This Pune-based D2C startup has designed shoes that grow with kids
Glaring insights are what hits the mind of a product designer with a love for shoes. Satyajit Mittal, co-founder and CEO of Aretto, discovered that one in three kids in India wear the wrong shoe size at any point in time because feet grow but shoes don’t. “While feet grow in smooth millimetric increments, shoe sizes increase in steps. This means that shoes fit perfectly only for a brief period. Kids start with wearing oversized shoes which they grow into and are replaced only when they become tight,” said Mittal.
“We all have surely experienced this as kids ourselves, right? I remember wearing my elder brother’s hand-me-down shoes through my pre-teens and adolescence,” he added.
The brainchild of Mittal and Krutika Lal, who is the co-founder and CMO at the tech-enabled kids-focused footwear startup headquartered in Pune, Aretto is one of the first brands in India that has been granted a patent for its sole technology. “Our intrigue kept growing, and we found out that kids between the ages of 0 - 3 years of age often grow out of there to four sizes in a year. Now that a big churn. What even happens to these shoes after the kids grow out of them? There were a lot of questions, but not a lot of answers,” said Lal.
When the startup dug a little deeper, it found out that India is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of footwear, with several world-class facilities and materials. With over two billion kids globally between the age of 0 to 11 years, opportunities were abundant for the startup. “Which is when we decided to put our minds to it and reimagine this industry with a fresh perspective. Having identified our first issue (feet grow, shoes don’t) we allocated our bootstrapped resources to unlocking the problem statement and developing a patented technology that enables shoes to grow as kids grow,” said Mittal.
The primary impact the startup has managed to create is reducing the number of SKUs by optimising the industry sizing benchmarks of 15 sizes to five sizes, each growing up to 18mm, postponing obsolescence.
While conventional kids’ shoes are shrunk-down versions of adult shoes, Aretto Leaps are specifically designed for kids, said Mittal. “Since Aretto Leaps hug and adapt to growing feet, there is no need for a toe gap allowance which often leads to an unnatural fit and gait. The adaptive sole of Aretto Leaps gives a bespoke fit to every user and majorly reduces sizing-based issues in kids’ footwear. While conventional shoe sizing jumps 7-8mm for every size, Aretto Leaps grow millimetrically with the child’s feet up to 18mm. We cover a spectrum of three sizes in one pair, thereby reducing inventory, moulds, and size-based returns which is a very high category barrier,” said Lal.
The startup, which is currently focussing on building a strong brand as the first kids’ technology brand in the market, aims to capture a larger market share by expanding its reach to UAE, Singapore, and Japan. It has set itself a target sell one lakh pairs by 2024-25.
