Trip Randall: CEO of Superfeet
Episode 844
On today’s episode, we sit down with Trip Randall, CEO of Superfeet — a brand most people don’t think about… but probably should.
Superfeet has been around for more than 50 years, originally built out of sports medicine and trusted by athletes who actually care about performance. But like a lot of legacy brands, it faced a question: stay relevant, or get left behind.
Trip didn’t found the company — he stepped into it after decades at Nike and Denon, bringing a different lens on growth, digital, and what consumers actually pay attention to. Now he’s focused on evolving Superfeet into something modern, without losing the credibility that made it matter in the first place.
In this episode, we get into what it really takes to scale a 50-year-old brand, why some of the biggest opportunities are hiding in “unsexy” categories, and how to make people care about something they’ve been ignoring for years. We also talk about what Trip learned from building billion-dollar businesses — and what doesn’t translate when you don’t have that same machine behind you.
If you care about brand building, category disruption, or how to rethink something everyone else has overlooked — this one’s worth your time.
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To learn more about Trip Randall and Superfeet:
https://www.superfeet.com
https://www.instagram.com/superfeet/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/superfeet-worldwide/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/trip-randall/
Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control, control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go, let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kira Goldin show. Have you ever noticed how some of the most important parts of a product, let’s say a shoe, are the ones that nobody really talks about, and that’s often where the real opportunity is. Our next guest, Trip Randall, didn’t start this incredible company, but he definitely saw what the opportunity was, and Superfeet is the name of the company. It’s a 50 year old brand with deep roots in sports medicine, built by founders who understood performance long before it was trendy, and they asked a bigger question, How do you take something that is really important to shoes and make them even better, and that is the task that Trip Trip Randall, who is the CEO of Superfeet, has taken on, which is, How do you take something that already works and does a great job, super feat, but make it even better for today’s athlete, hiker, skier, you name it. As I mentioned to Trip, I’ve been a huge fan of the product for a while, and I was so excited to get to chat with him and actually see how many more products there were than I didn’t even realize, so growing without diluting what made it trusted in the first place, and turning something most people overlook into something that they can’t ignore, that’s what we’re going to get into today. So super excited to be here with Trip Randall, the CEO of Superfeet, so trip. Thank you for joining us. Very excited to meet you.
Trip Randall 2:26
Thrilled to be here, Kara. Thanks for having me, and also for your support of Superfeet. I love that you’re a fan of the brand,
Kara Goldin 2:32
such a fan, such a fan of the brand. So, okay, so for listeners who have been hiding under a rock, and let’s say they don’t even realize that they can make their cool shoes that they have comfortable with Superfeet. How do you describe the brand?
Trip Randall 2:51
Well, first of all, none of them should feel like they’re behind behind the curve in any way, shape or form. One of the great things about this brand is while we enjoy folks like yourself and a number of people who have been with the brand forever. There are so many people who don’t know of or have not come across the benefits of this product for them. So that’s very exciting for us as a leadership team. Superfeet was, as you said, was founded 50 years ago with the idea that everybody needed shape and support under their foot that footwear inherently was not providing a fit and the support and foundation that every one of us need below our feet to help us throughout our kinetic chain through our ankles or knees or hips and our back so the our founders knew that and believed in it, and built a product that, at for one point, was more sports medicine, and not quite as accessible, but they were committed, when they founded Superfeet, to saying, “Look, everybody should be able to have this product, let’s make sure we bring it, make it more accessible, and give everyone this opportunity to get this underfoot, and that was 50 years ago, and the brand continues to go hard and heavy and strong, and our recently, we’ve, we’ll talk about it, I’m sure we’ve done a little work to give that, give that a bit of a boost, but yeah, it’s it’s foundational for us, and it’s foundational for everybody, we believe everybody, every foot out there should have Superfeet under it, most footwork companies don’t spend quite as much time under with the underfoot shape as they do around new foams and new technologies and designs and outsoles and midsoles, whereas Superfeet is purely focused on your foot, your left and right foot in some instances, which are probably not the same, and making sure that when you buy that amazing shoe, a running shoe, a ski boot you mentioned, or a hiking boot, that super fee can then close the gap between the shape of your foot and what that company created to really serve many consumers. We close that gap in that fit process to really make it better for you and make sure it’s more personalized for for the needs you. Have based on your arch height or your type of foot, so yeah, it’s a need everybody has. We’re, we are constantly chasing new consumers and bringing new folks to the brand, so, and as I said, they’re not under a rock, it’s just not something everybody has has considered, or it’s not maybe crossed their path. So, yeah, big business opportunity for us, and it’s what fuels us every day is that mission
Kara Goldin 5:22
that’s exciting. So, you spent more than two decades at Nike, such an incredible brand, and what a great career. What was the point when you said, “Okay, I’m gonna go and do something else? It seemed like such an exciting time at Nike, you left about three years ago, and what was the point when you just said, okay, it’s it’s time, I’m going to go and take on this new challenge.
