Chief Biomedical Officer · Co-Founder
Dr. Jay LeBow, DPM, FACFAS
Board-certified foot and ankle surgeon. Thirty-five years in practice at Mercy Medical Center and twenty-five seasons as the team podiatrist for the Baltimore Orioles.
1.5 Million Foot Scan Dataset
We measured 1.5 million feet to solve comfort.
The answer was not cushioning. It was fit & lack of support. Ill-fitting footwear causes more issues with foot health and comfort and contributes to sky-high return rates for online footwear.
- 1,500,0001,500,000+
- Feet scanned
- 18
- Feet measurements
- 97.5%
- Fit accuracy
- 3.85%
- Return rate
through our sister company ReaLift.
per each foot.
vs 68% buying shoe sizes online.
versus industry avg 18.5%.
01 — What We Found
Shoe sizes were made for the shoe industry. Not your feet.
You can see from a sample of data we collected that the length of someone’s feet does not strongly correlate with shoe size. Y is the shopper's foot length, and X is the European shoe size they wear. Shoppers were gravitating toward shorter or longer shoe lengths because their feet's shape didn't fit the shoe size they should be wearing.
02 — What the Data Told Us
Shoe Sizes Were Causing Comfort Issues and Pain.
Standard shoe sizing was standardized so factories could have fewer lasts, die cuts, & molds — and it was not built to accommodate the many foot shapes people have. The result is shoppers wearing shoes that are not built to their foot shape, causing foot compression, pain, and/or loose footwear.
03 — What We Did About It
Four things the data told us.Four things we changed.
01
Your foot is not the same foot throughout the day.
What the data showed
Prolonged standing produces measurable volume increase across the forefoot and instep as the day progresses. A shoe fitted to a morning foot is the wrong shoe by evening.
What we did
We build the last to accommodate greater volume throughout the day and pair it with a cork-and-foam insole that takes an impression of your foot rather than resisting it.
02
Width and volume correlate to comfort more than length.
What the data showed
Across the dataset, length did not match a customer's stated size far more often than ball girth or forefoot width did when combined with length. People are not wearing the wrong size. They are wearing the wrong shape.
What we did
We fit to ball girth, forefoot width, and length. We find that a lack of ball girth is the primary cause of foot pain, so we ensure there is enough room in the shoe.
03
Control the heel, control the world.
What the data showed
Heel-width variance and lack of support caused the rear foot to shift inside footwear sized for length. This caused fatigue, pain, and comfort challenges with users.
What we did
A reinforced heel counter and a supportive nylon shank hold the rear foot still, so the arch stops compensating for a sliding heel.
04
Hard floors do the damage, not distance.
What the data showed
Our population walks fewer miles than runners and reports more pain. The variables are surface and duration— twelve hours on tile, not three miles on asphalt.
What we did
An ultra-soft EVA midsole tuned for sustained standing loads rather than repeated impacts, paired with an ASTM-certified slip-resistant outsole, absorbs the harsh nature of our man-made artificial flooring & environments.
04 — Our Company Timeline
From humble podiatry beginnings to makingshoes for healthy feet.
Cumulative scans in the ReaSize dataset, by year.
1988–2023
35 Year Precursor
Dr. Jay LeBow practices podiatric surgery and is the team podiatrist for the Baltimore Orioles. He spent eight years at Under Armor and various other footwear organizations.
0
2023
ReaLift is Founded
Dr. LeBow co-founded ReaLift with Abdallah Terrab and Ronald Dod to help solve shoe sizing for the footwear industry.
first scans
2024
ReaLift Scanner Goes Mobile
In-store hardware is replaced by phone-based capture with an easy sizing tool on popular footwear brands’ websites.
~100,000
2024
WOA is being Conceptualized
The ReaLift team realizes that to solve the issue entirely for shoe sizing, you need to remove the shoe-sizing layer from the footwear purchasing process.
~350,000
2025
WOA Begins Development
Made to order. You order; we deliver a shoe. Simple, easy, new concept. Shoes made for you with your name on them.
~900,000
2026
WOA Launches
Returns settle at 3.85% against an industry average of 18.5%. Shoe sizing solved.
1,500,000
05 — Our Team
The people behind the data.
Chief Executive Officer · Co-Founder
Ronald Dod
Direct-to-consumer growth and acquisition. Owns brand, demand and the commercial model behind made-to-measure at scale.
Chief Technology Officer · Co-Founder
Abdallah Terrab
Architected the technology for Walking On Air Shoes including our mobile scanning technology and the headless storefront.
Computer Vision Engineer
Otmane Zagnoune
Owns the model that turns a ninety-second phone capture into 18 verified measurements.
Full-Stack Engineering
Nabil Mouzouna
Builds the scan-to-order path every customer actually walks through.
Head of Machine Learning
Asmae Tounsi
Head of machine learning and AI at Walking On Air Shoes. Spearheads accuracy improvements of the application.
Your feet have carried you long enough.
Scan in ninety seconds. Wear them for thirty days. Send them back if we read your feet wrong.