One of the co-founders of the defunct Environmentally Neutral Design footwear is launching a new “active-lifestyle brand focused in the fusion of health and wellness.” LUME will sell a ‘wellness system’ comprised of footwear, inserts, and socks. It’s a total package for your feet; kind of like if Chaco started making socks to wear with their sandals.

END made fantastic shoes, and I’m happy I still have some miles left on mine for when summer rolls around. I’m interested to see what LUME does, but my concern is that their plan is too ambitious. When I worked at a ski shop fitting people with ski boots, I’d have customers come in and tell me they had really wide or narrow feet, and when I measured them, I found their feet were often way off from what they thought. If you’re selling shoes that need to be customized with inserts, you’re going to have to sell them at places where bootfitters get them setup right, and that’s a limiting proposition. Not many skilled bootfitters like working in Dick’s Sporting Goods for $8 an hour.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 7:19 am and is filed under Shoes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.