What Makes a Harvard Doctor Start a Shoe Company?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan is co-founder of OESH Shoes. She is a Harvard M.D., an N.I.H. supported biomechanist, and a lifelong runner since her track star days in high school and college. After publishing numerous medical research studies linking traditional womenâs shoes to serious long-term health problems and disability, she gave up her coveted position as the first woman tenured professor and chair in the school of medicine at the University of Virginia, to develop truly healthy shoes for women. Shunned by the shoe industry for her research, she built her own factory and company, OESH Shoes, where she develops not only the shoes but also the machinery, processes, and materials to make them.
OESH is the only shoe company to be recognized by the National Science Foundation for its sustainable zero-waste 3D printing and 3D knitting processes. Making and selling its first batch of shoes in 2011, OESH has a community of now thousands of women who believe that fashion should be dictated, first and foremost, by health.
Listen to this informative The MOVEMENT Movement episode with Dr. Casey Kerrigan about what makes a Harvard Doctor start a shoe company.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this weekâs show:
â How many people donât understand the basic mechanics of walking and running.
â Why reducing someoneâs joint torque reduces arthritic pain.
â How even the most expensive running shoes increase joint torques.
â How even the smallest amount of arch support increases joint torques.
â Why many big shoe companies are so threatened by natural movement.
Connect with Casey:
Links Mentioned:
oeshshoes.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@oeshshoes
Instagram
@oeshshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/OESHshoes
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Jointhemovementmovement.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
What happens when you leave the stable life of academia and do the stupidest thing you could possibly think of start a shoe company? Well, weâre going to find out on todayâs episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happiest healthy, strong bodies. Starting feet first, typically because those things are your foundation. We break down the propaganda, mythology, sometimes the outright lies that youâve been told about what it takes to run or walk or play or do yoga across or whatever it is youâd like to do.
And to do that enjoyably and efficiently. And I mentioned enjoyably, I know I did, but thatâs the important part because if youâre not having fun, please do something different until you are. And Iâm Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host. Really quick, if you donât know what weâre doing here, itâs simple. Weâre creating a movement around natural movement. Weâre helping people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice, the way natural food is. And if you want to find out what thatâs all⌠Oh, and the movement part is about you.
So, you are moving this natural movement thing forward. If you want to find out how you can help, itâs easy, just like and share and give us a thumbs up and hit the bell icon on YouTube. All these different ways you can interact. Basically, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and also go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Youâll find previous episodes and all the different ways you can interact with what weâre doing here. So letâs get started. I am thrilled to semi introduce Dr. Casey Kerrigan. I love saying doctor in front of things. I never do that by the way, I had a chance. I grew up in a medical family, so I donât know why it came out that way. I just talked.
Anyway, here we are, Casey and Bob whoâs sitting behind her. And I say semi introduction because I want you to tell the story of what youâre doing and how you got to what youâre doing. And then I will interject by telling you how silly that was.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Okay. Well so way where began, way back when I used to run track in cross country in high school, college, and always was fascinated with gait. And then became a doctor, went to Harvard Medical School and specialized in a field called physical medicine and rehabilitation. Where you like care about the whole body, not just the feet, but the whole body and learning about gait. Itâs amazing how little we knew back then, and here Iâd have lectures with, weâd study the heart, the lungs, and we knew how those organs were just fine.
But people really didnât understand the mechanics of basic walking and running. And so I was just excited to research it, to really dive in and learn about it. And so I started doing research in, I guess, 1991 and then built a couple of gait laboratories. First one at Harvard. And then I was recruited down to University of Virginia in 2002 to continue my research and build an even better lab. So we had all this wonderful equipment. I was funded by your friends in Bethesda, the NIH, many, many years.
Steven Sashen:
Literally down on the same street I grew up.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yes. And I probably went by your house, going to the NIH for meetings all the time. So I was funded by the NIH to study gait, to get a better understanding, to help with improving peopleâs mobility, also to prevent disease and treat disease, prevent disease. And one of the biggest findings that I discovered back in, I think 98 was my first paper published. It was in the land set that a high heel shoes increase the, I should say, itâs the joint torques, but itâs really, you can think about it as the load on the parts of the knee, where we get arthritis.
And it was huge. It was like 26%. And that was significant, at the time, I was like, shoot, this is pretty big because people do surgeries on the knee when someoneâs got knee arthritis to change that number. If you see like a 5% change, you think, âWow, successful surgery. We just reduce that torque by 5%.â Well, weâre saying that shoes were doing 26%. So anyway, I was like, wow, high heels. And then I dug into all footwear. I found out that just wide based heels, also that moderate heels, that any heel, and then I kept doing this research and then really, boring down on what specific parts of the shoe do this? Increase these torques.
And the knee torque, when people think about, âThatâs just knee arthritis.â Well, knee arthritis is huge. It causes more disability, physical disability than any other singular disease in the elderly. It is huge. And it just doesnât get the attention that other diseases do. People live with it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, people think itâs a normal part of aging. Itâs like bodies wear out and there, so arthritis thatâs just what you get.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Exactly. And then women get it almost twice as much as men. And Iâve always believed the reason for that is because footwear. Women are wearing a higher heels generally than men. But thereâs more, itâs not just the heel. Thereâs other facets of the shoe that are increasing these torques. And so itâs not just the knee. The knee is like the loads that occur in the coronal plane, which is a side to side plane. People think about movement and everything in the going forward plane as a sagittal plane, but really thereâs all this stuff thatâs going inside the side plane and thatâs where things happen.
