Kickstarter: Altum Dress Shoe

I like to support things that seem like a good idea to me, especially in these times of "crisis" when there is a deficit of entrepreneurialism and an excess of navel-gazing. America excels in picking itself up by its bootstraps and it seems to me that this is due to the idea of "The American Dream" which is so deeply embedded in their culture as well as a lack of red tape when it comes to setting up a new company and ways to limit your personal risk if things end up going belly up. Perhaps this is why Kickstarter has yet to come to Europe.

Admittedly, a lot of projects on Kickstarter add as much value as farts in the wind - "please give me money so I can travel the world and make a documentary about it that will be really successful" - but there are also some very serious projects. In fact, I find it striking that every so often established businesses use it as a way to raise capital and gauge public demand for a new product.

I've also been searching for a pair of "barefoot dress shoes" that I could wear with a suit but without the heel counter, the restrictive toe box and the rigid sole that I hate so much about my work shoes. I've always hated wearing shoes but I've also always hated having to wear a tie: it's just one of those things. It has only been as a side effect of running with so-called barefoot shoes that I have come to realize that some shoes are actually comfortable and can be useful. The nearest I have got to date to something I can wear (and have worn) in the office - although, admittedly, only on casual Fridays - are the Run Amoc Dash shoes. The problem they have is that the leather is so soft and flexible that my toes leave visible indentations in the uppers, making them look like a pair of ballerinas plimsolls and the "go faster" stripe on the back makes them look less than formal.

While browsing around on the internet last night, I came across this Kickstarter project which was getting some serious plugging from the popular Birthday Shoes Blog: the Altum's Barefoot Dress Shoe.

I'm excited to have kickstarted my first ever project! (My wife said that I should go for the black ones because the brown ones would attract too much attention to what are already slightly weird shoes.) Since my dog ate my last pair of normal work shoes I have been wearing my MBT "weeble" shoes which are great but they are very bulky and today they were partly to blame for me spilling my smoothy all over my suit...