06/15/2025
This topic is close to my heart.
For years, I’ve said that we’re failing women and children when it comes to footwear. I’ve seen it firsthand—most recently screening over 500 athletes at Special Olympics New Jersey. The patterns were clear: shoes too long to accommodate width, forefoot deformities like bunions being ignored, and sloppy fits that undermine foot strength and natural development.
Children aren’t just small adults. Women aren’t just smaller men. Their footwear needs are different, and it’s time the industry caught up. We need to build shoes that respect biomechanics, development, and performance—not just scale down existing designs.
Simon puts it plainly—and he’s right. Let’s stop settling. Let’s do better.
So I have been pondering 2 things lately, women's sports footwear and children's shoes.
For most of my professional career, I have tried to get the footwear companies I have worked with to buy into the concept that both of these categories, although I am not sure "women" and "children" are actually categories, are important and that resources to build stand alone shoes for them should be diverted.
Now I am talking LARGE companies with lots of resources.
On every single occasion, I was knocked back.
The reasons? Well, here are the common ones in relation to female specific footwear, especially running:
🤯women are not much different to men (wtaf??)
🤯there is no need for women's specific lasts
🤯women do fine in downsized men's shoes.. shrink 'em and pink 'em
🤯it is not economically viable to build women's specific footwear
I am not making this up, this is literally the kinda responses I have had from more than one brand!
What about kids?
🤯the market for specific children's footwear design is too small
🤯the risk of setup costs outweighs the potential benefit
🤯 Kids do fine with downsized adult shoes, just made them with much crappier materials at much lower cost.. shrink 'em and sink 'em
Okay, well, it's easy for me to find quite a few surveys that tell me there are more female than male runners. So, how come we are primarily building for men? I am gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that women ARE different to men. In fact, I am going to propose the differences, mechanically, physically, hormonally, psychologically, and physiologically, are profound.
And it is equally easy for me to find data on and tell you that it is critically important to build shoes for children across several age spectra that accommodate the biomechanical and physiological differences they demonstrate compared to adults. The general consensus is that children make up 25% of the world's population, but these numbers always classify anyone 15 years old and up as adult. And yet in Australia, the legal adult age, or age of majority, is 18 years old. What is going on here? At 15 years of age, for many, the foot is not even fully grown!
So I do not get it. Why is it that we cannot get serious about building fit for purpose footwear for women and children.
I am ready to help make the change.. anyone else up for it?
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