I was recently given a very exciting opportunity by Salomon... They wanted me to help them develop a new product that should be hitting our shelves in late 2014!
Its a rotten job, but i guess somebody has to do it! So off I trot up to Kirkstone Pass in the Lake District. We met up in a quaint little B&B in Ambleside where I was met by some of the Top development guys from Salomon HQ in Annecy. It was here i got my first glimpse of the shoe we were here to develop..... The S-LAB Fellcross 3! We had a little chat about the aims of the day, and headed up to the Kirkstone Pass Inn, from where we would be doing our testing (well on the hills around the pub, not sat in the warm comfort of those 4 walls).
It was a typical day up there- Blowing a hooly, and peeing it down with rain! Perfect conditions for testing this iconic Fell shoe! The task was to try various different shoes with different Last's, Sole Units, Uppers, Mid Soles, etc, etc to come up with the perfect combination! This of course meant trying 15 different shoes, running up and down hills, through bogs and streams, across shingle, grass, and every other type of terrain you are likley to encounter on your typical fell! Thorough testing indeed! In between tests, we would log our findings ready for a discussion at the end of the day.
After a good 8 hours in the wet and windy hills, it was time to head back down to Ambleside for a coffee and chat. Time flew by and before we new it,we had been chatting about this new wonder shoe, with its new components, feel fit, etc, etc for hours. The finished product was almost in site, and everybody had a good idea of what was needed to make this THE fell shoe on the market. Along side this i was also lucky enough to try and test some of the other new shoes in the pipeline for 2014/2015, and boy are they something to be excited for!
Watch this space for further details of the new wonder shoe, AKA the Salomon S-LAB Fellcross 3!!
