Hoka Co-Founder Jean-Luc Diard Talks Big Foam and the Future of Running Shoes

It’s not every day that you meet someone who has transformed a market the way Jean-Luc Diard has.

As co-founder of the shoe company Hoka, Diard revolutionized modern running and walking footwear. Hoka is now a $2.5 billion company, and shoes with Hoka’s “maximalist” foam and rocker-shape design generate $50 billion annually. Diard, a hard-core runner himself, participates in extreme sporting events around the world.

This March, Principia College invited Diard to its Elsah, Illinois, campus to speak to business students and hundreds of community members about innovation and entrepreneurship.

While there, Diard sat down with Terrain to discuss the origin of Hoka, where he sees running shoes headed, and the key to enjoying yourself while you rack up those miles.

The first time I became aware of Hoka shoes was not as a runner, but as a patient in a hospital emergency room. What makes them a winner for jobs like that?
A hospital nurse will walk something like 10 miles a day, and when they’re not walking, they’re standing. Even standing still is very challenging for the body.

Hokas are very stable. They don’t allow your foot to move around a lot in the shoe, and that helps medical workers do their jobs better. The more comfortable you are in your job, the less stressed you’ll be. So, employees feel better at work, and they feel better at the end of their shifts.

What contributes to that stability?
When we began designing the shoe, we added cushioning to the front of the shoe, or the forefront. That’s where you have the highest pressure for the most amount of time.

To ease that pressure, we wanted to provide a lower drop than other shoes, many of which have a 12-millimeter drop from heel to toe. Our drop is closer to 4-5 millimeters. Some other shoes have drops closer to ours, but none have the cushioning in the toes.

From a running standpoint, a higher drop causes a “clap” effect. You land on your heel, and the front claps down afterward, again contributing to that stress.

That’s why people with plantar fasciitis like our shoes. They protect the forefoot, which reduces pressure on the tissue that connects your heel to your toes. But for runners, the result is much greater comfort overall.

Did you develop the materials yourself?
No one was creating a shoe with foam that was soft enough for us. We measure softness using a device called a durometer, which measures softness on a scale between 12 and 75. Most foams on the market measured around 52, but we found a manufacturer with foam that measured 42.

Fortunately, that manufacturer was also willing to do what we needed to adapt the foam for our shoes. At the beginning, we didn’t know exactly what size the foam block of the shoe should be, so we started larger and began to shape it to achieve the right balance between comfort and performance.

What other innovations went into the shoe?
Next, we added carbon plates to our running shoes. Plates had been used in basketball shoes and a few sprint shoes for a long time, but not in the running market.

We wanted to provide a very efficient rolling effect, and the foam alone would not deliver that. There is nothing more efficient than the wheel, and the plate allowed us to shape the bottom of the shoe as closely to a wheel as possible.

We had our first carbon shoe prototypes in 2011 or 2012, and we launched our shoe with a carbon plate in 2015. Nike introduced theirs in 2017.

So, you’re a relatively new company influencing an established industry. How did you introduce this new shoe into the market in the 2010s?
Our approach was to go extreme. Most shoes were small, and we went big with the additional foam. Then we invested the time to perfect it.

That’s good advice for any entrepreneur. Find a niche and go extreme, because that’s where you’re going to discover new things.

For example, if you believe that you have something that looks nicer than what’s out there, or has a functional benefit that creates a difference, go to the extreme, focus on that, and find your own way. Only then should you go to the larger market. If you try to face your biggest competitors from the start, you have little chance of success.

“That’s good advice for any entrepreneur. Find a niche and go extreme, because that’s where you’re going to discover new things.”

As you pursue that extreme, you also must focus on the steps that will take you there and the people who can help. Consider the people you associate yourself with and be open to recognizing when something is not in your set of capabilities.

In those times, draw on those around you for the additional assistance you need for your product to really take off.  I think of that “1+1=3.” It’s about additive value.

As a runner yourself, do you have any advice for other runners?
I think it’s important to alternate the types of running you do, both for the pleasure of it and for your body.

For example, younger people shouldn’t overly train on road running over large distances, because it gives a lot of shocks to the body that you’ll feel later. Mix in some trail running, because it will give you variation in skills and landscape. You can also add track and field, plus some speed exercises.

Where do you see running shoes evolving?
They will continue to become lighter and more stable. Today’s runners are also concerned about sustainability, so qualities like recycled or biodegradable materials will be important. The combination of these things will lead to the next generation of running shoes.

What has been a career highlight for you — so far?
I once had three women tell me that I had changed their lives. They had been in pain for a long time, but one of them said, “I’m a new person. I can do the things now that I love to do.”

No amount of advertising can replicate that for a brand, but personally, I’m proud that I have given someone a better life.

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Stuart Jenkins, a Principia College alum and founder of the footwear technology company Blumaka, introduced and moderated Diard’s discussion with .

Below are some entrepreneurial nuggets Jenkins elicited from Diard.

• “Experts rarely innovate.”
• “Always go to simple solutions.”
• “If you only improve marginally, you’ll always be behind.”
• “Start with a high goal and work your way back.”
• “Speed is the essence all the time.”
• “Don’t stay on the same thing. Keep evolving.”
• “Work with people from different backgrounds. The sum of that energy becomes positive.”
• “When you think globally, your products get better.”
• “Accept that you will fail, but set a financial limit to your failure. When you reach it, pivot to something else.”

“Eighty percent of running shoes are sold for walking. But we didn’t want to be a walking-shoe company.”

Author: Tim Fox is a contributor to Terrain.

Top image: Courtesy of Hoka.