Why The Same Brand Is On The Bottom Of Every Boot

Summary

Michael Kristy investigates why the little yellow Vibram octagon appears on the bottom of virtually every serious boot on the planet. The story begins with founder Vitale Bramani, an elite Italian climber who guided King Albert I of Belgium through the Dolomites and belonged to the Milanese climbing club SEM. In 1930s climbing, “grip” meant jute rope-soled espadrille-style shoes and “traction” meant iron-spiked overboots — two separate tools for two separate jobs. When a fast-moving weather change trapped a lightly-packed SEM party on Punta Rasica, the frozen rope soles became useless; climbers descended in their wool socks, and six people died. Bramani’s answer was the Carrarmato (“tank tread”) sole — the first rubber outsole to combine grip and traction in one design, the sole that later conquered K2 and carried Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Everest.

After emailing Vibram and getting invited to their Italian headquarters, Michael gets a masterclass in outsole engineering. Using the Nike Air Force 1 as the teaching example, he shows how every element of an outsole maps to its intended use: flat surfaces maximize court contact, sharp edges displace dust and sweat, circular patterns enable pivoting, and Vibram’s street-ready redesign breaks those circles up with edges so city walkers don’t roll an ankle. He breaks down the Carrarmato lug-by-lug — the giant heel lug for descents, angled side lugs that bite in all directions, and the four-pointed quadrilobo star (borrowed from the tiles of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II) symbolizing traction in all four cardinal directions. The modern Megagrip compound gets its own demonstration: instead of using soft, fragile rock-climbing rubber, Vibram dampens the springiness of a harder rubber so the energy goes into the ground (“thump thump thump” instead of “boink boink boink”), letting Michael run up a wet 45-degree concrete ramp.

The final question is why a company like Nike — with a market cap around 67 billion dollars — doesn’t just cut Vibram out and make its own soles. Michael’s answer: it would be kind of stupid. The added margin is dwarfed by the complexity of running a Vibram-sized operation, and money alone can’t buy Vibram’s “knowledge base fortress” of 90 years of compound chemistry, design translation, and testing infrastructure. Any brand that tried would be competing against Nike, New Balance, La Sportiva, and every other brand that puts Vibram on its footwear. Vibram wins, Michael concludes, because 90 years ago they weren’t the king of the mountain — they were the king of understanding how a rubber outsole should actually work.

Highlights

”Six people ended up dying”

“It was freezing cold, the rope-soled shoes were ineffective. A lot of climbers took off their rope-soled shoes and tried to descend just in their wool socks because they thought they had a better chance, but six people ended up dying.” — Michael Kristy, 6:51

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”You can’t group grip and traction into one thing”

“Before visiting Vibram, I was grouping grip and traction into one thing. You can’t do that. When you think of grip, think of to be the easiest way, think of sticky rubber on a very flat smooth surface. That is friction, that is locked down and you’re gripping onto the ground.” — Michael Kristy, 4:58

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How Vibram fixed the Air Force 1 for the street

“So how do you keep fundamentally the same circular design built to allow basketball players to pivot and stop people going to New York from twisting their ankle because their shoe pivots on them” — Michael Kristy, 9:22

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”Boink boink boink” versus “thump thump thump”

“If we have a really springy rubber as you walk or run, it’s gonna go boink, boink, boink, boink. Obviously not that much, the rubber itself is gonna be doing that. But if we dampen that so the rubber doesn’t spring back, the energy goes somewhere else and it goes thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.” — Michael Kristy, 12:26

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”Vibram has a knowledge base fortress”

“Vibram has a knowledge base fortress and unless you can scoop up everything that makes Vibram Vibram, which you virtually can’t do, you will never compete with someone like Vibram who is making the best outsoles in basically every sector of the footwear industry for everybody.” — Michael Kristy, 14:11

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How Vibram wins arguments: film the test

“And Vibram was like, no, that’s, you do not want to do that, trust us, you don’t want to do it. And the brand was like, oh yes, we do. So instead of arguing with them, Vibram goes to their massive testing facility and they set up a little test and film it for the brand.” — Michael Kristy, 15:10