Trip Randall 5:50
Yeah, well, your story, I listen, listening to your podcast, you have a lot of stories of folks having all sorts of journeys, some that were working well, some that weren’t going well. I’d been there for almost 25 years. I was coming up on 25 We, we got a new CEO, and fundamentally Nike shifted its business model entirely away from being sports specific to being more geared toward what a vertical retail model might be – men’s, women’s, and kids. Now, I don’t have to read everybody the headlines of what has transpired since, because it’s frankly, it’s a Harvard Business case study, I think, at this point, but it was time for me to move on, so I did, I left and said it was time for me to go do something different, and at that time I moved on, and not unlike Nike, which has a rabid following of supporters, still does and still enjoys that, which is a competitive advantage for that brand. I moved over into the audio space, so I left, as somebody said to me once, they’re like moving from sneakers to speakers, but also to a brand, a Japanese brand that also had a rabid following of aficionados and just lovers. So I went into the audio space for a few years, which was a great kind of a little journey, personal passion for me as well, but then realized when that was that company sold, we was ready to move on to the next journey. I met the folks who had come, who had decided to make an investment in Superfeet, because they, like you, were believers in the brand, primarily from the ski and outdoor space, and they were looking for a leader who, one, believed in the brand, and two, wanted to build something, and wanted to take something that was, as you say, 50 years. It’s a legacy brand. This is a brand that had been around and had, again, a rabid following. If I can, I wish I could count the number of people who walk up to me and have since I’ve taken this job, walk up to me on the street and find out what I do, and oh, and they, you know, want to get down, take their shoe off, and proudly show me what’s in their shoe, because, as you said, you can’t, you can’t see it, they knew we had, they had this rabid following of consumers, and they wanted to build on that, and they needed someone to take them into kind of the next 50, if you will, and it was really a match, and I met a team that I loved, the guys that I work with are fantastic, and then Superfeed also happens to have a tremendous purpose backbone to the company, beyond what we just do in product, which is an amazing part of something I was looking for, I wanted to be at a place where there was great respect among teammates, where we were giving back and making the world a better place, and it super features delivered all those for me. It was really just the right, the right opportunity at the right time. I’m very lucky, very lucky. I’ll just leave it at that.
