Show Notes
Running shoe technology hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years. Cyle Sage of On shoes, a 2011 Cade Prize finalist, explains how On shoes “roll and stop,” offering both vertical and horizontal cushioning. Cyle, a former triathlete and coach, partnered with a Swiss engineer in 2003 to design and market the shoes to take on the shoe industry giants. In the last few years On also has become the “it” shoe among celebrities, turning up on red carpets as well as running trails.
TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: 0:01
Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors, and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.
Richard Miles: 0:38
Some are going to have their head in the clouds and it turns out they can have their feet there as well. Here to join me in the cloud is Cyle Sage, one of the first employees of On, a running shoe company and also the person who brought On to the United States. Welcome to Radio Cade . Cyle.
Cyle Sage: 0:53
Thank you.
Richard Miles: 0:53
So, Cyle, I think the last time I saw you was in 2011, when On, or the shoes from On was named a Cade price , sweet 16 finalist.
Cyle Sage: 1:02
That’s right.
Richard Miles: 1:02
Like just yesterday. Right? So before we get too far into this, let’s start for our listeners talking about the technology itself in On, and as we said, it is a running shoe. And so I think most people are familiar with running shoes or traditional running shoes. You know, it’s , it’s extra padding, it’s a bigger heel. It’s basically meant right? To cushion the blow from running. So how is On different from those types of shoes that have been around now? What, since the early seventies, the Nike’s and the Adidas’s and why are they better than say a Nike?
Cyle Sage: 1:32
That’s a great question. And running shoe technology hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years, and yet you would think it would, but running injuries are not decreasing either. So because it’s all based on a traditional solid midsole and the Swiss engineer that I came in contact with in 2003, he was down in Florida, he was running on a beach side of the road and he noticed his legs weren’t as tired when he ran on the beach side of the road is when he ran inland and it was running in a regular pair of shoes. And he thought, well, I must be rolling on those sand grains and coming to a stop. So if I can come up with a cushioning system that rolls and stops, in other words, it cushions vertically and horizontally two directions. He might have something that people would love. So that’s the start of it. So seven years later On started, and it’s a cushion landing and affirm takeoff , but it cushions in two directions. And it also the shoe of lets your foot roll naturally heel to toe.
Richard Miles: 2:34
So you have a pair in the studio here and we’re , we’re both looking at it and , um, I’ll do my best to describe it for listeners without benefits of a visual. The best way I could describe it, visually is almost looked like a tank tread except without the wheels in the middle. So it’s sort of the shape of a tread. And then they’re on the bottom of the shoe. So you had this pocket right? Of empty space there. You said it cushions both vertically and horizontally?
Cyle Sage: 2:56
Yes. We call them clouds because they look like clouds. The early test runners, myself and other athletes when they ran them, wow, It feels like I’m running on clouds. And so, because there was actually air there , Swiss engineered, you could call these little Swiss balls. And so when you’re standing in the shoe, you’re not actually touching the ground. So, it’s activating your foot, it’s turning your foot on. That’s why we call it On. And then when you go to run, they collapse and they’re firm . So not energy return or a bounce shoe , but it’s a cushion landing and a firm takeoff and the, you know, it provides a new sensation, right?
Richard Miles: 3:34
The sensation is interesting. It’s not a bouncy sensation. It’s more of just a better cushion? Or?
Cyle Sage: 3:40
Yeah you feel light. You feel faster. We did studies. There’s actually less ground force impact. We actually did a study on that. Your ground contact time is reduced and it gives you a new sensation. We wanted to put the fun back into running.
Richard Miles: 3:54
Right . And you mentioned it also decreases injuries or does it have some sort of effect on preventing or mitigating traditional running injuries?
Cyle Sage: 4:02
So the latest biomechanical research shows that the best shoe for you is probably the one that you feel the most comfortable in. I mean, we have orthotics and inserts and they have their place and shoes with different mid-sole technologies that help for pronation and super nation have their place. But the latest research and the trend is let your foot move the way it wants to naturally that’s the best in art . The cushioning technology allows for that to happen, to move with your foot, to move naturally heel to toe.