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Key Points

• The most important slab of rubber in footwear history (0:05) - The original Vibram sole conquered K2 and was worn by Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Everest.
• Copy tanks, not dress shoes (0:27) - Vitale Bramani’s insight: rubber outsoles should mimic tank treads, not the bottoms of old leather dress shoes. Hence the Carrarmato, Italian for tank.
• The freezer demonstration (0:49) - Michael soaks rope-soled shoes and freezes them to simulate the conditions thought to have killed six of Bramani’s climbing companions.
• Why is Vibram still relevant? (1:18) - 90 years later there are 70-billion-dollar footwear brands far bigger than Vibram, yet the same outsole design persists.
• Michael visits Vibram (1:29) - Vibram is more an engineering company than anything else; they let him in to try everything and annoy the lead designers.
• 1930s grip technology: espadrilles (4:17) - Climbing footwear used wrapped jute rope soles — flexible and bouncy, good on smooth dry rock, terrible everywhere else.
• 1930s traction technology: iron spikes (5:18) - Hobnail boots and 1940s French overboots bit into the ground with iron spikes; traction and grip were separate tools.
• Bramani, elite climber (5:45) - He was the personal climbing guide for King Albert I of Belgium in the Dolomites and a member of the Società Escursionisti Milanesi (SEM).
• The Punta Rasica disaster (6:29) - Eighteen SEM climbers packed light in good weather, left ice axes behind, and got caught when the weather turned; six died.
• A system-wide failure (7:03) - Not just footwear: too many people moving too slowly with bad footwear. Bramani concluded traction and grip should not be separate things.
• Anatomy of the Air Force 1 sole (7:37) - Flat outsole for court contact, sharp edges to displace dust and sweat, circles for pivoting, and pockets at heel and toe pivot points.
• The street-ready redesign (9:32) - Keeping the circular design language but breaking the circles up with edges so the sole catches instead of pivoting — the translation work brands pay Vibram for.
• Carrarmato lug design (9:55) - The world’s largest lug at the heel for downhill braking, flat angled side lugs biting in all directions, wide flat tops for maximum contact area.
• The quadrilobo star (10:52) - The four-pointed star from Italian gothic architecture, seen in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, symbolizing traction in all four cardinal directions.
• Megagrip and rubber springiness (12:13) - Instead of soft, fragile rock-climbing rubber, Vibram dampens a harder rubber’s rebound so energy transfers to grip — durable for hundreds of miles.
• Why Nike doesn’t compete (13:25) - The added margin from in-house soles is dwarfed by the complexity of running a giant company like Vibram; you connect with two people instead of hiring 10,000.
• Money does not mean success (13:58) - You can’t just keep throwing money at something and beat everybody; rivaling Vibram means going against every brand that uses them.
• The design consultation role (14:51) - Vibram works with talented designers at giant brands and tells them when a cool design isn’t as effective as they think.
• Why the Carrarmato survives (15:56) - Vibram has since surpassed it for pure mountaineering with hyper-specific designs, but the original compound, structure, and traction remain excellent for general use.
• Next video: Ventile (16:59) - Michael signs off teasing the next topic.

Mentions

Companies

• Vibram (1:18) - The Italian outsole maker at the center of the video; Michael visits their headquarters and designers.
• Nike (1:59) - The 70-billion-dollar company that still comes to Vibram; asked them to fix the Air Force 1 for street use.
• Unbound Merino (3:17) - Sponsor; merino wool boxer briefs with 1,335 five-star reviews, staged as a funeral for Michael’s 14-year-old underwear.
• Macy’s / Alfani (2:20) - Michael’s deceased Macy’s-branded Alfani underwear, eulogized in the sponsor segment.
• New Balance (14:26) - Cited among the brands that would align against any Vibram challenger.
• La Sportiva (14:26) - Another Vibram partner brand named in the competitive-moat argument.
• Limmer (5:18) - Bootmaker referenced for a shot of hobnail boots.
• Società Escursionisti Milanesi (SEM) (6:18) - The Milanese climbing club Bramani belonged to; 18 of its members joined the fatal Punta Rasica climb.

Products & Technologies

• Carrarmato sole (0:41) - Vibram’s original tank-tread outsole, born from the 1930s climbing tragedy and still in production.
• Megagrip compound (11:40) - Vibram’s modern grip rubber that let Michael run up a wet 45-degree concrete ramp.
• Nike Air Force 1 (7:25) - The basketball outsole Vibram translated for street use, used as the video’s teaching example.
• Espadrilles / jute rope soles (4:17) - The 1930s grip solution; wrapped rope soles that failed in freezing wet conditions.
• Hobnail boots / French overboots (5:18) - The 1930s-40s traction solution with iron spikes that bite into the ground.
• Quadrilobo (10:59) - The four-pointed star of Italian gothic architecture at the center of the Carrarmato sole.
• Merino wool boxer briefs (3:17) - Unbound Merino’s 18.5-micron wool underwear; absorbs 30% of its weight in moisture without feeling wet.