Kara Goldin 8:31
What a great fit, though. I mean, you’ve lived and really understand kind of that market of shoes, but this is just expanding on that, and doing it really, I guess, in some ways your consumer was probably similar, but maybe it’s like the frustrated consumer that maybe you couldn’t have at times, because they really needed that extra support,
Trip Randall 8:57
you know? I might, I will never look, I always look back fondly on my Nike time. My, my blood runs a little bit of with a little bit of Nike orange in it forever, and for that I’m grateful. And it’s no surprise when you see this leader working with the team we have at Superfeet, that we have pushed all our chips into the performance space to serve athletes. We can talk about that a little bit, but yeah, it was, it was quite, it was quite a journey. I will say it also had a lot of alignment, as you said, consumer-wise, tons of alignment there. The retail climate and the retail landscape quite similar, a different world. It’s very interesting being in an accessory brand versus being the big behemoth Nike, where you know people are coming to you to do business. It’s an entrepreneurial journey to come from a bit from a big brand. I don’t know what it is about my career. I’ve gone from big brand to medium sized brand to small brand. My responsibility continues to go this way. I don’t know what that says about what’s happening here, but it’s such an interesting journey to be. You’re not the big gorilla on the street, you are. You have to wave to get a bit. Attention, which is a good some, we have some of that going on now, where we’re getting more into a pull market, but being in an accessory brand that is trying to help people, that is hidden, by the way, as he sits in your shoe, you don’t, there’s no, there’s no logo on the outside, and telling people what’s going on, it’s been, it’s been quite a journey, but there was quite a bit of alignment between my experience from Nike, and I had a lot to do with me being here with the guys who trusted in me to take, take the brand to the next, next stage. They figured I might have a little bit of a sense of what might, what might, what good looks like, and what it might mean to chart that next, the next steps in that, and that journey. So, yeah, definitely, thank my, let my Nike days for having some impact on why I’m here,
Kara Goldin 10:43
so take us through the the process, so a consumer that you see who comes into Super Fee, I would imagine dealing with an issue, or maybe they just think that something can be better than it is, maybe it’s not a massive problem, typically, that they’re trying to fix, but they want comfort, right? They know that if they have better comfort, then they’re going to be able to perform, or better, whether that’s high performance, like, you know, a triathlete, or the average hiker out in Marin County, where I am, who just like wants some comfort and doesn’t want to screw up their feet. Take us through the process when somebody is looking at the Superfeet brand, and what is the most surprising aspect that people might not realize about this consumer.
Trip Randall 11:37
Well, let me start with the consumer. We look at, we break our consumer down into three distinct consumers, so that’s that’s very important, so that we don’t lump everybody into that same journey, because the insights and what people are looking for and what motivates them in that journey, depending on which consumer group you fall in, that we, that we, we serve is quite different. So, what we didn’t want to do is just have this one size fits all journey, we serve a sport athlete, we serve an industrial athlete, which we can talk a little bit about, and then we serve what we call the city athlete, which frankly is a bit of code for more or less every everybody who is just running around during the day, putting a lot of steps in, very busy lives, moving and go, maybe they’re not only taking care of themselves through fitness, but they’re walking the day, they’re in their shoes all day, they might not even have a chance to come home, they go straight out at night, and they’re, you know, their feet, their feet pay a price, and their body can pay a price over the course of the day. So that’s this wide group, but what we did is push our chips up into this performance and sport bucket first, that’s where the company started. It started serving World Cup skiers back in the day, and little bit of little differences could mean being in a podium position or not. And that journey is very different. So we decided to make sure we were serving the athlete. We made a product commitment in terms of sport specificity, so you mentioned we, you know, us as a running brand, you know us that we serve hikers, but we also saw an opportunity to serve runners more deeply and more in a performance manner. You mentioned it, there’s no question consumers come to us looking for comfort, so we have that consumer and we need to deliver that. What we are also doing is flipping the script a bit, and this is what is really a differentiator for our brand, is our brand. We have data that shows that our brand actually does help performance as well. It will help you accelerate more quickly, helps transfer energy from here to there without you losing that in your footwear or losing that in your shoe, which in the sport world, as I said, can make all the difference in the world, even if it’s small, small amounts. So that’s a big differentiator for us as that sport consumer comes in. Yes, comfort, but, and by the way, yes, pain. We have, I, I give so, so many people come to me and say, “Oh, my, I have plantar fasciitis, can you help me? And we do have a magical product there, but more and more athletes are coming to us saying, “Help me, I need that, whatever edge I can, I can get to be just that much better, and we want to be included in all those investments they’re making, whether it’s ice plunge baths or hydration or rollers to stretch themselves out. We believe that the insole is part of that. So, the journeys are different, depends how you come to us. If you come to us as an athlete, we want to make sure you, we know what sport we’re serving. Do you have an affliction, or are you just looking to be better and get that edge? And we’ll take you through that journey, whether it’s digitally or in store, to make sure that you get the right product in front of you. And if it’s the industrial athlete, the worker, we want to know what kind of environment you’re working in. Are you on concrete? Are you, are you in landscaping, and you’re outside all day. Are there risks of injury from stepping on a nail, that kind of thing? If it’s construction, we have products that serve that, or are you like on a factory line where you’re just on your feet all day? So, we’ll, what we’ll ask you questions on that journey to be sure we know who we’re serving, what those actual needs are, and then we’ll direct. To the product that serves you and that city athlete, if you’re just looking for comfort, we got you covered hands down, depending on what your arch height is, or how much cushion you like under your foot. So, we start by asking you a lot of, a lot of questions. I hate to say it, but we want to know you, so that we can serve you just that much better.