When you think about all the injuries that occur during running, itâs all in the side to side plane, theyâll all with respect to the torques, the mechanics, not the motion, not what you can visually see, but what you can measure when you combine your ground reaction forces with motion analysis that you can see what the loads are, all the joints. So the knee joint is just like one indicator of that things are abnormal in that plane, but itâs abnormal all up and down the plane.
So, where you get stress fractures, why you get hit pointers, really every single injury you can explain in this coronal plane and with respect to those torques. So it was like, okay, knee arthritis, but it was much bigger than that. And finding-
Steven Sashen:
As you were doing this, how much of this was making you surprised versus just like confirming what seems so screamingly obvious with the barest amount of thought, but it hadnât been proven or anything?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Some of it like the high heel stuff and womenâs dress shoes, a lot of that is like yeah, no brainer and thought, âYeah, Iâm confirming this is ridiculous, of course.â But it was surprising I think, because being a runner, I just thought, âOkay, Iâm getting the best pair of Nike shoes. And I think I have the best.â And so when finding out that theyâre not, that theyâre aspects of the most expensive running shoe that are increasing these torques, I think that was surprising.
Steven Sashen:
That alone is so interesting to me because it occurs to me. The only reason itâs surprising is that we grew up⌠Iâm 58. How old are you?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Iâll be 60 this year.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, please give me a break. When I turned 50, my dad called me to try and tease me about being 50. I said, âAre you kidding? Iâm entering a new age group for racing. Iâm going to be the fastest guy in the 50 to 54 group. Itâll be awesome.â We grew up in that era when Nikeâs went from being basically just flat, really thin, tiny little bit of toast spring and original waffle trainer. But that was really it. And then, we all bought, drank the Kool-Aid as they kept telling us that they were doing things to improve performance and reduce injury, despite a lack of evidence.
Whatâd you say about?
Bob Kusyk:
Itâs like cars in the 1970s.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Bob Kusyk:
It got added on every year with every new Detroit model.
Steven Sashen:
A friend of mine said something really interesting. He went to Mexico and he said, the billboards look like theyâre from the 70s in America, because itâs the same kind of like very simplistic messaging that we no longer fall prey to, we no longer believe that kind of messaging, but the messaging there wasnât as sophisticated. And itâs a similar thing. Itâs like, in the 70s, we believed what people told us on television. We believed and there was no reason not to, at all. It all made intuitive sense, things like, âOh, well, running is painful. So we need cushioning.â
Itâs like, okay, well, a bed, you want cushioning on a bed. You want cushioning on a good sofa. So itâs like, they capitalized on some messaging that made âintuitive senseâ but wasnât real until they said it long enough that everyone just assumed it was real.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Well, itâs funny, in 1977, I wrote a very long letter to Nike, they were a little company and tell them excited the LDV-1000. And I just went through, I said, âI think you need to do this, and you need to do that.â Itâs a really funny, itâs hilarious.
Steven Sashen:
I love it.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
And they call me back. So, it was really, yeah. So thatâs great.
Steven Sashen:
So on the trajectory from there to, so you got down to UVA with a better lab, and Iâm also just thinking about what youâve seen during this time and the improvements of the equipment that you could use to investigate the things that you were looking into. My God, thereâs been just so much change in whatâs available for research.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Right. Yeah. So, we could do the 3D motion analysis where you can see the movement of the joints. A lot of times you canât like just video camera, you might not be able to see whatâs happening in the coronal plane versus the sagittal plane. So you can really figure out what the motion is. But more than the motion, itâs just knowing where the joint centers are. So you can figure out where the joint centers are. And then with the joint centers, youâre running over a ground reaction force, Iâm sorry, a force plate, the measures of ground reaction force.
And then we had this sophisticated instrumented treadmill that had three different force plates on it. So you can measure the joint locations at the same time that youâre measuring the ground reaction force. And interestingly, so many people, they study gait and itâs very observational, itâs like, âOh, this is moving. This isâŚâ Like, âOh, youâre protonating.â But who cares? You need to understand where that ground reaction forces with respect to the joints to really get any kind of meaning out of it.
Steven Sashen:
We see this all the time where people either look at still images and make assessments about how someoneâs moving, or even looking at video at like 24 frames a second, which doesnât really tell you anything or of course when people go into a running shoe store and theyâre getting videotaped on a treadmill from the knees down by some 23 year old kid who was trained to identify something that maybe he thinks he can see and then recommend a shoe in relation to that. I was in Bill Sans lab when he was out here in Colorado.
And he said, âI only film at 500 frames a second, because thereâs not enough information otherwise.â And the interesting proof of that is my right foot was averting turning out in the last frame just before it hit the ground in 1/500 of a second, my right foot was turning out about 10 degrees. And that pointed to a hamstring issue that I had, that we would have never found in any other way. But people go, âOh yeah, I went to the shoe store and they put me on a treadmill.â
Actually, wait, youâre going to love this. One of my fantasies is to get like a fake TV film crew saying weâre doing a documentary or doing a story about getting the right shoe and go to different stores and have the same runner get on the treadmill and see how many different shoes that the different stores recommend based on their treadmill analysis. I think it would be hysterical because thereâs no way theyâre going to come up with the same diagnosis, let alone the same recommendation.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Right, right.
