The race for the perfect running shoe
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2024
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The running shoe industry is worth around 50 billion dollars across the world, with more and more of us taking part in the sport. With more popularity comes more competition, so what are brands doing to keep consumers interested? We ask the chief marketing officer at Swiss sportswear company, ON, and find out how it helps sales when a top athlete wears their shoes. And as the debate around 'super shoes' rumbles on, are they really worth the expensive price tag? US marathon winner Kellyn Taylor tells us about the pros and cons of carbon plated shoes - which played a big role in marathon records being smashed in 2023.
(Picture: A group of runners racing through a park. Credit: Getty Images)
Presented and produced by Izzy Greenfield
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Remarkable personal stories. |
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| 0:07.0 | These children are using their own bags, not to carry books, but they carry the drug markets in Sweden on their shoulders. |
| 0:14.9 | And sport, but not as you know it. |
| 0:17.4 | There's this massive landslide of myth myth and somewhere in there is the truth. |
| 0:21.7 | The BBC World Service tells the world's stories. Search for lives less ordinary, the documentary |
| 0:27.2 | and amazing sport stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I'm just tying my laces, getting ready |
| 0:36.2 | to go out for a run. I try to go out a few times |
| 0:39.9 | a week and compete in a few races a year. There are millions of us worldwide who do it and there's |
| 0:45.9 | something that we all love talking about, our running shoes. Which ones work best for which race? |
| 0:51.6 | How much money we're spending? Have we tried out the carbon plates yet, there's a lot to get into. And that's what today's episode of Business Daily |
| 0:59.4 | is all about. So I started my run and I'm actually on my way to my local running club. |
| 1:14.6 | There's a lot of competition in this industry and brands are having to constantly reinvent their products to keep consumers interested. |
| 1:22.4 | And it's about time. I spoke to some of them. |
| 1:25.0 | I think I've arrived at the home of the Stockport Harriers, |
| 1:28.3 | a local running club in the northwest of England. |
| 1:32.0 | When I rang them in Italy and asked if I could come and record, |
| 1:35.1 | they were very happy to chat to me about shoes. |
| 1:38.4 | And if you're a runner too, that will come as no surprise. |
| 1:47.8 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got BBC radio with us tonight Hi everyone are you all right |
| 1:50.6 | BBC well service |
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