✳️ It’s a Sole Sport

On the Rise of Vibram

Hey pals,

We reached over 1000 subscribers a few weeks ago, which is insane. Thank you you lovely lot! I’m always appreciative that people spend their spare time reading my nonsense, when they could be scrolling instagram instead (or running, but you know, who does that these days?)

The photos from the Peak Divide came back last week and i have yet another photo to add to the “Matt looking fresh after running 50 miles” album.

“My photo shoot”

An annoying trait of mine is to not look tired despite being up at an ungodly hour and traipsing my corpse around some bog-riddled hills for 12 hours. Fun facts! ✨

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On to this week’s newsletter - we’re talking about the rise of a brand that is everywhere, but everyone takes for granted - Vibram.

Hope you enjoy and have a great week,

Matt

At the 2024 UTMB final, Bouilard, Chassagne and López stood on the finish line, a mixture of exhaustion and surprise etched on their faces. Beneath their feet laid a striking similarity: Vibram. Three different brands, three different shoes, and one sole. It was Vibram that connected them all, steadying their footing across the alpine terrain.

That same week, the world learned two more things. Nike, a brand known for doing things their own way, announced a new partnership with Vibram in their Kiger 10s. In the same day, Norda revealed their collaboration with the legendary sole-maker, but this time for something entirely new: midsole technology.

It wasn’t just a big week for Vibram. It was the kind of week that makes you pause and realise: Vibram has been here all along, quietly shaping the way runners move across mountains, through bogs, and over rocky trails. But midsoles? This is a different direction.

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The Vibram story begins not on a trail, but in tragedy. In 1935, Vitale Bramani lost six of his closest friends to the unforgiving slopes of the Alps. Back then, climbing shoes were nothing more than leather and hobnails, treacherous on wet rock. Bramani knew that something had to change. Out of that grief, he created the first rubber sole for mountaineers—an innovation born not from ambition, but necessity.

Fast forward several decades, and Vibram had shifted from saving lives in mountaineering to making a name for itself in the world of trail running. The trail running was just beginning to flourish in France in 2006, giving Jerome Bernard, Vibram’s Global Marketing Manager, an idea that there was an opportunity here. With trail runners facing similar grip requirements to mountaineers in mountainous events, and current shoes offering minimal innovation beyond different variants of rubber and lug placement, Bernard recognised Vibram could expand their market opportunity into a new category.

Before they even had a dedicated product for trail runners, Vibram sponsored UTMB in 2007. It was a perfect match. The historic brand, known for reliability and toughness, found its stage at the toughest ultramarathon in the world. But it really needed to sell something.

The category faced three challenges. First, there was conquering grip and durability which led Vibram to develop MegaGrip in 2013—Vibram’s answer to slick, technical terrain. This compound, developed over years of research, became the gold standard for grip on wet and dry surfaces. With their strong French connection, Hoka were one of the first brands to adopt Megagrip in their Speedgoat shoes in 2015 – and they have continued using it ever since.

Then, the second challenge was lightness - hello Litebase, an evolution that kept soles lighter without sacrificing performance. With these innovations, Vibram became the cornerstone of trust in trail running. If you saw the yellow octagon on your sole, you knew you were ready for anything the trail could throw at you.

There is a footnote to Vibram’s entry into running that still exists today – the Vibram FiveFinger, those black slabs of rubber people adorned around 2009-13 when runners suddenly had a primal urge to return to barefoot running because it was ‘natural’. I’m not sure the product made sense for the ingredient brand to make then, nor it does now, but it certainly sold in America and made an impact on the barefoot running scene, fuelled on by the promise of injury-free running by Christopher McDougall’s ‘Born to run’ and later Altra’s philosophy. The shoes were likely many runners first introduction to the Vibram brand, but It’s fair to say after the rise of Hoka, the shoes aren’t as popular as they once were and the barefoot associations Vibram had have largely been forgotten (although they’re making a coming back in the fashion world?).

Over the years Vibram progressed from Hoka’s trail running shoes to Altra to Arcteryx to Nike, and is now being used by start-ups like Norda, 4T2 and Nnormal. But here’s a question: why would well-funded brands like Nike or start-ups like Norda and Nnormal turn to Vibram when they could develop their own soles for less?