Steven Sashen:
Anyway.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. So there was doing all this research and finding the specific things in the shoe that can increase these joint torques, but also finding that thereâs things that could reduce those joint torques. So that was interesting. Which of course then led to the development ofâŚBut some of the features that we showed that increases the joint torques. One of them was just arch support, just like at teeny tiny amount of arch support is like very minimal SpinCo soft cushion arch support-
Steven Sashen:
Shelf, yeah.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Off the shelf. And that, that increased those parameters. And then I guess the last straw was in 2009, I think. Yeah. We finally published paper that just looked at just your traditional running show. And didnât matter, I forget what brand it was, Brooks maybe. Yeah. Only because⌠I feel bad, they had donated it all is fair, but we also had Nike, we had Nike frees, we had so Nike free, same thing, no different, but they were increasing the joint torques by upwards of 50%. Now this is during running. So the high heels groups like, âOh my gosh, itâs more than high heels.â As, okay. Well that was in walking. We increased 26%.
But running, between running barefoot and running with shoes, it was like between 33, 50%. And again, not just a knee joint torque, not just the coronal knee joint torque, but the sagittal and the hip torques and ankle. So, everything. And then went and started making shoe.
Steven Sashen:
Letâs pause there and Iâll tell this quick story. So seven months after Lane and I started XeroShoes, when we were just selling do it yourself, barefoot running sandaled kit, basically, hereâs how you can make a sandal that looks like what they did 10,000 years ago. And we met some guys who had all started at Reebok 35 years earlier, and the footwear industry, as you know, but not everyone does. Itâs very incestuous. People just bounce around from company to company. So theyâd been all over the place.
And they were sitting in our dining room and said, âWe really believe in you guys and we really believe in natural movement and what youâre doing, and we would start this business with you, but weâve been in footwear so long that weâre not stupid enough to try and start a shoe company.â So, talk to me about that leap from academia and research to the stupid thing of starting a shoe company, Bob Kusyk, youâre leading on that one?
Bob Kusyk:
Oh, no. Yeah. Iâve been released.
Steven Sashen:
I donât want to be involved in that part of the conversation. So talk to me about that moment of, I say this only half in jest, that moment of stupidity, or what I like to say is, when Lane and I, we uttered the five dangerous entrepreneurial words. How hard could this be? And here we are 11 years later and we know the answer. So what was your, how hard could this be? Moment or what was the thing that really inspired ocean? For people who donât know, your company is O-E-S-H-O shoes. So talk about that transition.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. So here I was, I was publishing all this stuff, and you know what? I was like at the top of the academic world. So what? I had I donât know, whatever you are, tenured full professor at a young age and chair and whatever, and all these awards, whatever, but I wasnât helping anyone. And especially the issue was with women. Because women, the footwear itâs a lot worse for women than it is for men. And wanting to help women, womenâs health. I wasnât doing enough clinically. And in my research, it wasnât getting out there. And I was like, and in knee arthritis, I should say my specialty, our clinic, my department, the majority of our patients have knee arthritis.
Thatâs what I was treating and seeing patients with this debilitating disease and seeing that like we could prevent it. And at least help women who already have it. And so I couldnât get shoe companies to listen. Ideally I would have just ask, shoot, why donât you guys look at my research and make your shoes differently? But that wasnât going to happen. And I had to learn that. It took a number of years to figure that out that my research was really threatening.
Steven Sashen:
You just nailed it. We actually had the CEO too. CEOs of major footwear brands say directly to people that we know this whole natural movement thing is real. We just canât do it because it would be admitting that everything weâve said is a lie. So, when you hit them with research, thereâs two things that happen. One is they have that, like you said, they were definitely threatened. And the other is, thereâs a lot of true believers in those companies and in what theyâre doing with padding and our support emotion crawl. And when you give someone data that interferes with their belief, that contradicts what they believe, much to my shock and amazement and horror people donât go, oh.
They do the exact opposite and they just latch on to what they believe even more strongly. They will find some tiny little thing, like a typo in your paper and say, âWell, she had a typo so clearly, she doesnât know what sheâs talking about.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And thatâs exactly what happened too. It was unbelievable. People not only ignored my research, tried to discredit everything I was doing, and that was actually more harming to OESHI than anything because, the industry just fricking attacked me and not only could I not get a big shoe company to do what I wanted to do, but then when I do go build my company, Iâm now which basically. You go on the internet and just, you can Google my name.
And it was like, âOh my God, sheâsâŚâ So that was, and that I had no idea what was coming because I just thought, geez, Iâm going to, and thatâs what I did. I was a tenured professor, had millions of dollarsâ worth of laboratory equipment and traded it all in for millions of dollarsâ worth of factory equipment.
Steven Sashen:
Other than the negative response from big shoe companies, what were some of the surprising things that you discovered? Or what happened differently when you started the company, then what you imagined was going to happen when you started the company?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Oh my gosh. So I thought itâd be easier. I thought that people would adopt the research or shoes quickly. But Iâd see a lot of the problems were on my end at that point. I wanted to develop this material in the soul. Thatâs this like super springy. So some of the things that can reduce those torques and eaten out the ground reaction force, reduce those torques. I wanted like a shoe thatâs truly compliant. And it couldnât be ethylene vinyl acetate, ethylene vinyl acetate-
Steven Sashen:
Yes. Letâs pause there to do the science, English translation for people. So if youâre talking about something thatâs compliant, Iâm basically thinking of like small trampoline is the basic idea. There is going to be, like you said, a little springy, but of course, as soon as the springy, people are thinking, many people are thinking about what they hear from big shoe companies about how theyâre using foam. And itâs got quote, energy return and itâs springy, but what youâre doing something very, very different.
