🇮🇪 Footwear product behaviour advisor. Helping brands understand why customer perception changes long before products fail.
Ireland
Joined January 2009
- Tweets1K
- Following2.4K
- Followers285
- Likes1.4K
By the time a runner comes in with heel pain, the shoe caused it six weeks ago. It still looks fine. The brand never hears about it. Treatment rooms have been collecting post-launch product data for decades. It just never reaches anyone who makes the shoe.
justinpjblake.substack.com/p…
#footguru #runningshoes #runninginjuries
1
63
Have you noticed how many players are wearing bright pink boots at the World Cup? It's not because pink suddenly became fashionable.
#WorldCup2026 #FootballBoots #PinkBoots #FootballTips #FootGuru
1
45
What 500km Actually Does to a Running Shoe
open.substack.com/pub/justin…
#FootwearInnovation #ProductDevelopment #Footwear #Biomechanics #SportsEngineering #Research #HumanPerformance
17
Have you noticed how many players are wearing bright pink boots at the World Cup? It's not because pink suddenly became fashionable.
#WorldCup2026 #FootballBoots #PinkBoots #FootballTips #FootGuru
46
Four footwear veterans.
Four completely different careers.
One uncomfortable conclusion.
We measure shoes exceptionally well before launch.
We measure them surprisingly poorly after months of real use.
Read the full article here ⬇️
open.substack.com/pub/justin…
#FootwearInnovation #LifecyclePerformance #BehaviouralDurability
#InMarketBehaviour
#ProductDevelopment
#Biomechanics
#HumanPerformance
#FootwearIndustry
18
Why Two Runners Need Different Shoes
The best running shoe doesn't exist.
The best shoe for you might be completely wrong for someone else.
Different body weights.
Different running styles.
Different injury histories.
Different training loads.
That's why copying somebody else's shoe choice often ends badly.
Footwear is a relationship between the shoe and the person wearing it.
Not the shoe on its own.
#runningcommunity #runningshoes #foothealth #footguru #biomechanics
1
33
Most football boot reviews are almost useless.
Not because the reviewers are bad.
Because they're reviewing the boot after one session.
The interesting questions come later.
What's it like after twenty sessions?
After fifty?
After months of training?
How does the traction change?
How does the ride change?
How does the player adapt?
Those are the questions that matter.
Football Boot Guide in bio.
#FootballBootGuide #FootballBoots #WorldCup26 #SoccerTips #FootGuru
21
Why The Same Running Shoe Feels Different For Different Runners | Simon ... youtu.be/3ETEiSzlPBM?si=G2Bi… via @YouTube
#runningshoes #Biomechanics #footwearinnovation #sportsinjuries #sportsscience
27
The hidden football injury setup.
I’m at football matches most weeks and I see the same thing constantly.
Players buying boots based on colour, brand or what pros wear.
Almost nobody thinks about surface interaction.
FG boots on artificial grass can massively increase rotational grip.
More grip sounds safer… until the foot gets trapped while the rest of the body keeps moving.
That’s where ankle, knee and rotational injuries start becoming more likely.
That’s exactly why I made the Football Boot Guide.
Thirty years of biomechanics and clinic work put into one simple download.
Link in the bio.
What boots are you wearing this season?
#football #footballboots #worldcup26 #footballinjury #agboots #fgboots #soccertraining #footguru #sportsinjury #biomechanics
67
Just made my new Kindle book FREE for 5 days.
"Why Your Heel Pain Keeps Coming Back" — the load problem nobody explained.
Free on Amazon until May 19 → amazon.com/dp/B0GX2ZSNYF
RT if you know someone with chronic heel pain 🙏
1
2
29
Products don’t fail. They change.
The issue is the system isn’t built to see when that change starts.
Everything is optimised for day one. What looks right. What feels right. What sells.
Then the product goes into use and the behaviour shifts. Nothing breaks, but it’s not the same system anymore.
When it comes back, it shows up as noise. Less stable. Feels different. Inconsistent.
So it gets treated like a quality problem.
It isn’t.
It’s a lifecycle problem that no one is tracking properly.
open.substack.com/pub/justin…
#footwear #product #manufacturing #innovation
14
Check out my latest article: Why products that pass testing still feel different after launch linkedin.com/pulse/why-produ… via @LinkedIn
9
You didn’t validate a product.
You validated a moment in time.
After that, it starts to change.
If the same model is being described in different ways, you’re already past the point where it began.
open.substack.com/pub/justin…
#footwear #productdevelopment #innovation
11
Products don’t need to fail to start costing you money.
They pass testing.
They launch clean.
Then the experience shifts.
No defect. No clear signal.
Just inconsistency.
That’s where margin and trust start to erode.
Full piece ↓
open.substack.com/pub/justin…
#footwear #productdevelopment #retail #innovation
12
Most footwear doesn’t fail.
It becomes harder to read.
Same model. Different feedback over time.
Not broken. Not noise.
Something changed.
The problem is we treat it like variability.
It isn’t always.
Full piece ↓
open.substack.com/pub/justin…
#footwear #productdevelopment
#innovation #sportsengineering
12