The Disruptor: Hettas’ Shoes Are Actually Designed For How Women Run

Lindsay Housman has accidentally become a podiatrist.

She casually drops words like “metatarsal,” has heel-strike rates memorized and spends much of her day thinking about Achilles injuries. It’s just the sort of thing that happens when you start a biomechanics-focused shoe brand for women.

For all the physical distinctions one might note between men and women, feet (at a glance) seem more or less the same. Most of us have two, most with five toes each. Walking into a Sport Chek, you might veer toward one gendered selection of footwear over the other, but the distinction between the Nikes on either side would mostly be about scale or colour. A shoe is a shoe is a shoe… isn’t it?

Well, it isn’t. As Housman has learned after a lifetime of athletics (volleyball, skiing, HIIT classes, you name it), a chronic foot injury and an illuminating conversation with now-collaborator Doug Sheridan (a former Adidas product designer), there are pivotal differences between the anatomy of each sex’s feet—ones that shoe companies just haven’t cared to accommodate.

“Doug told me about the history of the athletic industry being predominantly focused around male anatomy, and it just blew my mind,” says Housman.  “Especially knowing how much  a woman’s body changes from puberty to pregnancy to perimenopause to menopause, how is the unique physiology not considered?”

Statistically, women’s feet are more pie shaped, with a rounded instep, lower ankle bones and proportionately narrower heels. In addition, their fifth metatarsal (in case you aren’t an amateur podiatrist like Housman, that means your pinky toe knuckle) juts out more predominantly and their big toe curves upward. These differences mean that most shoes just don’t fit as well as they could—ankle pads rub awkwardly, toes punch through, heels slip. The way women run, too, can be distinct from their male jock counterparts, with a distinct force profile (the intensity and speed with which a foot impacts the ground).

And so, applying all she’d learned in her career in tech and business (KPMG, Intra-west Group) Housman dove into finding a solution, feet-first. In 2021, the quest began, and in November 2023, Hettas finally launched its first line of high-performance footwear specifically designed for women’s feet. Hettas has three shoes in the collection currently—the Alma Cruise, Alma Tempo  and Alma Speed, each pair $238 and available in three colourways—to suit different styles of running. Sprinters tend to like the Speed, chill joggers reach for the Cruise and marathoners prefer the Tempo. A narrow heel cup and lower ankle collar holds the heel without rubbing on ankle bones or agitating the Achilles tendon; a rounded instep snugly holds the foot in place; the stretchy mesh upper and deeper toe box leave more room for women’s upward-bending metatarsal; a proprietary Pebax plate and high-tech foam in the midsole absorb impact in a way that’s easier on women’s joints. These are the details female runners likely didn’t know they needed, but ones intended to prevent injury, improve performance and keep women out and moving for as long as they can.

Housman isn’t just in the business to take away New Balance’s market share—the company’s mandate is to change the conversation around women in sport. Which is why Housman and husband Kyle have now self-funded the first two research projects at Simon Fraser about biometrics and anatomy, and Arc’teryx is now a co-sponsor of a federal research grant at the university. A feasibility study about hormones, injury and performance is in the works. All the info they’re collecting will be publicly available so that (hopefully) more athletic equipment can be tailored to the unique biometric, anatomic and hormonal needs of this audience.

“Our first project was a literature review of published research on women and running over the past 40 years, which highlighted the research gap,” says Housman. “A review of six major journals, from 2014 to 2021, revealed that only six percent of studies focused on women exclusively. Most shockingly, a study from 2016 said that women are often excluded from research as their hormonal cycles created too many ‘confounding variables.’ This clearly needs to change.”

Some of this research is happening in the lab, but much of it is going on out on Vancouver’s streets and tracks—or far beyond. Hettas has partnered with run clubs in San Francisco, Brooklyn and Toronto, and runs focus groups with university track athletes, too. Runners will test out the shoes and complete surveys and feedback. “We recently had an elite athlete put over 1,000 kilometres on the Tempos,” says Housman. “We ask for photos, we’ve asked for the shoes back. As far as I know, we haven’t had one toe poke through.”