I hate MBT shoes
Have you seen these grotesque eyesores? I am guessing you must have. It’s pretty much impossible to miss a pair of these monster trucks roaring around on the tootsies of every Ally McBeal, Bridget Jones or Dear Deirdre reader across the land between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM. What are these women thinking? I mean, these things are the footwear equivalent of Anne Widdecombe (especially the open toe sandal variety).
OK, so I am more than aware that when you get to a certain age you need to put in a little more effort. You know, a few more hours go into perfecting your own unique little (or not so little) package. You’ve got to learn to “work with what you’ve got”, as the fat one from Trinny and Susannah might say. I get all of that and I’m into the idea. So with that in mind, it’s obvious why women want to look after their body. This is where these little pairs of rubber-soled miracles come in. Known as MBT (Masai Barefoot Technology) shoes, these new age clogs help you to “mimic the walking stride of the Masai tribe” giving you results that will “transform your body beyond recognition”. Quite how sticking on a pair of oversized trainers is supposed to turn you from Michelle McManus into Madonna I do not know. Anyone I’ve seen with them seems to be a little on the weebly side, just waddling around with what resembles a couple of meat pies strapped to their feet. Maybe that’s some type of subliminal analogy for stamping out junk food, which these clever Masai people have come up with. You spend all day squidging the pies under your hooves and then you can’t bring yourself to stuff any in your mouth when you get home. That’s the only way I could see these things working.
February 9, 2008 at 12:35 am
Clever writing and funny post!
February 26, 2008 at 1:32 am
These shoes are not what they used to be. Having just been informed that this company was sold and that the new owners have previous business experience with discount shoes I now understand what the problem is with the shoes. They are not made with the same quality materials that their reputation was built on. Many folks, myself included, are unhappy with the wear of the new shoes. The soles on mine only lasted about 2 months before they were worn down in places. These are sport shoes–I only wore mine indoors and occasionally I wore them out on errands. I weigh 135 lbs, so I don’t think that excessive weight contributed to the wear. Please, don’t buy these shoes thinking that they
are the original quality that made these shoes such a great success. It’s alot of money-$235 for mine-to pay for such a short lifespan.
February 29, 2008 at 3:53 am
Last year our personal friend and inventor of the MBT, Karl Mueller, departed from his MBT kingdom in order to pursue other inventions and creations. At first we felt that this would not at all have an impact on the MBT product, which seemed to be at such a high quality and outstanding level. Nor did we feel it would impact the company’s business units as Karl had partnered his brand with many excellent people worldwide.
On the business side we were wrong: immediately MBT’s US subsidiary in Idaho (our direct business partner for the brand) was completely reorganized and new managers were hired, most of whom had made their previous careers in the low end and discount shoe businesses.
Their first move was to completely change the MBT product line: out with the old and in with the new. And as a consequence at the end of 2007 we ran an amazing sale on the dropped MBTs and we thank many of our customers for their enthusiastic participation and business in this sale of our existing inventory.
Even more significantly, on the product side we were unfortunately also wrong: having recommended, fitted and sold over 5,000 pairs of the entire MBT product line since 2004 from both our brick & mortar and our online virtual stores, it quickly became apparent to ourselves and to our customers that most of the MBTs produced after Karl’s departure were not even close to what we had become accustom to…
In particular, starting in November 2007 we began receiving a plethora of complaints from customers that their MBTs were wearing out — of the outsoles and collapsing Masai sensors — already after only three weeks of usage (attached is a picture study of the outsole of the MBT Sport comparing the older and the newer product executions).
Since then we have also wear-tested many of the new Spring 2008 MBTs and, also unfortunately, the results have been extremely poor: POOR FIT, COLLAPSING MASAI SENSOR, PREMATURE & COMPLETE OUTSOLE WEAR, LACK OF STABILITY, EXTREMELY HEAVY… And as a result somewhat reluctantly, we have now decided to no longer sell the MBT in our store until (hopefully) the former quality of this once-great-product has one day been completely restored.
Just as we had been so enthusiastic in communicating and promoting the MBT brand when it was in its prime, we hope you understand our decision that we can not support any of our former efforts, convictions and recommendations based on the poor product quality issues present in almost all of the current MBT products. Quite frankly, there is no way we could recommend & sell the MBT in its current execution FOR OVER US$ 200!!! and expect our customers at all to continue to take our advice and recommendation seriously.
To conclude, it appears that even more significantly than driving the MBT creation and innovation, Karl Mueller, during his time at the company, was successful in maintaining the MBT shoe’s high execution standard of quality production. With him no longer involved, we are convinced that the MBT is no longer what it once was… and that anyone who has been as involved with the MBT as closely, as thoroughly and as long as ourselves is similarly in complete agreement with our position.
May 24, 2008 at 1:30 am
I have had the same wear problems with my new MBTS and am glad I still have two pairs of the originals.