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The Beauty of Geometry

Two alumni step into the fashion shoe business with Insolia, and more than just good looks.

Brian Hughes '77 holds "The Glovey," an Insolia shoe by Amalfi at Nordstrom in Austin, TX.

In 1793, Marie Antoinette ascended the guillotine scaffold wearing a pair of two-inch high heels and it seems countless women have lost their heads over fashionable shoes ever since. But thanks to some reengineering, the idea that women are willing to sacrifice comfort for style may be losing its foothold even in the fashion shoe industry.

MIT alumni Brian G.R. Hughes '77 and Paul Rudovsky '66 believe a long overdue injection of high-tech engineering called Insolia® may be just what the foot doctor ordered for women who love the look of high heels, but can't stand the pain. "We can now offer women the ability to be two inches taller all day long and still be able to think at the end of the day," says Hughes.

Walking a mile in women's shoes may seem an unlikely departure for the two former Alumni Association presidents. Hughes' resume includes building the first Private Trans-Atlantic Telecommunication System and running his own hybrid rocket development company. Rudovsky has served as CFO of several public and private companies as well as CEO of a clothing manufacturer. "It's still the classic MIT approach," says Hughes. "This is a fundamental problem to which people have assumed there is no solution. When you finally find the solution, you are incredibly motivated to get it into the marketplace."

When Hughes joined the board of HBN Shoe in 1999 he realized it was time to shift strategies. "We didn't understand the shoe business worked in fashion seasons. We finally got a line of shoes and brought them to the marketplace and the retailers said 'Fine. What are you doing for fall?' We realized then that a bunch of MIT folks trying to design women's shoes was a big mistake. We had this great technology...why not sell it to other people who make shoes and make their shoes better and let them deal with the fashion stuff?"

Hughes and Rudovsky met on the MIT Corporation in 1996 and later worked together closely as Rudovsky succeeded Hughes as Alumni Association president. When Hughes first approached him about investing in Insolia, Rudovsky passed on the opportunity. Good idea, he thought, but the marketing approach did not excite him. At that point, HBN Shoe Company - named after partners Dr. Howard Dananberg (a well known New Hampshire podiatrist who invented the technology), and MIT alumni Beth Marcus and Nick Soloway - were planning on selling shoes with Insolia in a grassroots approach similar to a Tupperware party.

When the marketing strategy shifted to licensing the Insolia technology, Rudovsky took another look at the financial models, agreed to invest in the startup, and ended up raising more than half of a subsequent equity round in the second half of 2002. He also agreed to be CFO of the company on a part time basis, which turned to full time last fall.

The shift in strategy proved critical as the Insolia is already utilized in woman's shoes sold in the United States, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and the Czech Republic. It is the technology behind Insolia, after all, that Hughes and Rudovsky hope will start a revolution in high heel shoes. Dananberg, who in the 1980s invented the "kinetic wedge" sold to Brooks running shoes, came up with the first "weight-shift" solution for high heels thanks in part to an enabling technology called F-Scan--a flexible computer pressure mapping technology by Tekscan. "The story goes," laughs Hughes, "that one of Howard's more cantankerous patients told him: 'So you made a running shoe more comfortable. Big deal! What are you going to do about high heels?'"

All podiatrists know the problem with high heels. Standard construction of the shoes creates a "ramp effect" with the foot sliding down toward the toe box placing continuous pressure on the digits and ball of the foot. Bunions, hammer toes and a painful thickening of the nerves between toes are the all too common result. To add insult to injury, when the ankle flexes to accommodate the tip-toe position, the joint becomes inherently unstable and the knee joint overcompensates frequently leading to a syndrome of knee and back pain.

But what if the ramp could be altered to shift more weight back to the heel? Dananberg used the F-Scan technology to fashion a flexible shoe insole allowing him to map pressure exerted at the sole of the foot at various heel heights. He created formulas for unique, curved profiles of the insole board of shoes that would put the foot in optimal position and alignment at each specific heel height resulting in the distinctive--but outwardly invisible--"cup and bump" of shoes with Insolia. Due to the precisely located midsole bump, "about 25 percent of the weight that would have slid down to the toe remains back at the heel," Hughes explains. "Then, by cupping the heel, we increase the contact area and reduce the peak force of the heel by 50 percent. That's what creates the very strong illusion that you are wearing a heel that is about half the height you are actually wearing."

Research using F-Scan shows that women wearing a pair of conventional two-inch heels experience a 64 percent increase in forefoot pressure over the pressure exerted while wearing sneakers. Women wearing 2 1/8 inch heels with Insolia experience only a 22 percent increase in pressure. Blind studies also commonly result in Insolia wearers describing "this thick, wonderful padding," says Hughes. "But there is no padding...it's all geometry."

The "cup and the bump" aside, Hughes and Rudovsky admit they never dreamed they would one day be involved in the high-heel shoe business and the ride has provided a few bumps of its own. Getting the traditional shoe manufacturing industry to embrace new technology has not been easy. Rosa Hung, owner of Millie's shoe stores in Hong Kong , helped turn the tide. "A woman-run shoe company is what we desperately needed," Hughes says. "Someone who would say 'This works...we need this' versus a bunch of guys saying 'What's the problem? They are buying our product anyway.'"

"Start ups are always different," says Rudovsky, "they are more of a roller coaster ride since there is very little underlying business to dampen the effect of transactions." But the marriage of high tech and high heels may not be as strange as it seems. "To be fair, most people are resistant to change when it is imposed from the outside," Rudovsky notes. "The shoe industry is more accepting of change as it relates to styling because they view that as the most critical thing. Of course, the high tech industry couldn't care less about fashion." (After all, it took the personal computer industry nearly two decades to realize there was life beyond eggshell white.)

"The point is, industries change first in their own dimension, not all dimensions."

Insolia made its American debut in Nordstrom stores in May in Amalfi brand high heels. The technology is "invisible" and built into the shoe, so you may not notice unless you look on the sole for the Insolia logo or you try them on and feel the difference. "My working definition of success," says Hughes, "will be when I can walk into Saks Fifth Avenue and watch somebody look at a pair of shoes and the first thing they do is look on the bottom for our logo."

Even while workplace dress codes have gone informal, American women still buy some 200 million pairs of high heeled shoes annually for those "special" occasions when they...well... have to wear high heels. With all due respect to Marie Antoinette, Hughes and Rudovsky look forward to finally putting them out of their misery. -- Dave Enders