KURU Footwear is a footwear brand founded in Utah in 2008. It is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
KURU Footwear debuted in a few retail stores in October 2008, in the middle of the Great Recession. Then customers started calling to order a second pair, and many said the shoes had eased their plantar fasciitis, not what they were designed for. Founder Bret Rasmussen was also the customer support line, so he heard it first. The Salt Lake City company dropped wholesale and went online only.
Rasmussen has said the idea dates to fifth grade, when a classmate showed up in new Nikes and bragged that he could run faster. In 2006 he won the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, a statewide business plan contest, as CORE Footwear. The $40,000 went into patenting a sole called KURUSOLE and building prototypes. The pitch was aimed partly at action sports.
KURU says the sole flexes with each step to cup the heel's natural cushioning. The shoes come from outside factories, where Rasmussen says the tooling for one platform can top $100,000. Once he tried to save money by moving a set of molds to a new factory. The old factory, in his words, was not pleased. KURU now bids on search terms for foot pain. The action sports pitch did not survive the customer calls.
The name KURU was inspired in part by Kuru, a small city in southwestern Finland, and the K on the shoes was designed partly to resemble the Finnish flag.
