These Portland Start-Ups Represent a New Generation of Footwear

You may know them as “slides” or (if you are in Hawaii, slippahs) or Umbros, if you are from a certain, added-preppy slice of New England.  

But the workforce at Velous Footwear—the latest in a series of Portland-dependent sporting activities and outdoor equipment commence-ups seeded by founders who have deep roots in the area’s triumvirate of giants, Nike, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear—prefer the expression “recovery sandals.” 

The thought is that after an athlete finishes a marathon or a casual jog, they can slip on a pair of Velous sandals, which are priced amongst $64.95 and $69.95, relying on the model, and locate supportive cushioning for strained muscle tissue, a notch or five earlier mentioned the regular flat, foam-dependent flip-flop. 

“We definitely noticed some opportunities with the restoration classification to arrive up with a better resolution,” claims co-founder and CEO Tim Bartels, a former vice-president of global footwear revenue at Columbia, who has also labored at Nike, Eager, DC Footwear, and Saxx Underwear Co. “It is rather specialized niche. We are heading following the athlete when they are done with their activity. We are developing a thing that will assistance them recover, go out, and do their sport all over again tomorrow.” 

“Niche” is the  key phrase, and reveals up around and about in examples of Portland footwear commence-ups that are striving to carve out a space in a crowded sector.  

There is BALA, which has centered on sneakers for nurses and other health care professionals who are on their feet for hours every working day. There is Mise, which will make haute clogs for cooks, sous cooks, prep cooks, and anyone who’s ever labored in a kitchen. There’s HILOS, whose manner-forward 3-D printed shoes not too long ago received them a Finest in Clearly show celebration at the South by Southwest Pitch Competition in Austin this past spring.  

 There’s On, the Swiss-born manufacturer of high-efficiency jogging shoes that moved its North American headquarters to Portland, and Holo Footwear, introduced in 2020 and now offering their sustainable trail footwear everywhere from REI to Dick’s Sporting Merchandise to Norstrom’s, led by former executives from Columbia, Keen and Merrell. 

Velous’s closest regional rivals may possibly be some of their former colleagues at startup Jack West, who make what they’ve termed “athleisure” flip-flops and slides layout to attraction to development-location people in Asia, the US, and past. 

It is not just parochial hyperbole or hometown pride to call out this development, claims Ellen Schmidt-Devlin, the co-founder and govt director of the Sporting activities Item Administration Software at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist University of Organization. 

“If the concern is, could you commence a new brand in footwear in Portland, Oregon, the solution is sure. There’d be no position else in the earth that you’d want to do that,” suggests Schmidt-Devlin, who is herself a Nike alum. 

That’s not the similar as a guarantee that each individual new model will break as a result of and be the next Nike, Schmidt-Devlin adds. It’s only in the last decade or so that Portland’s get started-up infrastructure has advanced to guidance these fledgling providers, with attempts like the Oregon Sports activities Angels enterprise capitalist business and effectively-staffed consultancies like Zefyr, which has positioned alone as go-involving with makes, factories and the marketplace. It continues to be to be noticed regardless of whether there’s a “new Nike” amid the recent crop of hopefuls, she states. 

Velous is hoping, of system, to fill that slot. For now, even though, the organization has a few flagship styles, two slip-on-slip off versions and a person much more classic flip-flop form. What is different is the structure and resources, states Damon Butler, an additional co-founder and the company’s vice-president for style and design and resourceful. In a earlier qualified life, Butler worked for Adidas and Teva for layout inspiration for the Velous sandal, he says he looked all over the place from that traditional of midcentury fashionable style, the Eames chair, to the flexibility of an accordion, which can flex and bend in all directions. 

“An Eames chair has a molded plywood body with a soft leather-based foam that you sit in. So it is tremendous-squishy and relaxed, but with a rigid outer shell,” Butler says. Velous are built alongside those strains, with a rigid body along the sides and a more cushioning, comfortable foam interior, developed to maintain the wearer’s foot steady and centered, even when exhausted muscle groups are extra prone to a rolled ankle write-up-training. 

“If you glance at a whole lot of flip-flops, they’re just variety of like flat items of foam,” Butler suggests. “You stand on it, there is certainly practically nothing considerably there. But if you seem at ours, you can find no straight lines on the entire detail. It can be all scooped and curved and, and it marries beautifully with a person’s foot.” 

Like a lot of other footwear begin-ups, notably people that have taken root all through the pandemic, Velous is even now on line direct-to-client only, while the founders say they are increasing distribution globally, and will be at outside retailer expos this calendar year. In the long run,  their objective is to extend into other styles—imagine a recovery shoe for aprés-ski, for case in point.  

But the flagship sandal is the entry position, which comes at a minute when the “recovery” classification is using up additional and far more space in stores—think of the stacks of foam rollers and massage balls on sale at REI and other shops now, says co-founder and vice president of products development, Brad Bischel, as opposed to a 10 years or so in the past when a few publish-operate stretches were being imagined to be all you’d need to have to get up and do it once again the up coming day. 

Proper second or not, a footwear start-up, even in a linked marketplace like Portland, is not low-cost, suggests Schmidt-Devlin, notably specified manufacturing facility buy minimums and skyrocketing shipping and delivery expenditures. Specified extensive direct instances, it can be several years right before founders see any gains, she suggests. But starting by carving out a distinct niche—as Velous and other people have done—is a great method, she adds. 

“If you have been sitting down at Nike, and you questioned them, ‘How can I contend in opposition to you?’, they would inform you, ‘If you develop something that can go pretty, quite quick, you could conquer us in a certain region,’” Schmidt-Devlin suggests. “Because, you know, the huge businesses are like massive aircraft carriers. They’re extremely, pretty hard to turn and shoppers are modifying really speedily. And also, Nike, or any of these other businesses, if they’re likely to strategy [a new market], it has to be a particular dimension. And so heading immediately after a niche is a excellent way to get into the industry.”