Hey everyone,
Wanted to provide an updated and get some valuable feedback from you trusted BPL members.
Although we are an (extremely) small company, through some interesting circumstances and series of events, we recently had an opportunity to break into retail with our sandals. At first this seemed very interesting and of course caught our interest. However, I struggled with the thought of mass producing sandals, when half of the fun is handcrafting sandals specific for your feet as well as experimenting with different materials and other DIY ideas that may one day be branded under EXODUS. So with this in mind, and after some really deep thought and discussion among co-founders (i.e. me and my wife or should I say my wife and I), we decided to pass. At least for now (who knows what the distant future holds).
So for now, we will remain made-to-order to your custom foot tracing to ensure you get the best pair of handcrafted sandals this side of the Detroit River ;).
I want to put out a great big thank you to Tim Marshall from enLIGHTened Equipment for spending a lot of personal time to provide feedback and prove that a made-to-order cottage industry can put out some killer products and innovate at the same time (shiftless baffle system).
With that said, and with many of you having the original release of XO Originals, I would like to simply ask, what would you like to see from EXODUS this spring? Even lighter sole (I am prototyping one now)? Deerskin leather option on the footbed (first proto went out the door a week ago on this)? Optional strap designs? Whatever it is, please let us know. By staying custom, we can focus on giving you guys and gals more of what you are asking for rather than being focused on producing/selling as many sandals as possible.
As a sneak peak, I do plan on releasing to the public (i.e. you) the XO Burly's in the next couple of months. Some have already slipped out the door to requesting customers…shhh. I will add a photo below but these are a 10mm Vibram expanded rubber option and they remain fairly lightweight even though there is 4mm worth of rubber added versus the XO Original's. The 10mm certainly helps with foot fatigue and has a less aggressive tread than the Original's.
(heated in the oven to be hand molded)
We also hope to have a new storefront/website up by Spring and possibly add some additional EXODUS logo'd apparel there as well.
Thanks again for all of the support and please let us know what you would like to see!
Ryan
