and sleeping less well from the $25 million lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission over false advertising related to the toning shoes. Sketchers has voluntarily changed their verbage in their ads to avoid being sued in a similar fashion one suspects.
It has been an interesting time in the shoe world, trying to separate out claims of zero drop vs barefoot vs minimalist given how many of the categories overlap in design. The Zero Drop aspect, one of the most intriguing, given that it can allow for two of the things the most bother the novice barefoot user: lack of protection and lack of tread, while not putting the runner into any sort of pitched forward position. We’ve not see a ton of shoes that fit the bill yet, although the Altras and Hokas have ventured there, and New Balance’s new spring line looks exceptionally promising (sadly it won’t be here til March).
The very fact that it takes me this long, and this many words to even start to describe that changes in design to the shoes should tell you just how much variation there is today.
Winter is a Pain in Northern CA – Hard to find any takers for rain jackets when it’s a brutal 60 degrees and sunny in the middle of November. Gloves? Ski mask? Baklava? No, its still t-shirt and shorts weather for a walk or run. Wow.
With that in mind, I have a new shipment of Havaianas flip flops coming in this week. All beautiful colors and designs and, I get to say this, just PERFECT for mid November!
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