When it was founded in 2017, the shoe brand Kizik was on a mission to bring hands-free shoe technology into the mainstream. It’s now taking two big steps to further that goal.
The company is today announcing both a major partnership with New Balance and a new shoe, the $149.95 Kizik Freedom Run, which debuts on April 17. Together, the moves represent an expansion of its existing licensing agreements strategy and of its tech into the performance category for the first time.
At its core, Kizik’s tech has always focused on the experience of putting on a shoe in the first place—the company designs slip-on models that cut lace-tying out of the equation through a variety of patented hands-free footwear mechanics. These designs are accessible to those who have trouble tying their shoes, including children, the elderly, and those with disabilities.
But the brand has broad ambitions. “We think of the problem this way: Our shoes are for everyone, but they are life-changing for some,” then-CEO Monte Deere explained to Fast Company in 2023. Entering the running space meant the company had to adapt the design for higher intensity use cases but it also expands its reach.
Kizik can build brand association with its own technology, and jockey for market share among slip-on running shoes that are already on the market: Its ongoing collaborator, Nike, launched a pair in 2021, On manufactures a line of athletic shoes with kick-down heels, and Skechers has a whole series of shoes in its “Slip-Ins” category.
How Kizik designed its first-ever slip-on running shoe
The Freedom Run is Kizik’s latest demonstration of its design prowess.
The brand’s in-house team, HandsFree Lab, manages more than 200 issued and pending patents related to hands-free footwear mechanics, from extra-pliable tongues to shoes that open with a squeeze and multiple different heel configurations that allow wearers to simply slide their foot into the shoe.
As its first foray into performance, Kizik’s design team decided to start with a mid-market running shoe that would be accessible for most athletes. The Freedom Run isn’t an elite game-day shoe, but rather a reliable training shoe that’s built to last.
The concept of a slip-on running shoe presents an obvious challenge: pairing a step-on heel with the snug, compressive fit that athletes need. The heel would need to be flexible enough to slip on and off, but rigid enough to keep the foot from sliding out of the shoe with every stride. To address this challenge, the Kizik team opted for the Internal Flex Arc, one of the brand’s lesser-used step-in technologies. It’s composed of two rigid components on the top and bottom, with a tented heel pocket sandwiched in between them.
“When you combine those, it enables you to step into the running shoe because it compresses very well,” Hosford says. “The other thing it does when it bounces back is grab your heel. For a running shoe, that’s fantastic because it minimizes heel slippage.”
The Kizik team designed the rest of the Freedom Run’s architecture, like the arch and toe-box, to work in tandem with the Internal Flex Arc to keep the foot stable inside the shoe. As an added detail, the team also created a custom foam, called Viva Foam, to serve as the base of the shoe.
It’s designed to be compression-resistant to absorb the runner’s stride, as well as ultra-lightweight to avoid adding extra bulk to the shoe. Hosford says the lifespan of this design was tested in a machine that literally slammed the heel component over and over again to assess its durability. The Freedom Run lasted for literally thousands of compressions before it gave out.
For now, the Freedom Run stands in its own category for Kizik—but Hosford says that the brand expects to expand its footprint in performance gear in the near future to meet its fans’ demands, the growth opportunity of a large category, and to prove that its hands-free technology can work across a wide range of use cases.
Running shoes with step-in functionality fit within an obvious category of innovation: people are always looking for products that will make their life just a bit easier, according to Hosford. “Our founder [Mike Pratt] says, ‘No one winds up their windows in the car anymore. It’s all electric buttons that save 30 seconds, but it’s 30 seconds every day.’ Once that tech has been proven, you just don’t want to go back. It’s kind of the same thing with shoes.”
Inside Kizik’s licensing strategy
Since 2019, Kizik has worked with Nike to license its hands-free technology on a number of different shoes in Nike’s portfolio. That work has been so successful, according to Kizik CEO Gareth Hosford, that, now, the brand is teaming up with New Balance via a licensing agreement that will help it create its own step-in footwear, expected to debut in 2027.
Through its licensing agreements with Nike—and now New Balance—Hosford says these big name brands gain access to a selection of those patents. Then, they work closely with Kizik’s design team to incorporate the tech into their existing styles.
“This is a joint effort—we don’t throw it over the wall, we partner with them,” Hosford says, adding, “We sit down with them and go, ‘Okay, which shoes are you trying to deploy this hands-free technology in? What’s the technology that best marries what you’re trying to do? And then we work with them to connect all those dots both through development and then getting them ready for mass manufacturing.”
For Kizik, licensing serves the brand’s original purpose of making hands-free technology accessible to as many customers as possible, while also helping the company scale financially. At the same time, Hosford says, the brand wants to maintain its own identity by debuting new, exclusive product innovations under its own name.
“We have a great product engine and a great product team ourselves, and we believe that we are coming to market with innovative solutions that enable us to compete,” Hosford says. “Even if we’re also deploying our technology to other companies as well, we still can stand on our own.”