People

• Michael Kristy (0:00) - Host of The Iron Snail, narrating his visit to Vibram.
• Vitale Bramani (0:16) - Elite Italian climber and Vibram founder; the brand name combines his own — “Mr. Vibram.”
• Jim Whittaker (0:09) - First American to summit Mount Everest, wearing the Vibram sole.
• King Albert I of Belgium (5:45) - Bramani was his personal climbing guide in the Dolomites (and briefly possesses Michael).
• Domi (6:15) - Michael’s Italian friend from Brescia who pronounces “Società Escursionisti Milanesi” and “quadrilobo.”
• Tena (0:52) - Will kill Michael if the freezer gets dirty during the rope-sole experiment.
• Cassidy and Jordan (2:30) - Taylor’s sister and her boyfriend, who folded the laundry and decided Michael needed new underwear.

Surprising Quotes

“Mr. Vibram saw something at the time that no one else saw. With rubber, we shouldn’t be trying to copy the bottoms of old leather dress shoes, we should be trying to copy tanks.” — Michael Kristy, 0:27

“So, I just emailed them and said, can I come over? And they said, ask your mom. And I, my mom said yes.” — Michael Kristy, 1:29

“When you’re the first guy adding this much traction to an outsole and you think where do I want people to have a lot of traction you think in every major direction north south east and west so you just put that symbol right here for that reason” — Michael Kristy, 11:14

“But the other thing that I’m consistently learning over time is that money does not automatically mean success. You can’t just keep throwing money at something and it’s going to beat everybody. That doesn’t work.” — Michael Kristy, 13:58

“Big brands still call them because they actually weren’t the king of the mountain 90 years ago, they were the king of understanding how a rubber outsole should actually work in different environments.” — Michael Kristy, 15:56

Transcript

Michael Kristy: 0:00 Riddle me this: Why is this little yellow symbol on every single good boot? Because that is the most important slab of rubber in footwear history. The original version of this design is what conquered K2 for the first time. Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mount Everest, wearing this sole. Suddenly, the elite mountain climbers at the time were flying up mountains because they had some rocket fuel under their feet, invented by one of the greatest climbers to ever climb, Vitale Bramani, aka Mr. Vibram. That’s just a combination of his name.

Michael Kristy: 0:27 Mr. Vibram saw something at the time that no one else saw. With rubber, we shouldn’t be trying to copy the bottoms of old leather dress shoes, we should be trying to copy tanks. And that is exactly what this is. The Carrarmato, Italian for tank. The Carrarmato exists though because of what happens when I do this. I take these, run them under water, and then to simulate what actually happens, I’ll take these and I’ll put them in our freezer. Tena’s going to kill me if this freezer gets dirty.

Michael Kristy: 0:54 What I just simulated is thought to have killed six of Vitale Bramani’s climbing companions on a climb that he was actually on. That was part of the recipe that led to their death. And of course, their deaths brought the Carrarmato to life. But not for nothing, that was 90 years ago. There weren’t giant 70 billion dollar footwear brands 90 years ago. They are way bigger than Vibram. So, my question was, why is Vibram still relevant? Especially because they’re still making the exact same outsole. Well, it did update in design a little bit, but pretty similar.

Michael Kristy: 1:29 I really wanted to find out, especially because Vibram is more of an engineering company than anything else. So, I just emailed them and said, can I come over? And they said, ask your mom. And I, my mom said yes. And on top of that, they let me come in, try everything out, annoy their lead designers, and say why do these lines spin around the boot? Why are they flat? What is this star doing in the center? In the winter time, I used your soles to sprint across ice, now going up this very steep concrete thing with water coming down it. How are you doing that? How exactly are you doing that? I’d like to start my own outsole company.

Michael Kristy: 1:59 And yes, I did ask the big question. Nike is a 70 billion dollar company. There’s other giant companies. Why do they all still come to Italy to you guys when they want the absolute best? So, today’s agenda is to go over three things: traction, grip, and what 70 billion dollars still can’t buy.

Michael Kristy: 2:20 We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Michael’s Macy’s branded Alfani underwear, which he has worn weekly for approximately 14 years. Its death follows the tragic moment of Taylor’s sister Cassidy trying to be nice when she visited and folding their laundry for them. As we all know, she folded Michael’s undies and apparently she and her new boyfriend Jordan did discuss that it was time for Michael to get…

Michael Kristy: 3:00 New underwear. Hello old chap. Good to see you. Alfani? Ay, himself. Michael, before I go, who’s going to carry my torch? No, I don’t want to replace you. Who could possibly ever replace you? Only one brand is worthy of caressing your butt and the thing on the front.