And the ethylene vinyl acetate EVA, is the compound that most companies use for the foam in the mid sole of their shoe. And by the way, a quick aside, my favorite back to the point of shoe companies telling us stories that were simple, that arenât true. My all-time favorite is when Adidas came out with their boost foam, which they demonstrated how great it was by taking like a two pound steel ball and bouncing it off some concrete, and it barely bounced then off quote, the other companies EVA, which no other companyâs ever used and bounces like three or four times.
And then off the boost foam that bounces like 10 times and they go, âisnât this great.â And my response is, well, âNo, if you go to the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, which is hands-on museum, they have a display thing you can do where you drop a steel ball through a little plexiglass shelf with a hole in the middle, and it bounces off a steel plate. And instead of bouncing 10 times off the boost foam, It bounces about 260 times bouncing a steel ball off steel plate.â
But no one understands the physics of that. So they donât get why that boost foam demonstration is completely meaningless ignoring the fact that, you are not a two pound steel ball, or in any pound steel ball. So anyway, you were doing, trying to develop something that actually reduced these impact forces wasnât using EVA, and that led you to some very interesting places.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, so initially I was making these carbon fiber Springs that were in the shoe. That was great, but not⌠I could do better. And so finding a material that could have the springiness, but then also allow all the other attributes of the shoe to not reduce these torques. So itâs got to be completely flat. So the sole has to be completely flat, heel to toe, but side to side. And I donât know if you know, we cut open shoes all the time. We have a water jet side, because theyâre fun. I got to just get a bunch of old. We just cut them in half.
And itâs just so surprising all the junk that you see in it. And thereâs all these contours that run front to back, but also side to side. So you have the arch support, youâve got like the equivalent of medial posting. Youâve got the contours that, the toast spring, all of this stuff, thatâs just nasty. So yeah.
Bob Kusyk:
Like a canoe.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. Like a canoe, I like to say.
Steven Sashen:
Well, like canoe, itâs like, if you look at a lot of running shoes, especially sprinting spikes, if you cut them open laterally longitudinally, you see itâs literally, itâs this big curve, this concave thing with the idea that thatâll help you roll your foot, but what it does it squeezes the bones of your foot together and makes it useless. Unbelievable. This is one of these things where Iâm just always amazed that somebody⌠actually I was about to say itâs not true. I was about to say that Iâm amazed by some of these ideas, but what it really is, itâs like thereâs not a lot of people who can think through the implications of some idea that they have. Itâs like the initial ideas like, âOh, this makes sense.â
Weâre going to have something that helps you roll across your foot. That sounds like a great idea. And then people run with it, but no one ever goes, âWait, wait, hold on. What could that be doing other than just this simple idea?â And people get stuck on something that feels right, and this is what our brains are wired to do. If it feels right, weâre done thinking itâs easy, but going at one layer or two or 10 layers underneath is what most people donât do.
Bob Kusyk:
I think thatâs always been one of our truly an advantage we have is, is obviously it comes from Casey and what it is, is she can think globally about the human body. And I think thatâs where all these things get stopped out. Itâs exactly the example you just relate and itâs one small issue, but the actual, the real problem is the entire concept of wellness, which is individually arrived at. Itâs not one size fits all. And as you can kind of get itâs like this, whatâs this thing about, that youâd make an elephant with the little parts. And all the discrete parts.
And thatâs really not what weâre doing. Weâre not making an elephant. Weâre trying to make a shoe that is healthy. And long-term good for you. And all these little tiny things, example, cushioning, which feels so good when youâre in a shoe store. âOh, thatâs what I need. Iâve got XYZ issue, or I have no issue. And itâll just help me run faster.â The whole gamut of your shoe buyer, but theyâre buying a shoe with cushioning and cushioning is awful for your joints, awful. And we go back to the EVA and all the other stuff.
So, to your point, thatâs something thatâs always really enabled us to be consistent with our messaging from the beginning is weâre about you, weâre about your total wellness, long-term wellness. I think thatâs why our customer base is so incredibly loyal because once they get carried onto it, and I know you experienced this at Xero. Once they realize itâs a lot of small victories for that person has made XeroShoes successful I think. Those consumers are so loyal because they know how they feel now versus how they felt half a dozen years ago.
Steven Sashen:
Well, the thing that really sells it, what really sells it, Iâm sure youâve had this experience too, is not just that experience of getting out of a padded motion control, et cetera, shoe. But after they get used to something that allows their foot to move naturally, then putting on one of those shoes again.
Bob Kusyk:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Oh my God. And thatâs crazy I know-
Bob Kusyk:
Caseyâs is a foot coffin.
Steven Sashen:
I think I coined that term, but thatâs okay.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
There you go.
Steven Sashen:
Weâve done surveys of people who come to our website and ask them questions and the number of them who end up using language that I coined 12 years ago, or something is very high. Itâs kind of funny, but before we move on, I just want to do this really quickly. So for people who are just listening you canât see, but Caseyâs husband, Bob is sitting behind her. And so as the man behind the woman, what do you do?
Bob Kusyk:
Are we allowed to cuss on the site?
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Bob Kusyk:
Yeah. So I do all the shit. And I donât know how, itâs been a great team. And Casey is obviously the thinker, the designer, the person that puts us, how would you say? Casey looks through the cart, she looks through the windshield and my jobâs a little bit more of the rear view mirror, making sure that-
Steven Sashen:
Lena, my wife and co-founder and CFO her line is, âSteven gets to do the fun stuff about thinking of all the cool things to do with luck and go. And I have to tell him that we donât have the money to do it.â And what I say is, âMy job is to build a car. Her job is to make sure it has wheels and gas.â So I get it.