Kara Goldin 15:18
So, distribution, 50 years ago we weren’t doing direct to consumer, so distribution has evolved significantly, I think, for Superfeet, but how has that stayed the same, and how has it changed for you overall?
Trip Randall 15:35
It’s a great question. In a way, we were doing direct to consumer back in the day, there was a, there was a ski shop up near, up, up in the Sierras, up near Mammoth, in the, in that area, and it was serving World Cup skiers on the World Cup skier tour. So, when they were on their circuit, they would stop and get their boots tuned by these, these guys who were in the back, and when I tell you it was low key, like, if I had photos of it, you’d be like, that’s about as low key as retail could get back then. These, this was really down and dirty, but it was high-end performance in the footwear space, particularly for skiers. So, that is, I call that, that is direct to consumer for me. We were serving, that was like our own, that was really, in a way, it wasn’t our store, but that that shop in the back was, was our first, I consider, you know, Super Feeds’ first retail, and we’ve continued to push on the direct to consumer space. So, I would say what has continued is our direct line to the consumer through what, right, as we know today, superfeed.com very important to us. It’s one of the places we ask all those questions and take you through the appropriate journey to get you in front of the right product that you asked me about, Kara. So that’s been very important. Of course, the marketplace landscape has evolved dramatically. We have a, we have a large partnership also with in the Amazon space and with some other digital marketplaces, which is the way we know consumers are finding product these days, so very important. And then social media is also a place that we also are selling more and more product every day. Some products were early adopters there, as we know that the huge success stories of women’s cosmetics and some of the brands that have had just tremendous success there. But again, once you learn more about our product, and you can now market to those micro communities. The social platforms have been very, have been amazing on the wholesale side. I would say we go way back with REI. REI has been a partner for of ours for years, primarily because of that outdoor and ski business, and they also are serving a runner these days, so we do a lot of business with them, there, Fleet Feet is a big, big partner of ours in the market, so at running specialty, as well as independent running specialty, who are we have a number of partners there, some of the more influential partners in the market, the Heartbreaks, the Connecticut run companies, these are folks who are serving their local communities, we are a big part of the fitter journey when you go in there to get fitted, more often than not, you won’t just leave with a running shoe, you’ll leave with Superfeet as well. And we’re also a partner with New Balance, we’re a partner with Red Wing Boots, all brands. Interestingly enough, that if you looked and wonder what the sinew is that runs through all of their DNA, they just cared about fit. They knew fit, at the end of the day was a performance benefit, they knew it was going to help you get through your day, whether that was a performance activity or whether it was just getting through your day, and they just shared there was just a shared DNA between Super Feed and those brands, so it’s not surprising that those are the brands we partnered with, so it’s evolved, it’s different, I would say our new our industrial workspace, that distribution is new. It’s actually new, newer, newer for me too. We do business with the big distributors, grain the Grangers of the world, accessing all sorts of workers, and they, they access workers at scale, scale that we couldn’t normally at, we wouldn’t be able to access quite the same way with our own sales force. So that’s an, that’s probably the newest landscape we have in terms of distribution, that is, you know, kind of evolved the brand versus where we started, and it’s changing every day, all of it, just to be honest with you, it’s amazing, the rate, the rate of change is incredible in our space, so we’re just keeping up with
Kara Goldin 19:16
it, that’s so interesting, so How are you reaching that new consumer than in the industrial space, I mean, Granger, as you mentioned, but do you actually have to go to these locations as well for fit? How are you getting to that consumer?