Part of the answer is trust. Vibram isn’t just rubber. It’s a promise. A promise that when you’re barreling down a mountain, the ground beneath you won’t betray your footing. It’s a promise that on rain-slicked rocks or loose scree, your shoes will grip where they need to. For runners—whether elite athletes or “weekend warriors” (I kind of hate that phrase, but whatever)—that promise is invaluable.

For ingredient brands like Vibram or Gore-Tex or even Intel, trust that your product will perform better than the standard is gold dust. When the incorporation of these brands into a product comes at a premium, they need to have consumer trust.

In an era when trail running shoes are increasing and the cost of living is still high (yes smarties, inflation is dropping but prices are holding), Vibram’s presence on the outsole signals to the customer that their investment is secure—that they’re paying for durability, performance, and longevity. Whilst the prices for Vibram-tagged products are generally higher, their brand equity offers peace of mind that what consumers are buying will endure the harshest conditions, making the investment feel more justified.

On the other side of the coin, for brands, the Vibram logo allows brands to lift their price point without immediate customer pushback. Consumers recognise that Vibram’s technology comes with a reputation for excellence, so they're more willing to pay a premium knowing the product will deliver on its promises. The association with a well-established, high-quality ingredient brand like Vibram can give brands a reason to raise prices while maintaining customer trust and satisfaction.

Let’s also not forget that innovation in sole technology has been lacking over the past 20 years. Sure Salomon have Contragrip and Inov8 have Graphene grip and Continental keep trying to make inroads, but nothing has stuck. Reviews continually find these compounds are great on some terrain but suck at others. It’s this background of unreliability in current competition that has allowed Vibram to build its comparatively trusted reputation.

This level of trust is not a given. It’s something Bernard has purposely built over the 18 years they’ve been in trail running. Whilst most ingredient brands work in the shadows, Vibram spends 80% of their marketing budget on consumer facing marketing. This comes through in their long-term partnership with UTMB, tying itself to the world’s premier alpine ultra. Also in their Mobile Innovation Lab that goes from event to event, offering runners a chance to test Vibram’s technology, re-sole their shoes, see the difference for themselves, and offer feedback. It’s personal. It’s human. And it’s a rare move for a company that could have stayed comfortably behind the scenes.

Let’s not forget their pièce de resistance: the yellow octagon on every sole. It’s been there since 1967 as a marker of their history and resilient reputation in the outdoors. A simple yellow badge, but one that crystalises all their marketing investment into a visual emblem that signals to consumers at the point of looking at that daunting shoe wall running stores love to have that this is a shoe that will grip when you need it.

Apparently, it’s shape is meant to represent the octagon shape of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a four-story double arcade in the centre of town named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of the Kingdom of Italy. How very classy. How very Italian.

You could say Vibram have provided the pickaxes in the gold rush – they have ridden the boom through supplying the means necessary for trail running brands to compete. And now, Vibram is venturing into new territory—midsoles.

As they demonstrated with their partnership with Norda’s in the 005, the aim is to leverage their commercial technology and experience to build the midsoles of running shoes. From a commercial position, this makes sense – there are only so many shoes out there that are appropriate for Vibram to be on (any shoes designed for mountains and ultras). Through midsoles they can expand their coverage horizontally to all running shoes and vertically to offer an all-in-one solution for brands looking for the sole and midsole technology.

In a way, this is an easier market for them to crack. Bernard was keen to point out that Vibram in uniquely positioned to build these midsoles since they have the technology that few over companies do. Their name already carries weight. Every major trail runner already knows the quality of a Vibram sole. But moving into midsoles means moving into the realm of performance and stepping slightly away from what they’re known for—safety and grip.

Midsole technology is about energy return, cushioning, and comfort. It’s the heart of a shoe’s performance, not just the protective layer between you and the ground. It’s where runners expect speed, not just reliability. For Vibram this poses both an opportunity and a risk.

So what does this mean for Vibram’s future? It means they’re not content with being the best at one thing. They’re ready to expand beyond soles, to bring the same trust they’ve built over decades into new parts of the running shoe. But it also signals a subtle shift—a move from protection to performance, from reliability to innovation.