five hundred brands copied the shoe. none of them can copy the papers.

Five years ago today, on 20 September 2021, the journal Scientific Reports published "Daily activity in minimal footwear increases foot strength" by Curtis, Willems, Paoletti and D'Août. Twenty-two adults wore Vivobarefoot Stealth II shoes for six months and recorded an average 57.4% increase in foot strength at p less than 0.001, against a control group of twenty-four who did not. It was not the first time the company's footwear had appeared in a peer-reviewed result. In December 2020 the same journal published "Minimal shoes improve stability and mobility in persons with a history of falls" by Tomasz Cudejko, James Gardiner, Asangaedem Akpan and Kristiaan D'Août, in which thirty adults with a mean age of 68.6, all of whom had fallen since turning 60, were measured barefoot, in a conventional walking shoe and in a Vivobarefoot Primus Knit. Postural stability was significantly better in the minimal shoe than the conventional shoe in every direction measured, walking stability in the fore-aft direction was better at p less than 0.001, and the Timed Up and Go clinical mobility test was completed around 0.3 seconds faster. The paper's competing interests statement records that three of its four authors hold a mutual grant with Vivobarefoot Ltd as industrial partner, on a project funded by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, under grant number 1570. These are laboratory measurements of stability and mobility taken on the day of testing, in people who had already fallen. They are not evidence that the footwear prevents falls, and no claim to that effect is made here or anywhere in this kit. The wider context has moved considerably since. NICE published guideline NG249 on falls assessment and prevention on 29 April 2025, the Royal College of Podiatry published a falls prevention policy on 7 July 2025 costing falls to the NHS at £4.4bn a year, and the Royal College of Physicians published its National Hip Fracture Database annual report on 10 September 2026, recording more than 72,000 hip fractures a year, around one in thirty hospital beds, £1.1bn in annual NHS cost and a further £1.25bn in social care within 120 days of injury. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that falls are the leading cause of injury death among adults aged 65 and over, that more than fourteen million older adults report falling each year, that there were approximately 4.5 million emergency department visits for older adult falls in 2024, and that falls caused over 43,000 deaths in that year. Vivobarefoot, founded in 2012 by seventh-generation shoemakers Galahad and Asher Clark and now past €100m in turnover, launched a health education platform called VivoHealth in 2022, offering courses under names including Running Fundamentals and Holistic Health. Its current global campaign, Weird More, launched in September 2026 through Thingy and Thingy and produced by DROOL, and stars the NFL player Mack Hollins.