Trip Randall 19:35
It’s a great question. It’s not unlike that consumer journey, where, depending on what consumer you’re after, ask the right questions to be sure you’re not serving everybody the same way, that industrial space operates very differently. So one way, one, we do have a direct sales force, and those that crew, I love that crew, they are busy every day connecting with wholesale retail, where there is there is a wholesale business out there, and we have some great wholesale partners that serve that consumer. Interestingly enough, some of the running, some of the running stores serve that consumer, because the consumer comes in. Yes, they know it says running on the door, but they come in and say, aren’t you guys the feet experts? And they are, so they come in there sometimes and they say, hey, what can you do? I’m on my feet all day, help me. So it may not be a running shoe everyone’s always looking for at a running store, which is interesting. Yeah, on the industrial side, the distributors matter. They can help us access these large companies with huge workforces, whether it’s airlines with baggage handlers, whether it’s car manufacturers with production lines, whether it’s hospitality with just imagine the huge hotel chains. These people are on their feet all day, each with slightly different needs. That’s the distributor can help us access those at a scale that we can’t normally get. We can’t normally get to on the distributor side. You asked about, do you go out there? And the answer is absolutely yes. Where on the wholesale side, the traditional retail models, you’re serving buyers, you want to, you’re getting a buyer’s interest. You want them to see your product, know that the consumer that they serve is going to believe in your product and see value in them carrying it. The buyer, if you will, on the industrial side is sometimes like safety officers, or you know, it’s the wellness or wellness officers, depending on the company. Some have moved, evolved to the place of having wellness officers, which is fantastic, and some it’s safety, so they’re looking to keep their worker happy, keep them working, keep them productive, and even on the wellness side, make sure that when they go home at the end of the day, how can they continue to impact their lives? So we do go out and work with those folks, and we have data that shows that our product, when you’re wearing it, you will be, you will be more productive. So, those safety officers and those companies see more productivity from their workforce, because one, they’re happier, two, they’re healthier, they don’t have back pain, they’re not calling in to say, ‘Oh, I got my back is killing me, I can’t come in today, which has a number of angles to it, one, the productivity side, which is important, but also the human side, so our science and our data is very important to that business, and we’re so we’re constantly measuring the benefits of the impact we have. Do people like the product? Do they.. it’s funny, we know we have something when we go to, like, a factory and they say we don’t want to give the product back. Thank you for trying it with us. To keep it, we’re like, absolutely, it’s yours. So it’s just a very different model than the traditional retail model.
Kara Goldin 22:24
So AI is a conversation for everyone right now. And how has that inserted, or how have you inserted AI into Superfeet? And maybe what have you found it still can’t do?