Michael Kristy: 3:17 Sorry, I had a case of the giggles. What is that thing? Anyway, the brand goes by the name Unbound Merino. Their men’s merino wool boxer briefs have 1,335 five-star reviews. They’re made from superfine merino wool. What micron is the wool fiber? What? Uh, 18.5. Yeah, wow. It’s more than you can ever need, and the dual structure of wool’s fiber means it can absorb up to 30% of its weight in moisture and not feel wet. It’s temperature regulating, and the chemical makeup of wool helps it naturally resist odors. Great for the upcoming summer weather.

Michael Kristy: 3:46 I mean Alfani, that’s incredible, but how, the history we’ve had… Michael, please. Get some new underwear. You’re a grown man. Macy’s killed me for a reason. Check out the link in your own description and feel the unbound bounds of actually good underwear.

Michael Kristy: 4:04 Okay. The two most important words in this video are grip and traction. Bramani and Vibram is the master at both. But in the 1930s, when Bramani was climbing, that was not the case. You had these. This was your grip. You probably recognize these if I do this. Do those look more familiar? They’re espadrilles. What’s very important about them is their sole. This is a wrapped rope sole made from jute. Climbing footwear in the 1930s did not look like this, but it did use this sole. So, that’s why I got them. Luckily these don’t fit me so they look terrible. Get in there you little bugger.

Michael Kristy: 4:46 At the time, in the 1930s, rope soles were really good when you were going up smooth and dry rocks because they can get into all the little nooks and crannies on the rock. The flexibility of the soles combined with the kind of soft bouncy aspect of the rope and everything allowed climbers to get a lot of grip, or some grip. Before visiting Vibram, I was grouping grip and traction into one thing. You can’t do that. When you think of grip, think of to be the easiest way, think of sticky rubber on a very flat smooth surface. That is friction, that is locked down and you’re gripping onto the ground. That is where these rope soles came in handy on a climb. But they suck for anything else.

Michael Kristy: 5:18 Okay, now pretend I’m a boot. When we’re talking about traction, we’re talking about actually biting into the ground. And these are the teeth that were biting into the ground around this time period. Technically these should be hobnail boots, which I think I have a shot of from Limmer of, but these are 1940s French overboots. This is probably not what most mountain climbers were doing, but maybe some people kept them. You’d put these on and those iron spikes bite into the ground so you’re locked in. That is traction.

Michael Kristy: 5:45 Bramani was an elite level climber. Like I said, probably one of the best in the world. He was the personal tour guide for King… King Albert the first of Belgium when he was climbing the Dolomites. That just like shot into my brain like I was… That’s my King Albert the first of Belgium, nice to meet you. Whoa, whoa, sorry. Did I do that thing where I get possessed by King Albert the first of Belgium again?

Michael Kristy: 6:08 Long story short, Bramani is an elite level climber and he belongs to a group of fellow elite level climbers called - I had my friend Domi read it for me because she’s Italian, she lives in Brescia. Società Escursionisti Milanesi. But I’m just gonna call it SEM. The people in SEM also elite climbers.

Michael Kristy: 6:24 But recently, Bramani climbed a mountain called Punta Rasica and he was about to do it again. And 18 other people from SEM were like, “I would also love to do that. Also, the weather is really nice, so let’s just pack really light. We can go up and down super quick. We’ll only bring our rope-soled shoes and we’ll leave our ice axes behind and a lot of our packs behind.” In short, of course, the weather changed very fast. All of a sudden, they were almost at the top and they had a huge problem. It was freezing cold, the rope-soled shoes were ineffective. A lot of climbers took off their rope-soled shoes and tried to descend just in their wool socks because they thought they had a better chance, but six people ended up dying.

Michael Kristy: 7:03 Not just because of the footwear. It was a system-wide failure. Too many people moving too slowly with bad footwear and speed was the main thing here. But Bramani looked at footwear and said, “There’s a lot of stuff I can fix here. Namely, traction and grip should not be separate things.” So the question becomes, sure, okay, traction makes sense, but this is specifically engineered for a maximum amount of traction. So why? How does it work? And the answer to that is actually best shown through a Nike Air Force One because Nike said, “Vibram, would you mind helping us fix something?”

