Strike Movement (and all the various ways the company spells their brand at www.strike-mvmnt.com) is new to the technical athletic scene. How new? The company officially kicked off their first run of product last month.
STR/KE MVMNT’s first shoe, the Interval, carries a slightly more personal connection here. Its designer Brandon Lostutter is a two-time CK design competition champ.
With the company tagline “United By Motion,” we spoke with STR/KE MVMNT’s founder and design director Marc Morisset who emphasized to us the brand’s focus on bringing a clean aesthetic to technical athletic wear.
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CounterKicks: Tell us about your new brand STR/KE MVMNT.
Marc Morisset: STR/KE MVMNT is an athletics brand based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Its goal is to design and produce technically proficient product while maintaining a clean wearable aesthetic.
CK: What was the design brief for the Interval shoe?
Morisset: We wanted to design a minimalist cross-trainer that would perform well at the widest variety of tasks, strip away any superfluous components and deliver a clean ultra lightweight shoe.
CK: What’s your favourite aspect to the shoe?
Morisset: There are lots of aspects that people are attracted to. From a performance standpoint, the STABLE PLATFORM outsole really shines. It’s the foundation of the shoe and it does what it was designed to do. It runs well, it lifts well and the balanced durometers of the outsole and rubber inlays provide a lot of tactile feedback and very predictable grip even on wet surfaces.
CK: What kind of feedback have you gotten on the shoe so far?
Morisset: It’s been amazing. It’s interesting to see what people think but they almost always say something along the lines of, “Yeah! Why hasn’t anyone made a clean looking performance shoe?” There is a large segment of the population who look at the wall in a running or sports store and they are like “Really? These are my options…”
CK: Tell us about the vision and product focus of the STR/KE MVMNT brand.
Morisset: STR/KE MVMNT is focused on performance athletics and providing quality gear for the aesthetically minded athlete. We have designed and tested our footwear in a CrossFit environment because it is the most diverse and most demanding of performance characteristics. Crossfit also introduced us to the Pose running method and that was definitely a catalyst for the outsole design. We believe 100% that the heel has no place in the running cycle.
We tested the shoe with local trainers, some of whom wear the shoes for 12 + hours a day. Personally, I’m three plus years deep in CrossFit, 3-4 days a week, and have my level 1 certification. We were at a local event a few weeks ago and there were 20+ people wearing the shoes. It means a lot to us that we are seeing support from that community, they are the deciders as to whether or not it’s a CrossFit brand. The product has to perform.
CK: What are the specific footwear needs of someone involved in CrossFit versus other sports or athletic activities?
Morisset: CrossFit demands ability through a wide variety of movements and so in order to perform, a shoe has to do the same. It invariably makes for a very well rounded cross-trainer. When we began to develop the Interval the options in the market were predominantly minimalist running shoes. They worked to a certain degree but failed in other ways. Lasts were way too narrow for the foot to splay properly, the outsole rubber was often very hard as it had been designed for trails, and the heel of the shoes were either too narrow, rounded, soft or had voids in the area that would allow the shoe to compress and absorb way too much energy during lifts. We set out to address and eliminate all of these shortfalls.
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Learn more about STR/KE MVMNT and get the Interval shoe at www.strike-mvmnt.com
Got these in yesterday – wearing them right now. Very minimalist but not realy barefoot. Looking forward to the gym tomorrow.
Good stuff.