Five finger shoes You’ve seen the five-toed running shoes?” This was political commentator Keith Olbermann during an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in May. He had limped onto the stage with a cane and his left foot in an orthotic boot. When Letterman asked about the injury, Olbermann blamed it on the toe shoes. “They’re great for your knees. They’re great for your hips. They make you actually feel younger,” he said. “Unfortunately, if you try to run in them and you weigh more than 175 pounds, you will break something.”
Olbermann was talking about Vibram FiveFingers, a kind of glove for the foot made by the Italian rubber-sole specialist. For Vibram, this talk-show banter was a small public relations headache. It also was a signal of how popular its toe shoes had become since the company began peddling them six years ago. Back then nobody was interested, says Tony Post, chief executive officer of Vibram’s U.S. division. He first showed the design to his biggest sole customers to see if they wanted to partner on a product. They passed, so he brought it directly to retailers. They also balked. “It was just a little too strange,” says Post. This year the company is on pace to sell some $100 million worth of FiveFingers—a sum that will account for more than half of its North American revenue.
In between, barefoot running happened. A subculture of distance runners who consider the average shoe to be an affront to the human foot gained a broad following through a bestselling book and, along the way, created a market that is fast approaching half a billion dollars. In other words, people who believe you should run without shoes have kick-started a running-shoe boom. At the 750 running specialty stores tracked by the Leisure Trends Group, “minimalist shoes,” which did not exist as a category until 2008, now account for 9 percent of the market, with more than $24 million in sales so far this year. The mainstream retail chains, according to SportsOneSource analyst Matt Powell, are slated to sell $350 million worth of minimalist shoes for 2011. If you include “lightweight” shoes, a category created in 2009, sales could hit $1.8 billion. The trend toward less shoe, says Powell, is accounting for virtually all the growth in the $6 billion running market. The demand has shoe companies hustling to bring new products to market and wrestling with two big questions highlighted by Olbermann’s appearance on Letterman: Will people get hurt? And will barefoot shoes become everyday footwear?