shoe companies have ruined running

I agree shoe prices have gotten really out of hand. Part of it though is to blame on the hordes of 40 somethings all too willing to shell out $280 for alphaflys so they can smash the 5 hour marathon barrier. The companies wouldn't be pricing it like this if they couldn't get away with it...

Separate categories for barefoot runners, flats runners and supershoe runners. It stops everybody moaning.

Create your own running shoe, the reason we have these shoes is people buy them, companies generally don’t make products that return a profit

Actually the sport of running allowed athletic shoes to ruin it because they give them way too much power. Could you imagine the NFL allowing one single company to dictate as much as running allows Nike to dictate?

Garbage leadership. With proper leadership there's no reason running wouldn't look like golf or tennis and have just as big a pride purses and just as much national coverage.

They charge that much for super shoes because they're that expensive to manufacture. It's not like Nike has a monopoly on the market and is price gouging. It's a competitive market and everyone is charging a ton for super shoes.

Like it or not, running is skewed towards the highly affluent. It's right up there with skiing and tennis. The running community is willing and able to spend a lot of money.

It doesn't cost anywhere near that to make the shoes. It probably costs them 20% of the sale price to manufacture the actual product. The rest is marketing, rents, staff and profit for shareholders.

If you took away all of the marketing and storefronts - you stopped sponsoring athletes, no TV ads, billboards etc and you sold everything online from a single warehouse in each country then the price of the shoes would be about 40-50% of what it actually is.

When we buy these shoes we are paying for kipchoge et al to jet around the world.

In Fairness Shoe Companies give Runners some of the best Sponsorship Deals, When Athletes (Top Runners) Say they are Unsponsored or Don't have a Contract It usually means, With a Shoe Companies, Personally I would rather Shoe Companies get out of the Sponsoring Business, And Have GOFUNDME's set up, so Fans and Friends can support their favorite runners, Look at The Number of Instagram Followers they have usually at least 10k, If they asked their followers to donate even $5 A Month, something just about everyone can do with 10 Thousand Followers that is A RELIABLE 50k a Month for the Athlete, far better for MOST than Shoe Companies, giving NCAA Champions 25-50k a Year, And Many All Americans get NOTHING (Depending on Event and Popularity) and then if you get injured or just have a bad year you get dropped to Apparel Only or Nothing.

The GOFUNDME is good in that it gets fans involved and they feel good about helping the Athletes they like, The Shoe Company looks at the Athletes only for if the Athlete can make the Company Money by Advertising for them, If the Athlete can't do that, they cut the Athlete, The Fans See The Athlete as a Human Being (Unlike Companies) not can they get Money for them.

Lets Get back to People doing things out of the Goodness of their Hearts, Not what can they do for me.

Running shoes are too expensive and worst of all they sell out quickly (in the UK anyway), so it's difficult if not impossible to get discounted shoes that are decent.

Cost of goods sold is a small part of running a business. This isn't rocket science.

Dude just buy a pair of Ride 15s on Amazon for $50 and put in the miles.

but that's begging. you may as well sit on the street with a cup in front of you. i wouldn't be comfortable doing that personally.

It's (still) a free market and you don't have to buy them.
I would think that most people don't need these carbon shoes anyway.

Blame the hobby jogger customer who buy all the unnecessary gear for the local 5k

One could argue that running was “ruined” in 1981 when the Cascade Run Off 15K in Portland, Oregon paid prize money with the support of Nike. Then in 1982 the IAAF abandoned amateurism, creating trust funds for athletes in 1985. By 1997 they added competition Awards. Mechanical and pharmaceutical cheating pays off orders of magnitude more in running than other sports. But how can we go backwards and kill professional running? We cannot. We’re stuck with what we got.

You reminded me of a ridiculous Nutriment ad that ran in the running magazines back in the '80s. It featured a 7' tall NBA player with a pair of obviously way too small for him track spikes draped by the strings over his crossed forearm. "I run the 10k 84 times a season", was the tag for why he was a great spokesman for telling skinny distance runners they need to drink sugary protein drinks. It was funny and insulting at the same time. Like, who should be our spokesman for runners? Frank Shorter? Bill Rogers? Nah, an NBA center will reel them in.

Shoes are typically updated yearly, not every two months. Take advantage of this to buy the outgoing version at a discount.

I don’t know why you’re paying $300 for supershoes and only wearing them once. I’ve always paid $250 or less and I get about 200 miles of racing and another 200-300 miles of tempo running out of them. Honestly a better deal than when flats cost half as much but only lasted half as long, and you would need to buy a separate tempo/racer for half and full marathons.

And you know Atreyu is a thing. But let me guess, you’re yet another of those runners who moans about the running shoe industry model but then doesn’t support Atreyu.

Cycling called....hold my beer.

Tennis called....hold my wine.

Golf called....hold my beer.

Insert physical hobby....insert innovation.

I’m sure the OP is a hobby jogger too, the elites tell these companies what they like and don’t like and get them for free.