Richard Miles: 4:33
I think it’s fair to say that the shoe industry is fairly competitive, right? This is a , an industry in which there are a lot of very, very big companies. And it’s fascinating to me, you started out with this startup company in roughly 2003 to 2008 period with the development of the company?
Cyle Sage: 4:50
So I met the Swiss engineer in 2003. So from 2003, until 2005, we were gluing these elements, clouds on the bottom of our shoes, whether we ran on Adidas or Asics or Nike , we were, yeah. On existing shoes, we did about 150 pairs during that timeframe. And then in 2008, we came out with an entire shoe. I was a professional triathlete training here in Gainesville and introduced the Swiss engineer to a professional triathlete, Olivia Bernard , over in Switzerland. And they started working on the development process over there. And then 2010 on started Olivia with two of his friends, Casper Colepethy, and David Allerman. One had a marketing design background, one had a sales background, and then that kind of formed on that.
Richard Miles: 5:38
It’s been pretty daunting. Describe what it was like to enter this highly competitive market where you have already by 2010. I’m guessing Nike probably is the dominant. In addition to Nike, you’ve got a lot of other big, big shoe companies out there. What gave the founders the courage to enter in a market that has be brutal, I imagine.
Cyle Sage: 5:58
In 2010, we took the shoe to the Ispo show in Europe. It’s the largest sports exposition in the world. And this technology won that year, 2010 and the brand new award for the best innovation in sport. And then from there, we were kind of a player. We were on the map, but very, very small percentage and people are resistant. They’re like, Oh, it’s a fad. It’s this it’s that it’s not going to work. And that was tough to overcome in the early years. And then we just kept at it. More retailers came on board and Olympic Gold Medal was one. And then now we’re the fastest growing, running brand in the United States. We’re still seven, 8% of the market share, but we’re growing very fast.
Richard Miles: 6:40
As you mentioned, you yourself were a competitive triathlete. And a lot of it seems like your early success was kind of in that market for the high performing iron man triathlete crowd. Was that sort of a deliberate decision to go after that elite athletic crowd and then hope that that would filter into a broader market or did that just sort of happen because of your connections and that’s who you knew?
Cyle Sage: 7:02
Right. Olivia was a world champion do athlete and six time Ironman, Switzerland. And I was involved professionally in triathlon. So it was premium product with performance and function. And that’s our DNA is that we are a performance running shoe company. Everybody said, Hey, this looks really cool. I can wear it with jeans. And so we’ve now we’ve branched out into, if you could wear your shoes all day, every day, all the time, what would that look like well you’ve got trail, you’ve got the comfort world or the fashion world, and you still have the performance running world. So we have now developed models for those different categories.
Richard Miles: 7:40
And so it seems like one of the nice side effects of being a premium product, because you’ve now starting to acquire premium clients because all of a sudden On jumps from that world of elite triathletes to movie stars and celebrities.
Cyle Sage: 7:53
We’re spotted on the runway and the Oscars and the front cover of vanity.
Richard Miles: 7:57
Tell me, how did that transition happen? And what did it start with? Like one celebrity, all of a sudden just started wearing them or was that again, a strategy, a marketing strategy?
Cyle Sage: 8:07
We weren’t doing ads. We weren’t doing TV commercials. We felt that it was going to be an organic growth, grassroots word of mouth. That’s the way we wanted to market it. And sure enough, one day, some movie star who was wearing them and then another, and then that just kind of got the ball rolling, but we didn’t see movie stars or anything like that to get started.
Richard Miles: 8:27
Tell me about the future plans of on, in terms of the growth and development. Is there a strategy to gain a significant portion in the, in the U.S. market? And then what does that look like? I assume you want to grow your market share, right?
Cyle Sage: 8:39
We’re growing at 70% a year, year over year growth, which is unheard of in a market. That’s basically flat for a lot of companies, but we like our niche and we’re just going to let the customers dictate how big we get. And if we just stick to what brought us to the table that put the fun back in the run, that sensation that everybody loves when they first put the shoe on, right. That’s going to continue the growth.
Richard Miles: 9:04
Let’s talk a little bit about your personal background. We’ve mentioned that you were a triathlete and swimmer and runner. Um , let’s go back before that. Where were you raised? What did you like to do as a kid? Were you a good student? All that good stuff.