Michael Kristy: 7:37 First thing you need to do when designing an outsole is decide, what is that outsole for? This outsole is for the basketball court, so you need a lot of grip. So when you flip this little fish over, you expect to see a relatively flat outsole. If my hand is the court, you’re trying to make sure you have as much contact with the ground as possible. But of course, the court isn’t perfectly smooth. We do have very nice lacquered wood, but on top of that wood is dust, sweat, little debris and stuff like that.

Michael Kristy: 8:04 So you need to have some things on the bottom of the sole that are going to displace that dust and sweat and everything on the ground. So these sharp edges and these rows and everything can actually come in contact with the lacquer wood floor and not just dust. And then if you’re a basketball player, you’re doing a whole lot of this. You’re running forward, you’re stopping, you’re going backwards, you’re going side to side. So we need to make sure the actual shoe is designed like that. This is my favorite part of the video by the way.

Michael Kristy: 8:30 When we have a player going forward, we need these guys, these little edges looking for the ground to be able to grab on and allow you to go forward. But also since this is circular, we need these guys when you’re going side to side so you don’t just slip this way and go forward that way. So why is it a circle you may ask? Well, because when you’re playing basketball, the biggest thing that you’re probably doing is pivoting. When you pivot, those circles allow you to freely move. And look at this: the main pivot points, your heel and your toe, actually have a little pocket taken out. So when you’re putting all the weight there, you have please… has as little grip as possible but you have it everywhere else but these are not really worn on the basketball court anymore they’re specifically worn around town outside stuff like that.

Michael Kristy: 9:11 So Nike brings up Vibram and says this is iconic we need to keep this general language but we really want to make an Air Force 1 that’s way better on the streets of New York or in your town whatever. So how do you keep fundamentally the same circular design built to allow basketball players to pivot and stop people going to New York from twisting their ankle because their shoe pivots on them. The answer is you keep those circles and the design language but you break them up and add edges all the way around. So now if my hand is the ground instead of rotating smoothly it gets stuck in all these different places. This transformation is one of the reasons Vibram is so powerful and brands go to them translating this iconic design to pure modern day performance very hard to do.

Michael Kristy: 9:55 So if we break down the Carrarmato sole this is not made for the basketball courts this is to give you predictable footing on uneven and unpredictable terrain. First thing we have is the world’s largest lug the heel if you’re going downhill obviously this can grip and bite onto certain things make sure you don’t slip. You’ll notice that these lugs on the sides are very flat and they’re also pitching at an angle all the way around. When you put down your foot you’re getting bite from the outside edges in all directions and they’re very flat and wide as you go to the top because according to Vibram that gives you maximum surface area when you’re making contact with the ground.

Michael Kristy: 10:31 But what the heck is going on with these four-sided stars that was my biggest question. The story goes that Vitale Bramani looked up when he was walking through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and that’s where he saw the shape of the yellow Vibram logo but also the story goes or at least it’s a bit more internal to Vibram he looked down and saw these tiles which of course boom right here easy answer.

Michael Kristy: 10:52 But this four-pointed star is actually incredibly important in Italian gothic architecture. It’s called a quadrilobo, which she kind of like puffed into the microphone when she did it so I asked her if she could do it again and she got a little annoyed but still did it. Quadrilobo. Thank you Domi anyways very famous shape has a lot of symbolism to it especially in the world of religion.

Michael Kristy: 11:14 But also it represents the four cardinal directions north south east and west when you’re the first guy adding this much traction to an outsole and you think where do I want people to have a lot of traction you think in every major direction north south east and west so you just put that symbol right here for that reason. But it’s if you think about it for more than 10 seconds now in 2026 you’re like well what if you did like a circle or this weird design with a dip in it you could make it a lot better and that’s true.

Michael Kristy: 11:35 That’s the final question of the video it’s broken up into three parts first we have to do grip in compounds because we have something called Megagrip and it allows me to go up this. That’s one grip this is the other. Traditionally to get a ton of grip you want a really soft outsole.

Michael Kristy: 12:00 You want like when you look at rock climbers, that rubber at the bottom insanely soft and it oozes and falls into all the cracks of the rock and gives them really rock solid grip. But it’s not very durable and it doesn’t, it yeah, it’s just not durable. But of course you are Vibram and you have a crack team of engineers saying, well, it doesn’t need to be totally soft exactly because we can play with one more setting: the actual springiness of the rubber.