Bob Kusyk:
Yeah. I know you do too, every time I talk to you, you have a smile on and-
Steven Sashen:
Itâs the drugs, itâs totallyâŚ
Bob Kusyk:
I was thinking about, I think weâve probably this is now our 11th year selling. Weâve probably have more arguments about the way you load the dishwasher than we have had with the company.
Steven Sashen:
Lena and I have basically the same argument every three years where we just get so overtired. I become just short tempered, and she gets a little micromanagy and as soon as we identify that thatâs whatâs happening then it takes about 20 minutes till, we get over and then I go, âWhat do you think? Same time, three years from now. Should we just do this again?â I know you guys have the same thing working together has been the most, literally the most satisfying thing in my life is working with my wife.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah.
Bob Kusyk:
Yeah. Itâs fun. For me, it has since I canât paint, I canât sing, itâs really, businesses to us it begins with an art form to make this we love the David Goliath thing, thatâs always fun to root for the underdog, which we, as you know, looked at as well. Itâs very, very satisfying to bring health and wellness to people in such, as Casey said, think about that. Your whole growing up to become a doctor to help people, then you decide, âOh, well of course Iâll do research because thatâs the way we help the people the most.â And then getting completely stopped out on that.
Yet, having the guts in Caseyâs instance, sheâs the first female department chair at the University of Virginia school of medicine, all this crap, which is wonderful, but-
Steven Sashen:
Awesome crap.
Bob Kusyk:
Itâs only for Casey. But her reach and if you know her, itâs about helping people. Letting people have a better life. And to actually now do it, when you look back at all the shoes that weâve sold and all these customers and how loyal they are, thatâs profound. And it really is more than those spectacular academic papers, which she wrote. By the way, none of them have ever been refuted.
Steven Sashen:
Well, Iâve made this comment to a number of people that the problem with the research that backs up what those of us in the natural movement world know to be true is that itâs not presented in a way thatâs either a sexy enough or confrontational enough. And none of us have the PR resources the way the big shoe companies do, where we can present this to a stack of reporters who basically just print whatever we say, because they donât question it. They assume that itâs true. My latest example of this, thereâs actually an article that Iâm quoted in about the Nike React Infinity Run shoe, which they say reduces injury by 52%.
Itâs like, well, okay. Technically, according to that study that hasnât been published yet, that React Infinity Run, did reduce injury by over 50% compared to their best-selling motion-controlled running shoe. But when you look at the numbers the best-selling shoe, the Zoom Structure, in a 12 week study injured over 30% of the runners and the React Infinity only injured 15%. Now, if you take this into account⌠Yeah. So hereâs where it gets more fun.
So, this is the other thing that we have not done well, is present stories in a way that people grasp intuitively more quickly. So what I say is, so that first number it injured about one and three, and the second number of injured about one and seven. This is kind of like me saying, Iâm going to buy you dinner at a restaurant every night this week, which restaurant do you want? The one where youâre likely to get food poisoning twice or only once?
Bob Kusyk:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
And this is the best they could do. Now, of course, when they reprinted the Nikeâs press release about this, no one said if that shoe is so good, why are you still selling any of the others? Even more they said the reason they think that the shoe improved reduced injury rates is they reduced some of the protective features that were in the Zoom Structure. And my question is, why didnât you eliminate them and see what that did? Which is of course what you and I are basically doing.
So no one questions the holy fill in the blank because they just assume that whatever theyâre reporting is well-documented, itâs like, dude, every couple of years, whenever thereâs an Olympics, there is a news story about how athletes are wearing Nike products, that theyâre paid to wear. Why is this news? This is the part that amazes me and is the David and Goliath bid is how do we get the kind of attention to show that weâre the one with the Slingshot and there is no, there on the other end of that rock?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. And you know what it is, itâs like, I donât know. Iâve always thought of it maybe because I ran a lot of marathons that this is a marathon race-
Steven Sashen:
Between you and me. Iâm a sprinter. I hear a rumor that at the end of the track, thereâs things called turns, is that what theyâre called? I donât know.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
No, but itâs having this like patients, I guess, and research is the same way. You study something, but you have to do this study, youâve got to publish it before you get your next grant. Itâs like, things take years. And so Iâm used to that pace and being able to grow organically and that we have a thousands of OESH as we call them where our shoes that are just thrilled and thatâs sustaining, that keeps us going.
And I just gave up long time ago on the idea that weâd be an overnight sensation. People were like, âOh my gosh, this is it.â And I got it. Shoes have to be this way and nothing else. But itâs slow. But I see it, every year it gained a little bit more traction. And itâs fun. Itâs fun to be on that movement.
Steven Sashen:
Weâre able to do something that the major companies arenât able to do, which is, and Lena says it best. She says, âThereâs enough shoe companies in the world. Thereâs no reason to start another, unless what youâre doing changes peopleâs lives.â And when our customers yours and ours, talk about how itâs changed their lives, they tell people in a way that no one who buys a pair of Brooks Adrenaline, or whatever says, âOh my God, youâve got to buy these shoes.â And so the interesting thing in the evolution of a movement, like what weâre doing is that there will come, assuming that it continues to move the way it is, there will come a point where we hit critical mass, where thereâs enough awareness of what weâre doing and the value of it, where everything will accelerate dramatically.
Itâs like, this is going to be a weird analogy, but I invented a piece of computer software for film and television writers 30 years ago. And I thought, as soon as people experience this, itâs all over. Weâre going to dominate the universe. And it actually took two and a half television seasons. So the first season, the early adopters tried it, the second season, a second group tried it, but theyâre anxious because in Hollywood, if you slow down a production by not being able to print out a page of a script, for example, that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and you lose your job.
