My business card says: ‘Assistant Innovation Designer’. I come up with conceptual designs and ideas here at VIVOBAREFOOT. I’m free to be as creative as I like, come up with blue sky ideas. I’m curious and passionate about footwear design and exploring ideas. Read more…

“Sustainable shoe making is barefoot shoe making, our paths are made by walking them”

– Galahad Clark, VIVOBAREFOOT Managing Director

Our MD, Galahad Clark, was invited to address this year’s Copenhagen Fashion Summit Read more…

Tim Brennan, childhood friend of Galahad Clark, talks to us about the resurgence of barefoot running and reveals the origins of VIVOBAREFOOT. In a series of articles he explains how he came to the idea of “hacking up” his Nikes in search of a truly barefoot shoe.

One of the major landmarks was the barefoot cover story on Nature magazine in January 2010.

That was the point where journalists started to bang the drum about barefoot running.

But why now?

Read more…

Here's Asher Clark, of AMC Design talking about shoes, Terra Plana, sitting on the toilet and going barefoot.

Read the full interview on yankodesign.com

Here's a couple of the questions from the interview:

This is a question I've always wanted to ask the pro-barefoot camp. Many runners pronate or supinate and require corrective orthotics. Can these runners use the Evo comfortably?

Most people have been in shoes every walking hour of there life since they were kids and it stands to reason that if you jump out of your shoes and run a marathon your going to feel pain in places that you didn't even know existed. Absolutely, if you are new to barefoot you need to take it slowly and listen to your body, building up to longer runs and looking at improving your running technique with a like minded running coach. The?? hard soles of shoes actually cause a lot of foot problems and research shows that if you let you body move as nature intended, a lot of the problems you talk about can be corrected. For me personally barefoot just feels rite and perhaps is not for everyone but we were all barefoot once upon a time, right?

As head designer of Terra Plana, what inspires you? What do you do when you come to a creative block?

Am inspired to make things better…better to wear, better for the environment…just keep being better.

We recently wrote a blog entry for 10:10.

10:10 is an organisation which challenges and encourages people, businesses and organisations to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 10% in 2010.

Here’s what we wrote:

Since signing up to 10:10 we have implemented several small, easy steps that have helped us cut our costs, carbon emissions and energy usage.

IN THE OFFICE

We are in the process of switching all our lighting to a combination of L.E.D. and compact fluorescent sources. We have a strict recycling policy to reduce the amount of office waste we throw away and maximise the amount we reuse and recycle. Our thermostat has been turned down a notch (much to the dismay of a few in the office!) Everyone walks, cycles or uses public transport (or a combination of) to get to work and we minimise the amount of international travel by effective communication.

OUR SHOES

We understand the inherent impacts of manufacturing our shoes and we are very much aware of the resources required to produce, package, ship, sell, and recycle them. Fundamentally a few key decisions in the design process, some careful and meticulous planning and a lot of hard work along the way enables us to offer a great range of shoes while working to reduce our impact.

Design

Our shoes are designed to survive. A long-lasting shoe gives you more wear for the amount of energy that went into its manufacture

The design of a shoe is probably the most important aspect in reducing energy usage and carbon emissions along the supply chain. We at Terra Plana regularly re-evaluate what we can do to minimize waste and toxin use and maximize product use and love.

Here are a few principles we try and stick to:

• We design our shoes so they are lightweight. This not only saves energy when we ship them around the world but it is also better for your feet.
• We minimise the amount of glue by using stitched constructions. Our Pop construction uses no glue whatsoever. Where we have to use glue, our factories endeavour to use water-based adhesives.
• Our shoes are designed to survive. A long-lasting shoe gives you more wear for the amount of energy that went into its manufacture, while our use of traditional shoemaking techniques makes our shoes easier to repair when they do start to wear out.

Materials

We use as many recycled materials as possible including recycled plastic bottles

Everything we make requires energy input, but we do make careful choices in the materials we use to keep this to a minimum. We use as many recycled materials as possible including PET (recycled plastic bottles), partially recycled soling rubbers, foam footbeds, nylon heels and quilts from a Pakistani co-operative.

By using vegetable tanned leather we reduce the amount of toxins and heavy metals needed in a normal tanning process. The leather is prepared by using vegetable extracts to create rich and beautiful colours.

Manufacture

Our shoes are manufactured in China, which has a dense network of the most advanced (and eco-friendly) component suppliers in the world. Although helping us minimise our production footprint. Making shoes in China is the most efficient way for us to deliver genuine value to our customers in a sustainable way.

As long as people eat meat, leather can be an industry byproduct and a realistic sustainable proposition. A huge shift in cattle culture, however, needs to happen first. While there is a move toward “sustainable” leather sourcing from free-range cows, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. To really impact change, we still need a mass-market solution.

Cattle and deforestation

One of the main issues of late, as raised by Greenpeace’s “Slaughtering the Amazon” campaign, is that it’s the fashion industry—rather than the meat one—that is driving an increase in cattle farming. The result is that swathes of the Amazon continue to be cut down for grazing lands and growing soybeans for animal feed.

It’s the fashion industry—rather than the meat one—that is driving an increase in cattle farming.

The demand for leather products will increase until leather supply is properly restricted and much higher prices are reached in the hide market (which is effectively a commodity market). It’s critical that the price increase and restrictions go hand-in-hand so that it doesn’t become even more attractive to raise cattle for leather. Otherwise, leather will be a byproduct of an environmental disaster.

Wired: Thin flexible sole gives your foot freedom to flex while offering protection from cuts and scrapes. Look like actual shoes.

A nice introdcution:

“Terra Plana is a company that uses eco-friendly (and some recycled) materials along with different shoe assembly methods to minimize waste and use of glues and other chemicals. Their VivoBarefoot line is designed to approximate being barefoot, using a very thin puncture-resistant sole with minimal padding or arch support.”

Here are a few insightful lines about normal-to-barefoot running technique transition, using the Evos:

“The first thing I noticed when running in the Evos—and I noticed it whenever I jogged a little in the Lesothos as well—is that landing on your heels is not comfortable. I mean, I knew that barefoot running is supposed to make you strike the ground with the middle or front of your foot rather than the heel, but I kind of thought I’d been doing that all along in the Nike Frees. As it turns out, even the Nike Frees have a lot more padding in the heel than the VivoBarefoot shoes. So I was more conscious of how I was landing, and it did shorten my stride a little as expected. “

View the original article, Putting Vivo Barefoot Shoes Through Their Paces, at Geek Dad

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