For most of my life, I trained every day. I competed at a high level, cared about what I ate, how I trained and how I recovered. I thought I knew my body pretty well.
But something was always wrong.
My feet hurt constantly. I had plantar fasciitis, lower back pain, and I couldn't understand why. I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to do, yet somehow I was still in pain.
Then one day, while scrolling through social media, I came across barefoot shoes. I had no idea what they were, but I was willing to try anything, so I ordered a pair from a brand I can't even remember.
What I do remember is the first time I wore them. Normally, after 15 minutes in shoes, my feet would already start hurting. That day, 15 minutes passed. Then 30.
Nothing.
For the first time in years, I wasn't thinking about my feet.
It felt incredible.
There was just one problem: I didn't like the shoes.
I loved how they felt, but I didn't want to change the way I dressed just to feel good. I wanted the kind of shoes I'd always, just without going back to the pain.
So I started looking. At some point I became obsessed with finding a barefoot clog I actually wanted to wear. I searched everywhere and couldn't find one. And the deeper I went into the barefoot world, the more I realised it wasn't only the shoes. I didn't really identify with the way most brands looked, spoke or presented themselves either.
Eventually I stopped searching and had a much more dangerous thought:
Fuck it. Let's make one.
The funny thing is that my whole family comes from footwear. I grew up surrounded by shoes, but I had never made one myself. And none of us really knew anything about barefoot.
I started contacting factories and explaining what I wanted. Dozens of conversations later, the answer was almost always the same: impossible. Too wide. Too flat. Too flexible. The construction wouldn't work. The shape wouldn't work. Something had to be compromised.
Eventually, one factory agreed to try.
The first sample was terrible.
So we made another. And another. We changed the shape, proportions, sole and details most people would probably never notice. By the time we were happy, we had made twelve versions of the same shoe.
We could have stopped earlier. Some of them were probably good enough.
But good enough wasn't why we started.
Version twelve became IKAROS.
When we launched it, I had no idea what would happen. Maybe people would understand it. Maybe nobody would care.
Two weeks later, half of the sizes were sold out.
I remember looking at the orders and thinking: maybe I wasn't the only one looking for something like this.
And that's when BAREBOUND really started making sense to me.
I realised I never really wanted to make barefoot shoes. I wanted to make great shoes that happened to be barefoot.
There's a difference.
I don't want someone to look at IKAROS and think, that's cool for a barefoot shoe. I want them to see it and simply think, I want those.
Then they put them on. They feel the space, the freedom, the difference. And maybe they have the same moment I had years ago when 15 minutes passed and, for once, I wasn't thinking about my feet.
That idea still guides what we create today. Whenever we're developing something new, there's one question I keep coming back to:
Would I still want this shoe if barefoot didn't exist?
If the answer is no, we shouldn't make it.
Looking back, it's strange to think that BAREBOUND started with something as simple as questioning a pair of shoes. One question led to dozens of factories saying no, twelve samples, IKAROS and eventually an entire brand.
But maybe that's why BAREBOUND became about more than footwear for me.
We spend so much of our lives accepting things simply because that's how they've always been done. The obvious path. The safe choice. The way things are supposed to be.
Sometimes all it takes is asking:
Why?
For me, being bold was never about doing something crazy. It's about questioning what doesn't feel right, trusting your own idea and being stubborn enough to see where it takes you.
For me, it started with a pair of shoes.
I have no idea where it ends.
BE BOLD.