So, it took like a year and a half, two years, for enough people to be able to say, âThis really changed my life.â And there was enough people that everyone else suddenly had confidence that they were taking from the early adopters. They absorbed their confidence and then it took off. But itâs a similar thing here. Itâs just there I was dealing with a limited number of human beings who were writing a producing film and television. Now weâre dealing with everybody on the planet who wear shoes. Slightly steeper hill, if you will, or bigger hill. So what else do you want to say about just what youâve been doing at OESH that is breaking the mold or doing different things? Do you want to talk about, you mentioned 3D printing before, do you want to talk about the fun that happened with that?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
So, it turns out that the material that-
Steven Sashen:
Wait, let me just interrupt. First of all, describe what you mean when you say 3D printing, because itâs not what most people think of.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Right. Right. So one was figuring out this magic material for the sole. And then once I figured that out and at the time, the only way we could make shoes with it was with injection molding in a very specific way of injection molding, which we were doing here in Charlottesville. And by the way along, I was doing everything like you wouldnât believe, I couldnât just have somebody make this in China, which is where all shoes are made. I had to figure it out here. And basically with this sort of R&D factory, figure everything out, learn all this stuff. I didnât even know which way you turn a wrench, and here Iâm doing everything.
And itâs so funny. Because when you say Bob, everyone just assumes, Bobâs the one doing all the machine stuff right or something. And he has no idea what goes on in there. No idea. So Iâm in there, Iâve got all this like equipment that could 480 volts, just fry me if I didnât know exactly what I was doing. And so weâre injection molding this stuff. And then it dawned on me that, âOh my gosh, we could 3D print this.â But not just with like a regular 3D printer, it would have to be this like special 3D printer that didnât exist, that could print directly from the material from raw pellets and produce it and do it very cost-effectively and all of this good stuff.
Bob Kusyk:
And itâs the configuration of the sole, which for us is one piece, thereâs no distinguishing feature between a midsole and the outsole. If you would, itâs the engine of the shoe, it gives us this unique spring.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Itâs got like, itâs all one material, which has basically the insole, the mid-sole, which is just a bunch of Springs. And then the outsole, which cannot be molded, cannot be made with traditional manufacturing. And so youâve got this like incredible. So in my head, I had this idea right from when I was doing the research, but there was no way I could make it. And then 3D printing is like, Oh my gosh. But I couldnât 3D print it at the time. This was like 2014. And so, I had to invent and then build 3D printers that could do this.
So, I shifted my funding, the national science foundation funded the development of those 3D printers. And so I was getting these grants to develop that. And that was just, it was pretty cool because now like the technology coming, I could do stuff that I couldnât imagine. I was making these carbon fiber things so many years ago, and this is like a billion times better. And so that was really fun. The 3D printing. And then combining that with really understanding shoe manufacturing as you understand so many things about how shoes are made, like that side-to-side contour which is ridiculous.
Going back, I believe itâs done for aesthetics. Itâs not talk about control, but itâs basically, and especially women, women have wider forefeet, wider toe boxes than men do. We have a very narrow heel, wide forefoot. And so, creating that flat shape, but thatâs challenging in some ways for shoe manufacturing, itâs easier to create a shoe that has⌠so we had to like refigure out a lot of the manufacturing stuff. And so the 3D printing, if you look at our 3D printed sole, itâs pretty neat and that you can really stitch any upper to it.
And then knitting came along, knitting is just tremendous that you can make a comfortable upper that will go well with the sole. And so, we have an industrial knitting machine in the factory and can program it and do all the code and stuff. And itâs just fun to be able to develop in tune with all this developing technologies.
Steven Sashen:
In other parts of your life, do you have an equal fondness for cool toys?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Not really. No. Just anything to make shoes.
Steven Sashen:
I did a Facebook live last night and someone asked me, do you ever get tired about talking about shoes? Itâs like, âNope. I get a little bored talking about how a big shoe companies make crappy shoes.â Thatâs getting a little old, I wish I didnât have to do that, but what weâre doing, the basic idea of what weâre doing is endlessly fascinating.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I donât know, we have a water jet saw that makes at the time we got it. So this thing is cut just with water.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. People canât even imagine that. The first time you see a water, basically for people whoâve never seen one, it just shoots water in such a thin stream at such high pressure. It just cuts through anything like butter and they are fun.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. We have to start cutting up some shoes. Well, and weâll send you the videos, but yeah, we had this to cut the carbon fiber and then itâs like, we have this thing. And so, we build all our own 3D printers and the water jet saws, part of that. And we also have a CNC milling machine. But so I can operate because who knows how to maintain a water jet saw? So, I do everything. Iâve been running a thing. I maintain it. I had to do a major pump rebuild. I was the one doing the pump rebuild because it couldnât get a technician during COVID.
But I know every single thing about this like complex piece of machinery, but I couldnât tell you like my car when it breaks. I have no idea. I donât know why it needs to oil. I donât know. Yeah. So anything outside of it has to do with making shoes, but itâs okay. It can be, the machines that we use to make the machines that make the shoes thatâs okay. As long as itâs like the end is to make a shoe, Iâm good.
Steven Sashen:
Simultaneously think about the number of things that weâve all learned from having to figure it out because weâre doing it differently. Even with us where our manufacturing is, letâs say itâs a bit more traditional when we work in the factory, it takes us at least two years to get them to understand how to make our shoes, because itâs so different than what theyâre used to doing. And they just canât wrap their brain around it. Thereâs just so many subtle little things that make it work or not work.