Trip Randall 22:42
No, it’s a great, great, great story. It’s one that obviously everybody’s talking about. You know, the journey for us is interesting. In that one, I have.. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a journey, an accelerated journey, and accelerated evolution of a topic or a tool or a platform, I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know that any of us have. So, whereas less, maybe even less than a year ago, where we knew it was on our radar, and in an, in a, in a quiet way, we were, we were dipping our toe into the AI space. We, we replatformed, and our, our e-commerce platform is heavily, heavily vested with AI tools and AI thinking and learning, so we weren’t sitting on the sideline, but it wasn’t sort of a direct push, and I’m not sure we knew where exactly to apply it and how to apply it with our business. So I would tell you, as you catch us today and you speak to me today, we are building and have a framework, a strategic framework that we’re building on how to approach it, where to approach it in our business, and what is the, what is the problem it needs to solve, because what we don’t want to do is just, you know, hand handing out the tool to everybody, which, by the way, is also something we will do with our team. Our team all has access. Interestingly enough, as we were doing our our team goals for the year, an enormous percentage of our of our team asked came to us and their leaders and asked for AI learning and help, which I think is such an interesting kind of tipping point for the whole for the whole shebang, because the employee wants is knowing that I need to learn, I need to stay ahead of this curve and not let this happen to me, and they see efficiencies they can have in their business, and I’m sure along the way people maybe have concern about what that means for our business and what that means for our teams, but they ask for help. So we are going to help our employees by making sure we give them those tools, and we’re going to build a strategic framework, which we’re in the middle of doing on where and how best to apply. We don’t want to run, we’re not going to maybe be the first to go out, but we’re going to pick, look at our product, whether it’s in the product space, whether it’s in our back office functions, whether it’s in our marketing space, you name it. We’re going to apply, take a look, and see where to, where to apply it first, and then we’re going to move thoughtfully into that space. You know, you asked what it doesn’t do. I, I’m, I’m not so every.. I’ve said this, I’ve had this conversation before, and sometimes people say, “Don’t be so sure. I think it actually does do that. So, I may be.. I may be already dated on this, but there’s just a gut business to me. There’s.. there’s still just a.. there’s a gut feel. All the data in the world can tell you, you know, amazing things, and we will, we should be data driven. You should be able to back what you’re doing with some proof points. Absolutely, there’s also a gut feel when we cut, when the, when our this amazing leadership team that we’ve built at Superfeet sit in a room together and decide where we’re going next as a brand. All the AI data in the world is not going to do, is not going to, is not going to mimic the conversation that happens at that table with that team with the with the years of experience they have and seeing all the ups and downs and the movements and the trends in the market, so I don’t know that it can mimic that yet. I’m sure people are trying and I’m sure there will be attempts and I’m sure there are even agents out there doing it right now, and maybe you hear about the billion dollar company run by one person, right? You hear that story, you hear those stories, and so somebody’s figuring out what that looks like, but I’m still a believer in people, I’m still a believer in that gut feel that that team says, you know what, our instinct tells us that’s the way, that’s where to go next, and yes, proof points behind it, yes, some data to back that up, so we’re not flying blind, but I like to believe that humans are still having their hands on the wheel and are steering us to the next place for this brand, and that’s what that honestly is what pushed us into this performance. I should say back into the performance space. We were always were a performance brand, but to just say, hey, that story needs to be told more firmly and more aggressively in the market, that was a, that was kind of a gut feel for us, that that’s where we belong. So maybe an agent’s working on that somewhere out there.
Kara Goldin 26:48
So, interesting, you worked in a company at Nike for years, where Phil Knight is still, he’s he’s still a part of the ethos of the brand and founder-led companies. I’ve worked in a few, also a founder myself. But how important do you think it is to kind of go back to those roots and kind of figure out, like, what were they trying to do, and how do we continue doing that? We can expand it, but how do we make sure that we’re not going to lose those consumers who, who are loyal consumers who have expectations of our brand, that I feel like you’ve, you’ve been able to ride that successfully, and in your previous life, and how do you view that with Superfeet today?
