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Shoe inserts as a trending product? Hard to imagine. A founding duo from Berlin still believe they have found the formula for a million dollar business.
When Annik Wolf set out to run a marathon three years ago, nothing worked after a few weeks. The former management consultant recalls that she had to quickly stop training due to severe knee pain. He went to an orthopedic surgeon, made appointments with the physical therapist. It turned out: Wolf has a hip misalignment. One of his knees suffered significantly more strain than the other. The result was inflammation in the joint. But give up running and marathon plans? That was out of the question for Wolf. When she told her then-co-worker Vincent Hoursch about it, he advised her to try it out with templates.
Until then, a foreign word for the Berliner, as for most Germans. Although, according to Wolf, up to 70 percent of all adults have a misaligned foot and insoles are a proven means of pain relief, only about a fifth of them would wear them in their shoes, Wolf says. “Many are not even aware of the benefits of insoles and it often takes weeks before you come up with a recipe for a partner.” That led the now 30-year-old to her own company: Together with her former colleague, Hoursch founded Wolf in 2019 Getsteps, an online deposit provider.
“We focus on brands like Casper”
The process is simple: with a configurator, customers first select their type of footwear, such as sneakers, running shoes or boots, and then decide on a covering material, such as artificial leather or a special odor-neutralizing surface. After ordering, the company mails a set of foot prints by mail, which the customer uses at home according to the instructions, and returns it to Getsteps along with a completed questionnaire. There is no downside, as the founder says when asked, “Our tests have shown that impressions at home are as accurate as in the medical supply store, where the shoemaker presses the customer’s foot into foam,” Wolf said.
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Getsteps produces by hand, just a few weeks ago Wolf and Hoursch opened their own production plant in Berlin-Lichtenberg. Custom-made templates cost between $ 90 and $ 120, depending on the design, and are up to 50 percent cheaper than usual, according to Wolf. “As an online provider, we focus exclusively on templates, whereas a classic medical supply store offers many other services. This allows us to produce completely different production volumes at lower unit costs, ”explains the price advantage.
Wolf and his business partner Hoursch also try to differentiate themselves from the competition when it comes to branding. The store has a modern design. The complicated technical terms are not in the foreground, but rather large fonts, comic book illustrations and hands gripping the inserts, which are designed in plain black, like a smartphone. The founding duo want their shoe inserts to be consciously understood as a lifestyle product. Getsteps is not your typical medical company, Wolf emphasizes, even if the startup is necessarily certified as an orthopedic shoemaker business.
“We are targeting direct-to-consumer brands like Casper or dental splint supplier Sunshine Smile,” says the founder. It refers to companies that sell their products directly through the Internet without intermediaries and that value close contact with customers, for example on social networks. Getsteps advertises its deposits on Instagram, among other things. Almost 5,000 people are already following the account. When it comes to sales, the company also has the support of influencers.
Ten million sales in sight
Business is good. It started a year ago, in late 2020 Wolf and Hoursch reported sales in the seven-digit range. The trend is increasing, as Wolf says: “In January and February alone, we have already billed around 400,000 euros. Therefore, we assume that we will achieve sales of between five and ten million euros this year ”. Getsteps aims to make the first profits from 2022. According to Wolf, the market has not yet been dominated by any major suppliers. She estimates that in Germany alone, three billion euros are spent on shoe inserts every year.
This is one of the reasons why investors seem to be interested in Getsteps. As an extract from the commercial register shows, the list of shareholders already includes 15 donors, despite the company’s two-year history. Some of them are known on the scene. McMakler founder Felix Jahn, Helpling founder Benedikt Franke, and Stephanie Kaiser, founder of Berlin-based business builder Heartbeat Lab, became involved in Getsteps at an early stage. In this way, 1.2 million euros have already entered the company in a first seed round, says Wolf.
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She and her partner Vincent Hoursch hope to get more capital from an appearance on the television show “Die Höhle der Löwen” on Monday night. The duo want to raise 500,000 euros for ten percent of the shares with a valuation of five million euros. Because the company is already planning the next steps.
In addition to the expansion into German-speaking countries, the number of employees is expected to grow from the current 20 to around 50 by the end of the year. There are also plans to use customer footprint information for other shoe-related products. According to Wolf, a digital foot ID that could be integrated into stores like Zalando is conceivable. “That would make it much easier for customers to find the right shoe size and, at the same time, reduce return rates for online retailers.”
By the way, Wolf still hasn’t run his marathon. But that’s not because of the insoles he’s supposedly been wearing in his shoes for two years. He just didn’t have time to start the business. After all, he hasn’t had any knee pain since.
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