This week at Outdoor Retailer, a huge outdoor retail expo here in Salt Lake, the running shoe company Altra that Jer and 2 other great guys (Golden who is Jer's cousin, and Brian a friend of both of them) started up 2.5 years ago was honored by one of the biggest running magazines out there. Runner's World awarded Altra the Best Debut award for our first shoe, the Instinct and Intuition. This is such a neat award and recognition!
The hard work we (and I say we because I've been along for the ride since the beginning too. Altra is something I believe in and love and work whenever I get the chance through testing, opinions, expos and just word of mouth etc) have put in is astonishing, and those first 18 months were a long hard and very difficult time for us. It's hard to pay bills without much of an income, we had no income from Altra at all actually until early 2011. Jer made do as best he could with website work and spent every other waking moment helping to develop and market these shoes. I'm so grateful for the connections we've made to be able to afford to mass produce these and be a real company to reckon with in the running shoe market. I'm also grateful for an income and benefits now :) Sometimes it's hard to believe that 3 young guys from Utah had an idea and dream, connected with the right people, and eventually won an award traditionally awarded to the big dog brands of running shoes. While Jer still works 40-60+ hour weeks and travels at least once a month it seems, I'm so very grateful for our place as founders in this company and to get to watch so intimately their development and progress.
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