Put Your Best Foot Forward with These Minimalist Shoes

Tell us a bit about the Wildling journey to now…

Ran and I met in Israel while I was studying in Tel Aviv. Our kids grew up roaming the Israeli countryside with bare feet, developing an amazing sense of body control and swift, agile movement in the process. In 2013, we moved back to Germany and the kids needed shoes for the first time in their lives. When they put them on, the change was immediately noticeable – their movement became less fluid, they kept stumbling over obstacles and, most of all, they simply hated the shoes, and kept taking them off at the first chance given. Ran is a sports therapist by profession – he started analysing shoes and how their features impact movement, and came up with ideas of how to construct a shoe that would be truly different. I had studied literature and history but had always loved communication and forming relationships. We had no clue about shoes and how to make them, and little to no experience in running a business. Looking back, I think that both were a blessing. Knowing nothing about shoemaking, we were able to imagine an everyday product from a completely fresh perspective, and being amateurs in management helped us create a company culture based on trust and intuition.

What is your approach to minimalism?

We live in a world where, for decades, everything has been pushed into one direction – more, more, more. Limitless extraction of resources, greed and economic systems built to grow continuously without calculating the true human and environmental costs of our economic activities have created the huge challenges we’re faced with – climate change and global injustice. We, therefore, urgently need to find ways to build regenerative economic systems by emulating nature’s principles and indigenous wisdom. Creating a minimalist product lies at the core of that. Using as few resources as possible to create our shoes is a big step towards a more sustainable product.

Why do you think foot health is so often overlooked?

Conventional footwear has an effect on foot shape and muscle strength, such as deformation of the big toe. If you think about a baby’s foot, the toes fan out widely, almost forming a triangular shape with the heel. Regular shoes have a very different shape – their front tends to come to a point, making our feet appear slimmer and daintier. Squeezing our toes together has an adverse effect on the natural angle of the big toe, something that can be detected from a very early age and that gets worse each year. Add to that a weakening of the foot muscles, because our muscles are held as if in a cast and cannot work to get strong in stiff shoes or shoes with supportive structures. The most frequent feedback we receive from customers, who are getting used to walking in Wildlings, is that their feet become accustomed to the natural freedom – it becomes nearly impossible to put on an old pair of shoes again.

As an organisation we have an even bigger responsibility than as individuals to question how we act and to find ways to do better.

How do you stay the course?

To hold ourselves accountable, we have formulated three big mission goals – saving 500,000 hectares for regenerative agriculture and rewilding; investing 50 million euros into the circular economy, partnerships and climate protection; and reaching 100 million people to learn with and from each other and strive for transformational change – and we are keeping track of our progress.