Glenview couple and Fleet Feet owners lend personal touch to footwear
Fleet Feet owners Dave and Lisa Zimmer have it on shirts, they have it on their website, because they believe it.
"Running changes everything."
Through technology that's only recently come online, one change is helping people run more smoothly, more comfortably, and thus helping minimize injury.
The Glenview couple, who in 1996 opened their first Fleet Feet franchise in Chicago and now operate six others including a store in Deerfield, have partnered with Washington-based insole company Superfeet to provide customers with ME3D personalized orthotic insoles.
When you think "ME," think you. The "3D," that's the ability to see a three-dimensional scan of the foot via computer wizardry, as well as the ability to print custom insoles.
The Fleet Feet folks can show that like snowflakes or finger prints, people's feet are different and unique. Even on the same person.
"The whole idea of ME3D was all about personalization," Dave Zimmer said. "When we're building that product and getting the data for that product, it's based on the fact that we know that somebody's left side is not the same as their right. You carry a bag on one shoulder, you write with one hand, it's personalizing it."
The ME3D is the end result of a process Dave and Lisa call Fit ID. Anyone seeking shoes at one of the Chicago metropolitan Fleet Feet locations will go through the fitting process but is under no obligation to buy the personalized insoles. Stores accept walk-ins for Fit ID, but prefer appointments.
An initial customer interview provides athletic and purchasing habits and history, which is then entered into a tablet. The second step measures customers' feet with a foot scanner and software by Volumental, a Swedish company. The scanner records the basics - width, length - as well as more specific measurements such as heel width, instep size and height of the arch.
"Higher-arched people require a different type of shoe than flat-footed people," Dave Zimmer said. "We need to make sure that we're addressing that."
This is not the clanky metal Brannock Device that's been a shoe store standby since 1927.
The final step is for the customer to walk on the store's "dynamic pressure plate" that shows gait, foot path and the foot's pressure points. Centered within a long rubber mat or "runway," only recently have these plates emerged from the purview of kinesiologists or biomechanics labs, Zimmer said.
"Most people have never seen themselves in motion before," he said. "They see still pictures of themselves and maybe every once in awhile they may see something in motion, but it's nothing that's analytical," he said.
"So what we're doing is we're pairing all these different images together to show people how they connect with the ground, disperse shock, and move forward, and then create something both in terms of a shoe and insole that are going to give them a more pleasurable experience."
Superfeet then uses all this data to three-dimensionally print out the insoles, available for pickup in the store or shipped to a customer within 10 days.
The results, Dave Zimmer said, "have been spectacular."
He used it himself following a knee replacement that has now altered his gait. He tossed his old insoles and got new ones that provided a vast improvement in comfort.
Dave and Lisa, Glenview residents the past 16 years after moving from the city, have been married 29 years. They met as sophomores at Columbia College in Chicago. Their high school-aged children, Sebastian and Bella, naturally are track and field athletes at Glenbrook South.
The kids work at the Deerfield store in the summer, and Lisa and Dave also employ high school students from Glenbrook North, Glenbrook South, Deerfield, Highland Park, Stevenson and Loyola Academy, Dave's alma mater.
Dave and Lisa first saw a pressure mapping system in a Colorado store about three years ago. One scan took 15 to 20 minutes; now the scanning process takes about four minutes.
Lisa, whose expertise is marketing, said, "It's so cool to be able to see something that your body's actually doing, and to realize that there are flaws in my feet, there are flaws in my gait, and everybody runs differently.
"You can't just say, 'Hey, what's the best shoe for me?' That's not an option anymore, there's so much footware out there that's made so differently, that's why the Fit process is so important."
It's important enough that Lisa said the Finnish running shoe manufacturer, Karhu, has collected information from more than 2 million foot scans done by Fleet Feet stores nationally to inform their production decisions. The Zimmers themselves have provided about 125,000 scans to the collection.
"It's actually making an impact on a shoe company," Lisa said.
Change is good.
"We have the simple statement of 'Running changes everything,'" Dave Zimmer said, "and we believe the work that we do doesn't just affect one individual. We believe it affects the entire world, because running is such a giving sport."