What We Learned From You

What We Learned From You

We recently ran a customer survey to help guide our strategy in the coming year, thank you so much to the 155 participants!

As a small business it's imperative that we offer the best service we can, and that includes listening to the people who support us. It also means taking an active role in this wonderful, friendly community by sharing our plans for our future goals, so that's what we're doing here today!

Some survey participants were already emailed the survey results, but for those who are not in our mailing list and also anyone else interested you can read on if you're curious about:

  • a summary of the survey results
  • how we interpreted the feedback
  • how that insight will guide our strategy moving forwards


High Scores: Where We Did Well

 

Variety of brands and styles available: average score 4.12/5

Likelihood of recommending the store to friends or family: average score 4.81/5

Customers also left positive comments, including:

  • "I love the new website navigation. Very intuitive."
  • "Keep doing what you’re doing; you’re helping so many people."
  • "Thank you for providing exceptional service and a smooth shopping experience."

The comments reflect a high level of satisfaction with the service and product quality. Customers generally perceive a high quality in the variety of products and are highly likely to recommend the store. 

It's not surprising, given that ~20% of you said that you heard about us through word of mouth! This was second only to hearing about us via online search (at a whopping 62%). Still, it makes us so grateful to our community, it's really all thanks to you!

 

Trending Results

Main reasons for choosing minimalist footwear:

  • Health benefits: 77% of respondents
  • Comfort: 76% of respondents
  • Functionality/Mobility: 79% of respondents
  • Various custom answers point to wide toe boxes as a key factor, such as to accommodate bunions

The overwhelming popularity of these answers suggests that you are choosing to wear minimal footwear instead of conventional footwear for its health benefits, comfort, and functional qualities. However, when choosing between different barefoot models, that's where factors like style, special features, or materials come into play.

Less than 5 respondents chose price as a factor in questions like this, but rest assured we know willingness to invest in your long term wellness doesn't mean you have an endless budget! We'll continue to get the best prices we can for you.

 

How long have you been wearing barefoot shoes?

About two thirds of respondents are barefoot pros!

Maybe it was our regulars who decided to fill out our feedback form for the most part, as we're used to around half of the people we talk to being brand new to minimal.

Even if our sample data is biased towards those with more experience, we can look further into resources for folks who are already transitioned into minimal shoes and looking to enrich that experience, in addition to our resources for those who are just starting out.

 

Have you shopped with us in store or online?

We advertised the survey via online and in person avenues, but it looks like most of our survey results come from folks who are local or who have been able to make a special trip to see us. We do our best to make the trip worth your while, providing resources and advice in addition to shopping. In our big dreams we think about opening locations across the country; time will tell.

 

 

For now, popular suggestions on how to improve our retail experience fell into two major categories:

  • "What I wanted was out of stock,"
  • and "I'd like more variety, especially XYZ specific model"

While our Restock Alert system is heavily used, we may need to put more effort into advertising it, and educating on how it works. It's something we'll put more thought into, and we welcome your ongoing suggestions! And as for variety and new launches, we'll address that in our Insights below.

 

In person shopping is ideal for shoes, but for when online is your only option we want to make it a good one, too! Some of your popular suggestions for improving the website included:

  • make it easier to find the right size with sizing guidance
  • view all products and narrow results via filters, such as "in stock in my size"

We are working towards implementing both of these improvements in 2025, so hearing that this is also what our community needs showed us that we are on the right track!

 

Products and Services You're Looking For

 

We got requests for a few products and services we already offer! We'll have to do a better job of making these easy to find:

 

We also got requests for things that we would consider or that are already in the works, such as:

  • Loyalty program-- coming soon!
  • More selections for kids (Kids' Snowfox is now live!)
  • Discounts for health professionals (updates to our Movement Partner program are in the works)
  • A "phonebook" of barefoot-friendly health and wellness services
  • Greater range of foot health accessories like metatarsal pads, AiM Wedges, balance boards, sensory mats, and more affordable options for toe spacers
  • More options to wear with a dress or women's work styles
  • Treadmill, texture mats, and incline zone for shoe try-ons
  • More collabs with our Movement Partners!
  • Moving to a larger location or opening a second location: trust us, we would love more space!

 

There were also some requests we have chosen are not right for us:

  • Order directly from manufacturer for you: while it would be amazing for our customers, we are not set up as an import business for individual orders. When we tried implementing this in larger orders in the past, supply chain unreliability created some epic sagas we are not looking to revisit.
  • Shoe repair and restoration: we are not trained in this art, you'd do much better to seek out a professional.

 

Pro tip: if you tell us what you're looking for, we can help you find the best way to get it. That might be through us, or it might not. We want you to find what you need, please help us to help you!

 

Insights and Plans

 

Identified Areas for Improvement:

  • Development of a personalized foot profile system.
  • Addition of new brands (Feelgrounds, Shapen, Softstar, among others).
  • Improved inventory management to ensure the availability of popular sizes and styles.
  • Implementation of a loyalty program.
  • Extended store hours to accommodate more customers (stay tuned).
  • Website navigation improvements.

We've already been hard at work behind the scenes researching options to implement your ideas! This year, we hope to launch a loyalty program, and improve our website so you can view all products and filter them down to find what you want.

We're looking into a foot profile system so you could have your measurements and other useful descriptors stored in your customer account for easy reference during shopping. You could even sort products based on the same descriptors. If we can manage it, we'd like to look at implementing a universal sizing system across all brands and models at CEM. If it's doable it will be a huge project, so please bear with us as we work towards this dream!

When it comes to new brands, customers are looking for more stylish options, special use options, and shoes that come in wide to extra wide. We will take that into consideration going forward! While our spring/summer collection is nearly complete, this feedback will guide our decisions on what fall/winter options we bring in. We will also be watching the international political stage to see how potential tariffs will impact which brands we focus on; if we can no longer offer American brands at a reasonable price, this would be a reason to expand offerings from global brands more quickly.

We have to balance a few factors when it comes to keeping things in stock: availability from our suppliers, available storage space, and whether we want to "go wide or go tall." Going wide refers to offering a lot of options, but not having a lot of each at one time. Going tall means getting as much stock as possible in fewer styles. We plan to innovate with one-offs, special events, and leaning harder into seasonal ordering to maximize variety in our small space.

 

Looking Ahead Together

 

It was both a learning experience to read the thoughtful and detailed responses, and an emotional experience (some of us definitely teared up reading your kind words at our recent staff meeting).

It looks like a lot of our plans are on the right track, and areas we had overlooked are now going to be improved thanks to our community's generosity of time and insight. We're looking forward to making some dreams become reality with you this year.