I’m a skeptical person by nature, I question everything. I think the old adage of “If it’s sounds too good to be true…it probably is” holds true 99% of the time. If you understand capitalism and marketing, you know that a company tries to “kill” the consumer with options and that they will let you “hang yourself on a leash” with high profit options that they hope you choose instead of a basic model. I should also preface that I love capitalism, because it is economic freedom, even though I fully understand that companies will try to “exploit” the consumer.

A great example is toothpaste, the next time you’re in a store take a look at all the options that Crest gives the consumer. Now the basic Crest Toothpaste is going to cost the least and it will also have the lowest profit margin for Crest, that’s basic economics. Thus, Crest offers about 10-20 other options, tartar control, whitening, with Scope, Pro Health, et al. Now this is how Crest makes their money. They’ll charge $1-$2 more per tube, when the difference in cost of making basic Crest and Crest Whitening is probably a few cents. The goal is to find the consumer who is willing to spend extra, thus you give the consumer options, so that they start thinking, well perhaps I need this whitening toothpaste.

The same holds true with running shoes. I recently just cancelled by 24 Hour Fitness membership, which I picked up when I was rehabing from my injury. When I went to 24 Hour Fitness, I generally wore a pair of old running shoes, that probably had 400+ miles on them and looked horrible. What I started to realize is that people who work out at health clubs are the same people who buy the $100+ running shoes. On the flip side when I go to a road race, I see most people wearing shoes that are in the $80-$100 category. I suppose the major difference between active runners and people who work out at health clubs is that at a health club more people see your shoes. Thus, those people have more of an incentive to drop $160 on a pair of Nike 360’s. I literally saw more top of the line running shoes at the health club than at your average local road race, even though most of those people were not runners.

This brings me to the point of my article, Newton Running Shoes. I subscribe to Inc. Magazine and this month they had a stellar article on Newton Running Shoes called Keep Running. When I started reading the article, I figured it would be a normal fluff piece, but then I remembered that I was reading Inc., and not Runner’s World and Inc. does not pull any punches, so to speak.

Newton Running Shoes go for a pricey $180. The premise of the Newton Running Shoe is that it is suppose to make the runner land on his forefoot, instead of their heal, which Newton claims is a superior running style. This is a great excerpt from the Inc. article. Brian Russel was the inventor of Newton technology and was later bought 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.

Thus, the entire invention, the concept of Newton which they tried to sell to other shoe companies was removed for cosmetic reason. The author also takes a stab at a review done by TheGearJunkie who reviewed the Newtons and made the comment:

“I noticed that the Gear Junkie 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.”

The Gear Junkie responds to the article here, where he states the reason why he ran slower but that still doesn’t validate his comment of “feeling faster”.

A few thoughts, first, by pricing the Newton at $180, I’d say that is a great marketing move. In Economics we call this a Veblen Good. Simply put, if you price a good well above the current market rate, people will think that the shoe must be truly special. Newton also states the the shoes last from 300-400 miles, if you do a worst case scenario that’s $1.67 per mile ran.

It’s also interesting that Newton chooses to sponsor triathletes as opposed to runners. My assumption is that the triathlete market is better suited for Newton, here is my reasoning:

The 60,000 subscribers of Triathlete magazine have a median income of $122,600, according to co-owner Mitch Thrower, with 93.4 percent earning more than $100,000. Average income among athletes competing in the 22 official Ironman events: nearly $160,000.

Newton is going after a niche market, a niche where the average athlete makes a good salary. On the flip side, readers of Runner’s World readers have a median household income of $83k, click here, which is about $40k less than Triathlete Magazine.

I have nothing against Triathletes, I know several and they are early adopters when it comes to technology and technological promises. After all, a lot of these guys will spend $1k, just to lighten their bike by a pound when they themselves are still at 10%+ body fat. Thus, if you’re going to sell a $180 shoe, these are the people to hit up.

Running Shoe Companies make a lot of promises, stability shoes, motion controlled shoes, cushioned shoes, et al. Personally, I’m a fan of neutral, lightweight shoes. This article, sums up most of my thoughts and beliefs on running shoes.

I’ve gone online and found several forums where people who have bought the Newton Running Shoe, rave about the shoe, but color me suspicous, because I am also aware of the endowment effect. I personally don’t know anyone who has owned a pair of Newton Running Shoes, but the few times that I have seen them worn it’s by your average runner, not the speedsters.