Toby Hill, Superfeet UK and North European sales manager, talks about the brand, it’s development and what’s coming in the future.
Premium materials like carbon fibre, leading edge technology – including 3D-printed insoles – and decades of experience in biomechanical science are all foundational elements that set the Superfeet shape apart.
Toby said: “Superfeet started as a medical company, our parent company at the time NW Podiatric were the founders of Superfeet back in 1977.
“Basically, they were getting a lot of casts and moulds of people’s feet sent from all over the US.
“They were seeing that a lot of people didn’t need something for a specific medical condition and a specific correction. What they needed was shape.
“So, Superfeet was born as the sports division of the podiatry clinic and it’s obviously grown and grown over the last 40-50 years to be Superfeet in its own right.
“Up until a couple of years ago we were completely employee owned now owned by a by a group over in the US and have been for the last 3 1/2 years now, which just sort of secured a lot of things for a lot of people.”
Superfeet have an insole for everything – running, hiking, walking, football and rugby, golf, ski and snowboard, hockey and skates, fitness and training, racquet and court sports – but what sets them apart from other brands?
Toby added: “If all you’re going to do is insoles, you should probably try and cover as many bases as possible.
“There’s themes and sort of similarities to some of the products but the biomechanical knowledge and science that goes into them is consistent throughout.
“The way that we make the products, the materials are tuned slightly differently for different activities and different people. Everybody’s got a different perception of what is comfortable. We try and cover all bases. We’ve got thicker, thinner, softer, firmer, ¾, full length, various activities.
“The fact that our history as a medical company is probably one of the big points of difference for us.
“The way that the products are designed to focus on different parts of the feet rather than just one specific area.
“Essentially, your body weight comes in at the back of the foot and then works forward from there.
“That’s the part of the foot that we’re trying to work with while providing that support for people’s arches, which is the one thing that people tend to identify with.
“Most people tend to know roughly the size, roughly the width and roughly what they think their arch height is.
“Our products are designed to make that as easy to understand as possible. But the actual way the products are designed to work is, is slightly different to what a lot of other people do.”
When Superfeet was a podiatry clinic people would send in casts of their feet. Technology has moved on and feet can now be scanned to get a personal insole.
Toby said: “There’s various levels with it. We’ve got a good partnership with Volumental, from a scanning point of view. A 3D scan of the feet gives millimetre measurement of your feet, showing you everything you want to know as a customer and as a footwear fitter.
“Then we have a partnership that allows a pressure plate to combine with that system that’s basically showing us, the customer and the member of staff what the individual’s feet are doing inside a pair of shoes. Because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in ski boots, walking boots, running shoes, neutral stability, any of that sort of stuff, the inside is ultimately still flat and what comes out is still various bits of foam really. So, the foot is still having to work as hard as it can in inside that footwear.
“We want to be able to see how that foot is having to work and how we can then provide a solution to make that a bit more comfortable.
“We have the off the shelf stuff, we have custom insoles that can be done in store and we now have the 3D printed product as well, which is completely personalising the fit of the products to the individual’s feet, both in the contouring and the profiling of the feet through to different densities and flexibilities in the material as well.
“It’s quite a cool and exciting thing to have as an insole company. It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for we have that solution and retailers working with us can provide that for customers.”
The key word these days is sustainability and that is something that Superfeet take very seriously.
Toby said: “We as a company are constantly looking for different things. We’ve started calling out on our website everything about the products that we can – the stats and the numbers behind everything.
“You can see just how the how the products are made and where all the emissions are coming from.
“We’re constantly changing things. We’ve already updated the top sheet to all of our products to recycled material and we are in the process of gradually rolling out more and more recycled material into foams and the caps of everything as well. Where we probably haven’t been great up until this point is shouting about it.
“We’d rather be at a point where we have a high enough percentage of our products out there. Chances are that some of the more popular products that people are already starting to pick up already have recycled materials in them.
“We’re doing more and more constantly as we go along to make that product more environmentally friendly, trying to find different ways that we can work with retailers and various charities to give a second life to some of the products to avoid as much going into landfill as possible.
“It’s at the front of everything that we’re doing when it comes to the development of products now and the revamping of everything that we’ve had over the last couple of years. From the packaging that we’re using, the materials, how we’re shipping and how we’re trying to get stuff to warehouses to try and minimise as much of that impact as we possibly can.”
Superfeet aren’t resting on their laurels’ and are always developing new products or updating existing ones.
Toby said: “We’ve got a couple of bits that we’re developing at the moment for the next couple of years.
“We went through a bit of a change in the last year or so, we rebranded everything.
“Everything that had been in the range for a while, we rebranded to try and make a slightly easier product classification.
“We bought out some new products at the start of the year in the active cushion and active support ranges, predominantly to make that a bit easier in store for people.
“We’ve seen a lot of retailers where there’s been a bit of a crossover from being purely outdoor into outdoor and maybe a bit of trail running, run retailers taking on a bit of outdoor footwear.
“That’s probably led by some of the footwear brands and their blurring of the lines. Instead of getting people to hold very similar products in run, in outdoor, in winter, we’ve tried to make that a bit easier. So, it’s a little less of an undertaking for them.
“We’re just finding out bits that are potentially coming in middle of next year to update some of the products that have recently launched. That’s all going to have been purely based on the feedback of our retailers, and the consumers as well, to constantly try and make their life a little bit easier.
“And then beyond that, there’s some products in the pipeline that will open up potentially new markets for us.”
