Is Kizik a Utah company, and where are its shoes made

It passes both of the tests that matter here. Kizik was started in Utah and is still run from Utah, so it sits on our founded in Utah list and our headquartered in Utah list. When the company opened its first store, at Fashion Place Mall in Murray, it wrote that "Utah is our home" and that the store was "right up the road from where it all began." The doors opened on May 19, 2023, Utah Business^6,7 reported.

It does not pass the factory test. Nothing in the lineup is made here, so you won't find Kizik on the made in Utah page.

Mike Pratt, a Utah entrepreneur who had already built one company out of a small annoyance. His gym bag would not fit in a locker the way he wanted, so he built a prototype out of cardboard and had 4,000 made in South Korea, the Deseret News⁹ reported in 2016. That bag became OGIO, which was based in Draper.

The shoe problem was his finger. Pratt was using it as a shoehorn, KSL⁸ reported, when he decided there had to be a better way. Kizik dates his first work on hands-free prototypes to 2009, eight years before any pairs went on sale.

He started building the idea inside OGIO, and his attorney, Monte Deere, helped him move those inventions into a company of their own, Utah Business reported. In 2017 Pratt asked Deere to become CEO of both HandsFree Labs and Kizik. Callaway Golf had bought OGIO that January for $75.5 million, and Kizik's first product line came out that same year.

The early work was not tidy. Craig Cheney, Kizik's chief innovation officer, told KSL the team started as "five or six guys in a basement." Before the collapsible heel, they tried mechanical fixes that included springs and gears, and they went through "hundreds and hundreds of prototypes." Pratt's motto, Cheney said, was to find a way to "get shoes on without touching them."

In Vietnam and China. Kizik's help center says "our manufacturing facilities also operate in Vietnam and China," while its distribution centers are spread across the United States. Materials come partly from the United States, the same answer says, with the rest from those two countries. A second answer on the help center names only Vietnam.

Kizik works through what the help center calls "overseas vendors," and it says Kizik employees work with the factory managers and visit regularly. The audit checklist it publishes includes legal weekly working hours and a ban on child or forced labor.

What Utah supplies is the heel. KSL reported that the newer shoes use polymers and rubbers developed by HandsFree Labs, and the company says every style goes through 30,000 heel compressions in testing.

HandsFree Labs now has a second brand on the same platform. Blue Ox is its work boot line, and Kizik's help center says Blue Ox boots are designed in the U.S. and manufactured in China. So if you were hoping for a hands-free boot made in Lindon, that one isn't it either.

Its parent company, HandsFree Labs, which holds the patents and licenses the heel to other brands. The help center describes HandsFree Labs as the owner of "a deep portfolio of patents covering step-in heel technology," with Kizik as its sneaker brand and Blue Ox as its work boot brand.

Nike is the outside investor people ask about. It became the first licensee in 2019, and that year it took a minority stake in HandsFree Labs, Inside Retail¹¹ reported. Modern Retail¹² called it a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount. A minority stake is not ownership, so Nike does not own Kizik.

The company raised a $20 million Series B in 2022. In 2025 Gareth Hosford, who had held senior roles at Nike, became CEO of Kizik and head of HandsFree Labs, FashionUnited¹⁴ reported, and Deere stayed on the board to focus on licensing. By April of that year Modern Retail put annual sales at more than $100 million. The shoes were in more than 1,000 wholesale doors by then, plus six stores of Kizik's own.

The patents are the asset the company defends. HandsFree Labs says it has more than 200 issued and pending patents. In July 2025 it and Kizik sued Skechers, saying the Hands Free Slip-ins line infringes four of its utility patents and two design patents. Kizik's help center declines to comment further, citing an active legal matter.

Kizik is one of several footwear companies in our directory, and they split between brands started here and foreign brands with an American office here. The Utah shoe brands guide sorts out which is which, and the full list lives under footwear. Kizik's neighbors along I-15 are on the Utah County page.