Vivobarefoot's falls research is five years old. Its campaign stars an NFL player
Two peer-reviewed papers put the shoemaker's footwear in front of people who had already fallen. Its September 2026 global campaign is built around a professional footballer.
On 20 September 2021, Scientific Reports published "Daily activity in minimal footwear increases foot strength" by Curtis, Willems, Paoletti and D'Août. Twenty-two adults wore Vivobarefoot Stealth II shoes for six months and recorded an average 57.4% increase in foot strength, at p less than 0.001, against a control group of twenty-four who did not.
Nine months earlier the same journal published "Minimal shoes improve stability and mobility in persons with a history of falls" by Cudejko, Gardiner, Akpan and D'Août. Thirty adults with a mean age of 68.6, all of whom had fallen since turning 60, were measured barefoot, in a conventional walking shoe and in a Vivobarefoot Primus Knit.
Postural stability was significantly better in the minimal shoe than the conventional shoe in every direction measured. Walking stability in the fore-aft direction was better at p less than 0.001, and the Timed Up and Go mobility test was completed around 0.3 seconds faster.
The paper's competing interests statement records that three of its four authors hold a mutual grant with Vivobarefoot Ltd as industrial partner, funded by Innovate UK under grant number 1570. One of the authors is a consultant geriatrician.
These were laboratory measurements taken on the day of testing, in people who had already fallen. Neither paper is evidence that the footwear prevents falls, and the company's press kit makes no such claim.
The British falls apparatus has been built out since. NICE published guideline NG249 on falls assessment and prevention on 29 April 2025. The Royal College of Podiatry published a falls prevention policy on 7 July 2025 costing falls to the NHS at £4.4bn a year.
On 10 September 2026 the Royal College of Physicians published its National Hip Fracture Database annual report, recording more than 72,000 hip fractures a year, around one in thirty hospital beds, £1.1bn in annual NHS cost and a further £1.25bn in social care within 120 days of injury.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that falls are the leading cause of injury death among adults aged 65 and over, with more than fourteen million older adults reporting a fall each year, approximately 4.5 million emergency department visits in 2024 and over 43,000 deaths that year.
Vivobarefoot's current global campaign, Weird More, launched in September 2026 through Thingy and Thingy, produced by DROOL, and stars the NFL player Mack Hollins. The company's education platform, VivoHealth, launched in 2022 with courses under names including Running Fundamentals.
Galahad Clark told FashionNetwork on 3 September 2026 that the barefoot category has grown from around twenty brands to more than five hundred in four years. He also put turnover past €100m and founder ownership at roughly 70%.
That is the commercial point the kit makes against itself. A thin, wide sole can be copied by five hundred competitors in four years; a published paper with a named university and a public grant number cannot.
For founders sitting on evidence they paid to generate, the lesson is about where it gets pointed. Vivobarefoot's strongest data was gathered on 68-year-olds who had fallen, and its advertising budget is going to a professional athlete.
More: Vivobarefoot · its VivoHealth platform
