In order to craft and create last shapes specific to the product’s end use, we’ve partnered with English shoemakers, with experience totaling hundreds, and continuously collaborate with The North Face® athletes, collecting and applying their feedback from epic expeditions and training sessions. Finally, we consult with labs and think tanks to ensure that the most reliable, quantifiable data and recent studies are taken into account. This includes three-dimensional foot modeling, measurements of virtually every curvature of the foot, including widths of joints, heights of cones, and calcaneus angles.
Mountains of data go into each NorthFit™ implementation. For example, research has found that the human foot can expand and swell up to two centimeters over the course of a long run, so our shoemakers have adjusted for a larger toe box in our endurance running shoes. By the same token, a morphology study of almost 900 men and women revealed no differences in foot length measurements relative to sex, but it did reveal a statistically significant difference in ball and heel width, instep height, and width. As a result, The North Face® women’s footwear has a proportionately unique build from that for men.
In this way, the outdoor athlete can rest assured and focus on the task at hand, knowing that the most up-to-date scientific data and historical learnings have delivered comfort and performance that is certifiably NorthFit™.