Cyle Sage: 9:16
Iowa, so I learned the value of hard work. My aunt had a farm and I was out there on the weekends. And then , um , we moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico and then Oak Ridge, Tennessee. So Iowa and Tennessee is where I, my formative years, you know, kindergarten through high school. Oak Ridge, because my parents were involved with the national lab.
Richard Miles: 9:37
Where they both scientists, your parents?
Cyle Sage: 9:38
Yes. And they instilled the whole scientific process. So the Iowa gave me those early roots in the value of a dollar and hard work to the scientific processes. I mean, our math teacher at my high school wrote the SAT math questions. Then I got into swimming, loved the water, love , collecting everything in the water, alligators and snakes things that probably shouldn’t have been collecting. But I did. So I was very adventurous, outdoor, spontaneous.
Richard Miles: 10:05
When did he start the swimming? Cyle? Was that in high school or prior to that?
Cyle Sage: 10:08
10 years old.
Richard Miles: 10:09
10 years old. Okay . Competitive swimming or?
Cyle Sage: 10:11
Competitive swimming in Iowa. We didn’t have an indoor pool. So I could only swim outdoors for three months, but I , I go to the pool when it opened at 10 in the morning and I come home at nine o’clock at night, so.
Richard Miles: 10:22
Your parents encouraged you to do that. Did you just decide you wanted to join the swim team?
Cyle Sage: 10:27
Yeah. My sister was swimming and I watched her swimming a few meets and I thought that’s pretty cool to go from one side of the pool, the other faster than everybody else. And so that got me into competitive swimming and I learned swimming in Tennessee start in high school. We were doing nine miles a day and I learned the value of a second. I would train 20, 30 hours a week just to drop a second in my event, over the course of a year. So I learned the value of a second consistency. And then I got interested in exercise science, exercise physiology. How can I be more efficient? That brought me here to Gainesville to study exercise physiology.
Richard Miles: 11:05
Was for undergraduate, or when did you come to Gainesville after your undergraduate degree?
Cyle Sage: 11:08
I got my undergraduate degree actually in Marine science. Because I had a love of the ocean and the water and critters reptiles fish, and then came to graduate school here at the University of Florida. And that at the same time I was getting into triathlon and racing and then came across Dr. Cade.
Richard Miles: 11:27
One of our few guests on the show who actually worked with or knew Dr. Cade. So tell me some stories. What was that like working with him or getting to know him?
Cyle Sage: 11:33
You know, my quest to become a better athlete was all about efficiency. And , uh , of course that was the premise when Gatorade, how can these football players, they’re losing these electrolytes? And if we put them back in, we can make them last longer and more efficient. So that process was very exciting to me. And so when I got to meet Dr. Cade and I tested some early products, not Gatorade.
Richard Miles: 11:58
This is like early to mid eighties, roughly?
Cyle Sage: 12:00
Early nineties.
Richard Miles: 12:01
Early nineties. Okay. Got it.
Cyle Sage: 12:02
And you know, he just had that creative zest. You just wanted to be around it.
Richard Miles: 12:06
Did you do some of those experiments on the treadmill?
Cyle Sage: 12:09
Yes.
Richard Miles: 12:09
I did some of those as well. I was a runner, not a swimmer. And I remember doing bicycle experiments. You probably did a few of those where you’re poking and prodding you. And the mission I remember clearly was pedal at top speed for two hours until you pass out, whichever comes first until you exhausted the whole time they’re drawing blood. And I remember we were paid $50 an hour, which I thought was just an enormous sum until you get off the bike and then you realize you’ve been had. Right , right.
Cyle Sage: 12:34
But you got a lot of free product. It was good. Yeah. The whole process of scientific nature and that whole process coming into the athletic world was very exciting to me.
Richard Miles: 12:46
When you’re doing those experiments with Dr. Cade, was that your first inkling of the value of sports science or sports performance medicine, physiology, that sort of world.
Cyle Sage: 12:56
And then there’s that at the human level, like how you can go faster, further, longer. And then of course there was the gadget world. How can we take technology and sport performance and put it into running shoes, into swimming paddles into bike seats. I did a lot of experimentation. I was known as the gadget guy when I was early on in the triathlon career.
