Abshire, speaking at the Newton headquarters, told me his shoes can shave up to half an hour off a marathon time. That's attractive to me -- extremely attractive -- as I aspire to someday qualify for the Boston Marathon, and a 30-minute reduction in my time would get me there, easily. Yet that 30-minute-improvement claim is hard to swallow. I noticed that the Gadget Guy columnist who ranked the Newtons No. 1 in his gear-of-the-year column said the shoes kept him "feeling faster" in the Twin Cities Marathon. And then I saw that his finishing time of four hours and 36 minutes was 46 minutes slower than his time in the same race two years earlier. And Natascha Badmann, the triathlete who was wearing Newtons when she set a world record? I have looked at photos and video clips of her. In every instance I have seen, she is a pronounced heel striker, just like me. It doesn't appear that Newton's patented forefoot propulsion technology is what got her across the finish line in record time. Badmann admitted as much when I spoke to her via telephone in her native Switzerland. "They are incredibly light; for people like you and me who are heel strikers, they still are very comfortable," she said. "I ran an entire Ironman without blisters, which is a great thing. Before, I had eight toenails fall out."
When Brian Russell invented what would evolve into Newtons, he installed his mini-trampoline gizmos in both the heel and the forefoot, to spring the runner ahead whatever the footstrike. (One of his patents notes that the shoe, as originally conceived, "provides unique control over and guidance of the energy of the wearer's foot as it travels through the three successive basic phases of heel strike, mid stance and toe off.") There's no evidence those heel springy things were removed for anything but cosmetic and production reasons. So the forefoot-striking story line, the key to Newton's marketing, sure seems as if it was pumped up after the fact.
Abshire, Lee, and even Russell -- all forefoot strikers, by the way -- tell me the Newtons were indeed designed from the get-go for forefoot running. Disagreeing seems like splitting hairs. More to the point, forefoot running gave Newton a niche, a story, and that's probably what it takes to compete. Good for them. These guys put out a new running shoe, from scratch, all on their own. When Adidas and Saucony and the others told them to get lost, they decided to make and then market the shoes themselves. Like the long-distance runners they are, they just keep pushing forward. I wish them success. That said, I also wish I had my $175 back.
Other people feel differently. Mark Rouse, the retailer in Illinois, says customers are coming back to his shop for their second and third pairs. "Probably for every 20 pairs we sell, there's one or two people for whom it doesn't work out," Rouse says. Abshire says Newton is working on a transitional shoe, a model that will help runners switch from heel striking to forefoot striking. He and Lee are also working on a casual shoe, a sort of sneaker. Trail shoes are in the works. They are even looking into basketball and a line of branded Newton clothing.
Abshire and Lee claim to have sold 20,000 to 30,000 pairs of shoes online in 2007 and to have surpassed that figure in May 2008. They have accelerated their plans to place the shoes in specialty running stores, which is crucial to building the brand among serious runners. By midyear, Newtons were in 58 stores domestically, plus four overseas. By the end of 2008, Lee says, Newtons will be available in about 100 stores domestically and 20 outside the U.S. Even with this, Lee says the company should be profitable by 2009, and would have been profitable this year if it hadn't invested heavily in the research and development of new shoe models and in a more efficient manufacturing process.
That R&D seems key. If innovation is a cornerstone of the running-shoe market, so is competition. Several boutique running-shoe lines have sprung up recently, their manufacturers enjoying the same advances that birthed Newton. There's Spira, out of El Paso, guerrilla marketing a gimmicky shoe with springs in the heel and forefoot. LOCO, out of New Hampshire, is trying to carve out a niche with a promise not to innovate, or change its shoe designs, for at least five years. Zoot Sports, a 25-year-old company specializing in triathletes, launched its first shoe line in March. The Zoot men's Ultra Racer features "BareFit" technology for sockless wear, "Tri-Dry" technology to limit water retention, and "CarbonSpan+" for "smooth and powerful toe off."
Running shoes are a personal matter. Runners who have found a style and a brand they like often stockpile up to a dozen pairs of that shoe and stay loyal until the company stops making it. And, despite my personal misgivings about the Newton line, the shoes no doubt are ideal for some runners. The company will sink or float on how big that pool of customers is.
Abshire and Lee tell me that's fine. They say consistently that they don't want to be the biggest name in the business. They're not out to take down Nike, they say, nor are they trying to flip Newton. They're trying to build a brand. A small, niche, boutique brand, which they believe their industry can now accommodate. They want to build Newton the way Lee builds his real estate portfolio, over the long haul. When they talk about their vision for Newton, I think of Abshire in the Leadville 100, grinding out the miles.