Michael Kristy: 12:26 If we have a really springy rubber as you walk or run, it’s gonna go boink, boink, boink, boink. Obviously not that much, the rubber itself is gonna be doing that. But if we dampen that so the rubber doesn’t spring back, the energy goes somewhere else and it goes thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. So what we could do instead of making an incredibly soft rubber that’s going to get ripped up is we can make a harder rubber with less of that boink boink boink bounce and that thump thump thump instead is going to give the runner or the wearer more grip.

Michael Kristy: 12:53 And we’ll make lugs specifically that bite into the ground when you’re running forward and when you’re descending, we’ll reverse them so that way when you’re slowing down, you also have traction there. And all of a sudden people like me can run up a 45 degree angle wet piece of concrete with mega grip and feel fine and not slip because they’re changing the actual springiness of the rubber and keeping it firm and durable so you can run hundreds of miles with it at the same time. And that leads us to why Nike doesn’t compete with Vibram even though technically they could.

Michael Kristy: 13:25 Last time I checked, the market cap of Nike was 67 billion dollars. So the natural question I had was if you’re worth that much money, why not just cut Vibram out and make your own soles and make a ton more money doing that? And uh it’s for a few reasons. The first reason is just that would be kind of stupid. The added margin or money that Nike can make by making their own soles is completely dwarfed by the complexity of running a giant company like Vibram. That is a huge web of people that you can just outsource. You have to connect with two people at Vibram instead of hire 10,000 people.

Michael Kristy: 13:58 But the other thing that I’m consistently learning over time is that money does not automatically mean success. You can’t just keep throwing money at something and it’s going to beat everybody. That doesn’t work. Vibram has a knowledge base fortress and unless you can scoop up everything that makes Vibram Vibram, which you virtually can’t do, you will never compete with someone like Vibram who is making the best outsoles in basically every sector of the footwear industry for everybody.

Michael Kristy: 14:26 If you try to rival Vibram, you are going up against New Balance, La Sportiva, Nike… every single brand that puts Vibram on the bottom of their footwear is going directly against you and you’ll never win. And unless your name is Vibram, the most valuable thing you bring to footwear is probably not the outsole. It could be the design, it could be your logo, it could be some new woven technology, but probably not this.

Michael Kristy: 14:51 A lot of what they do is work with insanely talented designers at giant brands, but they look a little bit closer and say, “while that design is cool, it’s not as effective as you think.” This is what I learned from this brand, this is what I learned from this brand. Let’s figure out… way to actually pull performance out of it. And the best example of this that I have and my favorite story from meeting all the people at Vibram is this. And I’m going to change the story a little bit so this brand doesn’t get mad at me.

Michael Kristy: 15:10 But the brand was like, hey Vibram, we want to change something very important, a few things very important, and it’s better, so just do it. And Vibram was like, no, that’s, you do not want to do that, trust us, you don’t want to do it. And the brand was like, oh yes, we do. So instead of arguing with them, Vibram goes to their massive testing facility and they set up a little test and film it for the brand. And they say, this is what you want to do.

Michael Kristy: 15:33 And they show a guy going up a similar ramp that I was going up in this shot and immediately upon putting his foot down, he falls forward. And then they go, and this is what we’re proposing. Same dude, same testing conditions, goes up that ramp without a care in the world and doesn’t slip. Doesn’t even need his hands for guidance. And Vibram’s just chilling in the corner and they’re like, so yeah, let us know if you want us to make that change, we could do it no problem.

Michael Kristy: 15:56 Ooh baby. So we end here. Me asking Vibram, isn’t can’t you make this like a billion times better? Why are you still using this? And essentially they were like, the original design was so good that it’s extremely capable and able to be used in a ton of different scenarios today. But in order to remain the best, we have to break up all of our designs into hyper-specific uses when we can. So we’ve destroyed the Carrarmato model for pure mountaineering with weight, with grip, with traction, everything. But this compound, the grip, the structure, the traction is way better for other use cases and is really good for general use cases, so it still survives today with minor tweaks as the times go on. And big brands still call them because they actually weren’t the king of the mountain 90 years ago, they were the king of understanding how a rubber outsole should actually work in different environments. And by fundamentally seeing outsoles a different way 90 years ago and never straying from that idea and becoming a boot company, there is nobody else in Vibram’s league. Any brand, no matter how big, that makes this part of the boot or sneaker is going to lose to these guys.

Michael Kristy: 16:59 Okay, anyways, that’s about it. I’ll see you soon. We’re talking about Ventile next video.