Richard Miles: 13:18
One of the things we’d like to concentrate on or talk about on Radio Cade is not just the original invention, original technology, but the development in particularly the path that a startup takes to get from day one in the lab or in the garage to the marketplace. It’s tell us a little bit what that has been like to start very, very small. And then all of a sudden you’re looking at much, much bigger things. Almost every entrepreneur we talked to that’s followed that path. There are some great days, and there are some terrible days. Describe for us if you’d like to, what do some of the great days look like? And what do some of the really bad days look like in that startup process.
Cyle Sage: 13:53
With running shoes, it’s pretty black and white. Yeah. And we had some pretty big competitors out there and people are very loyal to their brands. And once they get a brand, they’re not getting out of it. So a great day was when someone would try our shoe, it’s a new technology, it’s different. And they would run down the street and come back and come back with that. Aha. Wow. I didn’t expect that. And that moment right there, you’re changing someone’s life. You’re maybe going to get inspire them to do things that they thought they couldn’t do. So we put the fun back into run. That’s what one of our early mottoes was and still is. And so that’s a great day. And then of course the other end of the spectrum is people didn’t like it. They hated it. Oh, I’m going to trip. And this is not for me. And that kind of really lets you down, but you got another day.
Richard Miles: 14:41
One of the things that we found in just developing the Cade Museum is that there are at least two types of criticism, right? There’s kind of the wacky off base that you dismiss , but then there’s another part, although you don’t really welcome it. And it’s a little bit painful. You recognize there’s some truth there. And the trick is, can you use that to improve the product, even though you didn’t want to hear it. Is there something in here that I need to listen to because that’s the market talking back to you, right? There’s some markets saying, here’s what we don’t like about your product.
Cyle Sage: 15:08
And we’ve come out with now three different iterations and we’re coming out with updates of other shoes. And yeah, if you don’t listen to the consumer in the feedback, you’re going to get left behind in the dust. So to speak, you’ve got to take that feedback, whether it hurts or not, you’ve got to grow with it. And usually it’s been working out for the better.
Richard Miles: 15:25
Yeah. I got to say with the increase now in platforms like Google reviews and Yelp, it’s both easier, but also pain comes a lot more quickly. If somebody doesn’t like your product, we still struggle with that. The museum, I’m a first reactions . I want to go find that person and give them a good talking to, for the one or two star reviews. But on the other hand, sometimes the comments you don’t enjoy reading them, but they’ve got a point. Maybe we need to fix this or that or tweak this or that. So Cyle, we always offer each guest the opportunity to dispense wisdom from on high, the mountain top that you’ve climbed. If you were meeting someone yourself say 20 years ago, and they’re trying to decide, gee, what do I do with this opportunity? I have. Are there any words of wisdom that you would give that person, things that you’ve learned that you wish you had done or not done?
Cyle Sage: 16:09
Three words, three words, simplicity, simplicity. We have 24 hours of the day, eight to sleep eight to work an eight to play. If you organize your day like that, you’re going to cultivate your creativity. And you’re going to keep that motivation going diversity. We wake up every day and we’re kind of bookend by these two thought processes. So you can learn more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. Or you can learn less and less about more and more until you’ve know nothing about everything. So somewhere in the middle is each individual’s sweet spot. We wake up, we’d have these experiences. And it’s very important to find what our experiences are daily and to share those with others. So diversity, because we all have something to offer to someone else. And then the last one would be consistency. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow. So make every day count every second count. My mom always said, if it weren’t for the last minute, a lot of things wouldn’t get done. And my dad said, if you can’t figure it out or you can’t fix it, duct tape it.
Richard Miles: 17:18
Great advice. Your second one diversity reminded me of , I was a diplomat and I used to tell people the job description diplomat is I would tell them , I look, I don’t know very much, but I don’t know very much about a lot of things. So that’s kind of the secret to surviving Cyle, thank you very much for coming on radio Cade and enjoyable discussion and wish the best to you and to and to On.
Cyle Sage: 17:35
Thank you.
Richard Miles: 17:37
I’m Richard Miles.
Outro: 17:39
Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme. Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and invention located in Gainesville.