Bob Kusyk:
But 99% of all the major made footwear is done a very specific-
Steven Sashen:
Exactly the same way.
Bob Kusyk:
⌠same way. So, itâs wonderful to be able to be that 1% and have it right. Yeah, itâs-
Steven Sashen:
Whatâs fun is we started out arguing with people. So we were making our first outsoles we were introduced to an outsole manufacturer in Korea and they couldnât make them consistently, the weights of the left and the right were different, the larger ones, which shouldâve had more material somehow weighed less than the smaller ones which should have had less material. We couldnât get the quality we needed. And we said, âCan you get us what we need?â And they said, âNoâ. And then they told every other outsole manufacturer in Korea not to work with us.
And so that was pretty entertaining. So, in the early days, being that fraction of a fraction of 1% was challenging. Now, as weâve continued to grow and they see that weâre growing significantly every year, theyâre paying attention to us, but itâs still to get people over the hump of doing things the way theyâve been doing it to now do it our way, because most of what happens with normal shoes is thereâs so many layers that you can hide your mistakes.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, exactly.
Steven Sashen:
Simple like ours, everythingâs visible. You canât-
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, exactly. Yup, yup, yup. And itâs harder to make. And when youâre using more expensive materials and⌠but itâs funny. I think about, you look at our shoes, well somebody said, âWell, they feel like theyâre getting their moneyâs worth.â If they get all this cushioning and arch support, like thatâs why we can never sell on Amazon. Or I think we did for a little bit, but the reviews are like, âHow much arch support do you have?â Itâs like we have zero.
But yeah, the more junk thatâs in that gives value, but itâs very similar. Bob always says, itâs like whole foods, itâs like, youâre going to pay more for food that doesnât have those preservatives and itâs grown without all this stuff. And so itâs the same thing. Yeah. It is more expensive. Itâs more you to make a shoe that doesnât have all this stuff is actually harder.
Steven Sashen:
And the point you made about material costs; people donât understand. They go, âIf itâs so lightweight, why does it cost more?â Itâs like, âWell, first of all, our shoes donât cost more. If the shoes that youâre looking they cost less itâs because theyâve been making that exact same shoe for 20 years and just theyâve been able to bring the cost down. And because they make so many of them and they own their own factory, and those materials are cheap.â And I go, âGo look at ultra-light backpacking gear. That stuff costs three times what regular backpacking gear costs, because the ultra-light materials are more high-tech and more expensive.â
The place where Iâm so fascinated is in all of this sustainable âsustainable stuffâ where a lot of those materials are A, more expensive. B, donât have⌠thereâs a lot of greenwashing going on. Thereâs a lot of stuff where the net carbon benefit is negative. In other words, the amount of effort that it takes an energy that it takes to pull water bottles out of the ocean, bring them somewhere recycle and turn them into something, itâs not better for the environment, but the story of the water bottles, people love it.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Fantastic.
Steven Sashen:
So thatâs a whole other story.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, itâs like taking hard plastic and putting it right into our water stream. Not good.
Steven Sashen:
Thatâs right. But to your point, itâs like more stuff equals better. Green, even if itâs not green equals better. All of these, again, itâs all the⌠speaking as a guy who sells shoes itâs, whatâs the word Iâm looking for? I canât think of it anyway. Point being that brilliant, but evil marketers versus brilliant, but good marketers are able to convince people of things that are just patently false, but make them feel good. And when you have billions of dollars to spend to do that, you can build a successful business.
The thing that Iâm frankly worried about is, thereâs going to be a certain point where what you and I are doing starts to get close to that critical mass level where the shoe companies who already know what weâre doing is legit, but when theyâre going to feel really threatened, not just philosophically threatened, I literally canât imagine what theyâre going to do to try and save themselves and hurt us at the same time, because oneâs going to⌠As an individual sport athlete, I realized, well, into my 50s, I realized that I have a psychological problem that I would argue either came from.
Or as consistent with being an individual sport athlete, which is the idea that the best man or best woman or best thing wins. But Iâve learned the hard way that thatâs not the way it works in business, especially when youâre about to let go, let loose that rock and the slingshot pointed right at Goliath. And have you given any thought to what might happen if we are successful at what weâre trying to accomplish?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Weâll be a better place and it will happen. Itâs going to happen. Itâs just itâs going to take a little more time, but every year we get there. Itâs a little bit more, and along the way, Iâm just thrilled with like is a doctor. You do the research you do as a doctor. When you see patients, you feel good about just helping some people. You canât help everybody. And so I feel great about the people that we do help, the people that do buy our shoes, I just feel so great about, thereâs so much satisfaction. I feel like I have the patience to get there. Yeah.
Bob Kusyk:
I donât know, I like the fight.
Steven Sashen:
I say, Iâm not competitive. I just want to beat everybody else whoâs doing things that are not what I want them to do. My biggest hope is that we live to see the effect of this. And I think itâs possible because things can move faster now than they ever did before. Thanks to the magic of the inner tubes. And this is a long-term play. The reality is this is a multi-generational play, and you and I have, if we live well, weâve got two more generations in us. And so Iâm hoping that weâre around to see the effect of it. I donât personally care if anyone knows that I had anything to do with it. Thatâs not my thing. If the big shoe companies started to suddenly do what you and I are doing I will still view that as a success.
And in fact, perhaps an even bigger one than us becoming the next fill in the blank. So, hereâs to hoping that we continue to provide⌠well, we donât have to hope that weâre going to continue to provide the benefits weâre providing, but that those benefits are profound enough for enough people that things really do hit that critical mass point and accelerate dramatically so that we get to see the effect of that for everyone on the planet, as well as just the personal satisfaction. I donât know about you, but did you see the movie, the Big Short?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
No, no.
