Vibram Heads To China

The company’s Five Fingers brand now accounts for 30% of its global sales.

Look out China: minimalist running is heading your way. Vibram, the Italian shoe company made famous for its Five Fingers brand of shoe, has just made a foothold in the world’s largest emerging country. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the company has invested $20 million in a 12,000 square-meter building in Huadu, China.

At the complex, called the Vibram Technological Center, prototype Five Fingers (VFFs) are tested. The actual VFFs are manufactured elsewhere in China.

“It’s a Disney World for shoes,” says sales and marketing director Tom Mendl about the new testing facility.

Five Fingers now account for 30% of the company’s global sales. Over 2.5 million pairs were sold last year.

One Chinese customer, Joseph Ng, a designer and social entrepreneur in Hong Kong, really enjoys his Five Fingers. After a month training in them, he said he was “really blown away by the way my body automatically changed the way I was striking the ground.”

For More: The Wall Street Journal