UKC

This indoor-oriented shoe manages to feel technical without being too aggressive, says Rob Greenwood. As a result it's fun and comfortable to climb in, but not to the detriment of performance. The price is worth shouting about, too!

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great and helpful review, as ever.

may have to see if the LV fits my comp kid daughter well.

And it left me wondering if any resolers are offering this (maybe better than Vibram) rubber on a resole? a quick google didn't show anything so i thought I'd put the question out there to the hive mind?

I'm not aware of any that do. I think Vibram have that side of the market sewn up. It is interesting to see these other compounds improving though. Zenith Pro 2 and Ultra 2 have both impressed me, as has Scarpa's S72. I'm sure there's others too, although these are the ones that immediately sprung to mind.

i’d guess that vibram does have a leg up at distributing material to resolers because other than making footwear, licensing their outsoles is a big part of their business. whether to sell whole soles and sheet rubber to manufacturers only, or to repair shops as well seems to be a smaller difference in the sort of business they’re doing.

with the in-house developed rubber compounds like science friction, zenith, etc., you’d probably be limited by resolers having an agreement with shoe manufacturers to get original parts. and that i could imagine to be also a question of company size. my resoler of choice is scarpa and la sportiva certified and has access to original soles for their models. according to a quick googling, scarpa has somewhere between 1000 and 5000 employees[1] and ~170 million euros revenue in 2022[2], whereas boreal seems to have <100 employees (their linkedin says between 50 and 200) and a 2024 revenue of 14 million euros[3].

i’d not be surprised if there’s a lower cutoff where it’s just not feasible for a shoe manufacturer to build up such a programme for original replacement parts.

however, that’s me making conjecture and i’d love to hear from someone more in the know.

links:
[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scarpaspa
[2]: https://it.linkedin.com/posts/scarpaspa_fatturato-crescita-performance-acti... (via wikipedia)
[3]: https://www.datanyze.com/companies/calzados-boreal/397525853

This could be useful to have a a purely indoor boot, saving my outdoor ones from wear. Why do you consider £120 a pair worth shouting about? It's a very average price for a pair of shoes these days.