Steven Sashen:
Itâs basically about the guys who predicted the crash, the real estate market crash in 2008, which Lena, and I predicted in 2006, but we didnât know how to capitalize on it. We were involved in real estate in 2006, and suddenly we saw the writing on the wall. Itâs like, âThis is all going to fall apart.â Everyone who can breathe is getting⌠if they can breathe, theyâre getting a mortgage at crazy rates. This isnât sustainable, but we didnât know what to do about it. And when I saw that movie, it hit me that one of my fantasies for my whole life, I hadnât really thought of it was to be that kind of right. The same kind of right that those guys who said this is going to crash.
But in watching that movie, they were so ahead of the curve that it nearly killed them. Just the stress of it all over the two years between like 2007 to 2009, it nearly killed them because everyone was telling them they were crazy. It wasnât working the way they thought. And so, I think weâre that kind of right. And I just hope that we donât go through that kind of crazy.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it was crazy like 2009, 10, 11, you know?
Steven Sashen:
Well, that was when they were basically just directly coming out and saying that what we were doing was dangerous. And then by the end of 2010, is when they started selling their own version of what they called minimalist shoes. So now they had a dog in that fight and they couldnât make that same argument. Ignoring that their âminimal shoesâ were worse than anything else that had ever been produced. But they couldnât argue. And then by like 2013, 2014 is when they realized they couldnât sell that story, the minimalist story and their maximalist story at the same time. And they pulled out of the minimalist side predominantly.
So, while knowing that it was actually the one thing, they did that was useful. Boy, someday, I hope someone really documents what went down in the last 11 years and beyond, because there are so many stories that we all know that are hiding in the closet somewhere that if people had any idea⌠my line is itâs too bad. That shoes donât kill people the way cigarettes did, because then thereâd be a congressional-
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Right, right, right. But itâs a slow death, knee arthritis is not good. I know.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely. But again, people think thatâs just what happens when you get old, you lose your balance because youâre old, you canât move as well because youâre old. And speaking as an aging athlete who hangs out with older athletes, itâs complete nonsense.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
That is right.
Steven Sashen:
Sure, he goes slower, but you know, whatever.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Bob Kusykâs not getting slower. Iâm not.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Because again, youâre not a sprinter. I was at the senior games once and hanging out with, I just turned 50 or 55, whichever one it is, 50, I guess. And Iâm hanging out with all these 60-year-old guys. And theyâre saying, âWhen you turn 60 man you start really slowing down.â And a bunch of 80-year-old guys were standing there and said, âYou guys have no idea what youâre talking about. Just wait.â And so for sprinting, now hereâs the fun part.
There is a significant drop off in speed for sprinters as we cross 60, but whatâs really fun is thereâs an age graded table based on how old you are, on how much slower youâre going to get, essentially, and you can do the math in reverse to create an age graded 100 meters. In other words, the older you are, the less you have to run. So when I did this a couple of years ago, I think I was running 82 meters instead of 100. My friend whoâs a training partner, whoâs just turned 70. She was running like 60 meters. But whatâs so amazing about the age grading is itâs so good that if you have good runners, itâs a photo finish, no matter whoâs in the race.
And so we have eight people from 20 to 80 and itâs a photo finish not to see who won to see every single place because weâre all crossing the line at the same time. Itâs super, super cool. So, even though youâre getting slower with something like that, you can have just as much fun racing against 20-year-old Olympians, itâs a blast.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Thatâs awesome.
Steven Sashen:
Anything you can think of that we left out? Or anything that you want to debunk about the reality of the footwear world or movement or gait or anything else?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
I donât know-
Bob Kusyk:
Letâs talk again.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah. We could have a whole thing on ethylene vinyl acetate, and UVA, and how awful it is for mechanics, the body. But I think when we talk about green, EVA has got to be the worst thing for our planet. Anything with vinyl, it doesnât decompose, it never will. And itâs the vinyl thatâs evil. But so EVA, oh my gosh. If you donât want to just buy, and of course youâve learned that. Iâve learned how awful shoe manufacturing is. I should say traditional, awful traditional shoe manufacturing is.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And one of the points about that, it took a while until the shoe companies figured out to make their outsoles, design the outsole. So they wore out at the same time that UVA did. That was a really, again, evil, brilliant move.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, yeah. Awful.
Steven Sashen:
When we approached rubber manufacturer about making our outsoles and we said, âHereâs the characteristics that weâre looking for. We want it to be long lasting, still be flexible.â And gave them all the things that we wanted. They said, âBut thatâs not how they make outsoles for shoes.â We went, âYeah, no. Thatâs why we want to do it this way.â
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Thatâs how you got to do it. Yeah. Right.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so tell people who want to find out more about what youâre doing and whatâs happening at OESH, how they can find out more and see what youâre doing?
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, go to OESH shoes.
Steven Sashen:
You might want to spell that for humans.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Oh, so itâs O-E-S-H so OESH is the word shoe, we reinvented upside down, inside out. Yep. And so itâs OESH Shoes and itâs educational. You can dig through like all these blog posts that are, I think still out on the internet that were very, controversial.
Bob Kusyk:
The first one.
Dr. Casey Kerrigan:
Yeah, the first one. Oh my gosh. The ones that people just would love to attack me on. So you can still hunt them down, find them.
Bob Kusyk:
Thereâs even a sub-category
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free