Trip Randall 27:42
It’s that’s that’s great. I would say I’ve kind of danced through this a little bit, but our story, our, we went back to the founder story, and, and, and went back to the heritage and roots of the brand, and those skiers we served who needed a 100th of a second difference to be on the podium or not. Who believed in this brand? We, and I will say, when I came to the brand, it was still serving that sport consumer. We have, we have, we enjoy an amazing hockey, like our hockey business, as just an example, is amazing. Like, it is just a given. And if you go to Canada, particularly, you will see people buy these high-end skates, and they will just go to the wall and pull Superfeet, and they will immediately put Superfeet into those skates, and the acceleration, the science-backed and data-driven acceleration boost that gives you, yes, it gives you comfort too, in a, in a, in a hockey skate, which over the years they’ve gotten much more comfortable, but they weren’t always that comfortable. That was our founder’s story, was that little bit of difference, that that marginal difference can make such a big impact on an athlete’s life. We went and grabbed that founder story, paid a lot of respect to it, so much so that we said we’re putting all our chips there. So that’s our story. Like, we paid the, in a way, I say this, you know, I’m not patting ourselves on the back, but we paid almost the ultimate compliment to our founders by saying you were right, we want to go do more of this, so I would say that for sure. Along that way, you know, we have a, we have an amazing board of directors, we enjoy a just a, just a, we have a great crew, and who I now I can, I count as mentors for me on the work we’re doing, but that was a question we asked, if we go this route, we have existing consumers that may not think of themselves really as athletes, that might not be the first thing word that comes to mind, they might be even even a hiker, skier, or some runners, they might still not reference themselves as an athlete. Are we going to alienate that consumer? And once we presented the point of view being founder-led, going back to our heritage, adding new product and new innovation that was going to be meaningful to take the brand to a place where, by the way, there’s competition out there. I swear, I open my phone up and my algorithms are so jacked up at this point based on all the insole stuff I look at that, but I see every new insole company that pops. Up, and I swear, there’s a new one almost every six months with someone that thinks it’s, yeah, anybody can put a piece of plastic together with some foam, and won’t that be good enough? The answer is no, and the consumer will tell it, will tell them that soon enough. But you know, we went back to them and said, are we, should we be worried about this? We took the brand point of view around performance and innovation, and the brand refresh that we knew was coming, and said, What do you think, and they were not. They said, No, do not worry about that consumer that you have today. Do not turn your, you’re not turning your back on them. Be sure in your storytelling that you make sure they understand why that benefits them, the cascade of materials, the cascade of science and materials that comes from that more elite athlete that we, that we serve, is going to cascade to that city athlete. The foams that we use now in our running product, which are super critical foams, not unlike the foam that was sitting in a shoe that broke the two hour, the the the thought of previously thought of unheard of time of two hours in the marathon in London this past weekend, that super critical foam that’s in all those shoes is now in Superfeet and will come over time to the city athlete that we talked about earlier. So that cascade of innovation matters for all our consumers. So we felt, and now there’s always a risk, you don’t know for sure, but we said, look, that’s a risk we’re willing to take, and so we also still keep an eye on that consumer. We know who our best consumers are. We serve them well, those who’ve been with us for years, and we are also bringing new consumers to the brand through this brand refresh, and also some of the sport product. There’s not a lot of older consumers buying cleated product for cleats, that’s obviously a push for us to go younger, but we think that’s important to keep any brand healthy. You’ve got to continue to feed the next generation. If there’s going to be a next 50 years, you can’t sit back and look at the last 50 and just sit on your laurels. You’ve got to bring the next wave of consumers in, and that’s where we’ve chosen to go find that. So, yeah, it’s great. It’s a good question. It was there was some risk in it, but it was a risk we were willing to take, and so far it’s so far it’s working.
Kara Goldin 32:05
I love it. Well, Trip, thank you so much for joining me today. Superfeet is, I absolutely love the brand and what you’re doing with it, so, so terrific, and love all the comments you’ve made and the lessons, so many in there, so it’s such a great reminder that some of the most enduring brands are built on such a strong foundation, and I love to see people go back to kind of the roots of the brand, because so often it just ends up continuing to add on to new consumers, but I think that your strategy of doing both is right on and super important. So, super feat for those who haven’t tried it or are excited to continue to support the brand. Check them out for sure. And, Trip, thank you again for coming on Trip Randall, CEO of Superfeet,
Trip Randall 33:04
Kara. Thank you so much. Honored to be here talking to you with, as a founder, founder in the spirit of paying homage to the founders we paid homage to. I know that’s important to you, being a founder yourself. So, thanks for having us. And we’re happy to come back and tell you how the journey went. So far, so good, but we are a long way to go. So,
Kara Goldin 33:21
absolutely, thanks again.
Trip Randall 33:24
Thanks, Kara.
Kara Goldin 33:25
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe, so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.
