True sources of inspiration are often earmarked by several factors: a crazy idea, a steadfast - borderline stubborn - vision, and a drive for success. Enter norda.
For those who call themselves creatives, it’s an imperative and inevitable that norda’s story serves as a hallmark of a successful mindset in the creative pursuit. Founded in 2020 by Nick Martire and Willa Martire, alongside designer Louis-Martin Tremblay and development lead Gerard Cleal, a group that collectively possesses more than 50 years in the shoe industry, the performance brand turned heads with their utilization of Dyneema in their sneakers - a material never before seen in footwear.
It was this creative vision, backed by material powerhouse, Dyneema, and the foremost technology from Vibram, that formed the building blocks upon which norda continuously supercedes its own work. Fresh off the launch of the 005, the brand’s first race day shoe, norda’s models boast of the technical prowess that evolved from the brand's own insular evolution: “We don't aspire to be like anything else that has come before us. And if you're just looking at other shoe companies, you're just settling for what they've done. What we're doing, we're just trying to do something so infinitely different to break the mold.” It’s a lesson in staying steadfast to your mission and to your art, and an example of perseverance in the advancement of knowledge, technicality, and innovation.
As described best by Martire to HBX in 2024: “When they zig, we zag.” Just over a year later, Martire’s co-founder and CMO of the brand, his wife Willa, further details to HBX: “If you're always comparing what everyone else is doing…it's fairly disruptive to your vision and your focus.”
With a fresh restock and the brand’s latest model, the 005, arriving at HBX, we caught up with the brand’s co-founders, Nick and Willa Martire, to discuss the engineering of the inaugural race-day shoe, brand philosophies, and the metamorphosis of norda.
The last time we spoke was in March 2024. What's been going on since then, and can you share some highlights?
Nick: Look, it's been wild. I mean, last time we were here, we were talking about the launch of the 002. Fast forward, we launched the 003, we skipped the 004 - the 5 was too fast - and here we are. The five is now live, after two years of work. And we're very excited.
It's quite rare for both of you to be interviewed together. I'm wondering if you could introduce the other person and describe their role in the company.
Nick: This is Willa Martire. She's the co-founder of Norda, technically, the CMO - we just call her the big boss. She truly is the boss. Willa leads all of the brand, visual aesthetic, the team, basically everything brand-related, [and she’s] also the glue of the company. In the beginning, when we started, [Willa] manned the Instagram entirely. People used to say to her, “Do you sleep?” because it was like 24/7 that she was on Instagram. To be honest, you still do it.
Willa: I like going in and reading messages from people - it's a good hands-on mechanism for feedback, you know what the community is saying, what they love, and what they don’t.
Nick: So what do I do?
Willa: [laughs] This is Nicholas Martire, CEO, founder, [and] a crazy mastermind of how shoes work, honestly. An incredible shoe technologist. And I think you have an incredible vision about how to evolve the running shoe.
Is it ever hard running a business as a couple?
Nick: [laughs] Where do we start?
Willa: I think why it works for us is that we are in two completely, if you will, two different silos. I'm working in the brand and marketing. And Nick is very much in the sales operation. Our worlds do collide. Of course, they have to, and that's usually when there are moments of tension.
Nick: But it's good. I think any moment that gets tense comes from passion. We all want the same thing. We're not satisfied. We just want to create the finest.
Willa: But it'd be funny to ask our team, because we can in a professional context slip into a husband-and-wife casual conversation.
Nick: I think there are a lot of wives and husbands who have started fun things.
Willa: I think the most difficult part about running a business together is having that time of not working, and that’s difficult.
Nick: There’s no such thing.
Willa: We have to actively say, like, “No talking about norda after six o'clock at night.”
Nick: We've never, ever, ever been successful.
But with something like a performance lifestyle brand, you guys are pretty into running in itself, so it's difficult to “clock out,” right?
Nick: Yeah, I think when you own and run your own business, it's your life, it's your heart, your DNA, so you're just constantly thinking [about it] every moment of the day. Because you know, if it's not your baby, I guess you could shut it off. But we just can’t.
It’s a testament to how much you guys care about the brand.
Nick: Yeah, that's a really good way of looking at it.
Willa: We do work in different ways. I tend to need more time off, a moment of pause, to get away from the emails - I need those days to kind of reboot the creative battery more.
Nick: Actually, you asked me an interesting question the last time we met, something like, “What is your day or work?” And I said I probably work two hours more a day than the average person. I work seven days a week. That's 14 hours. And for 50+ weeks, that means I’m working 700 hours more per year than the average human. You have to.
So your slogan is, “What do you run for?” So I’m curious, what do you guys run for?
Willa: Peace of mind. Running is meditation. It's a way to quiet everything and to recharge, to be inspired. I like being outside. And specifically, norda is a trail running brand, so it's about the outdoors and being immersed in the forest for me.
Nick: For me, it's learning. I'm learning about the shoes because I'm testing the shoes. For me, it's really just a learning opportunity.
Willa: Running is when I have all my creative ideas. I got all the way, almost into my 40s, to realize that I must be that the creative part of my brain is activated when I'm moving.
Nick: So two things, when you're running, generally, you're not distracted by the office or things like that, but it's the dopamine, it's the high, that releases hormones, and it enables you to think. That's why a lot of people, when they’re running or on walks, just get crazy ideas. It’s like unlocking ideas.
You teased the 005 last year, a model that underwent a whole year of testing, and there were eight versions that didn't make the cut. Can you explain briefly what was wrong in those eight previous versions?
Nick: There was nothing wrong; it's just the process.
Willa: It's a metamorphosis. It's kind of like a cocoon opening up into a butterfly. With each successive iteration, you find different things to tweak to achieve the ultimate experience. But also, we have a team of 12 athletes, and all of them at some point get different prototypes, and because they run differently and have different foot shapes, you have all this feedback, and you have to make accommodations. What you end up doing is making accommodations that are the most comfortable for all, because some shoes are comfortable for people with narrow feet, or wider feet, things like that, you have to find the middle ground.
Nick: It takes two years. We started with a vision to make the finest. We thought we had already done that with the 001 and 002, but as we say at norda, we just keep going higher. It's a mix of science and technology and science and art.
How do you feel now that it's out there after two years? Is it a sense of relief, or is it more anxiety?
Willa: You know what? In the running industry, the most anxious part is when you have the first final product out to the testers. Once the reviews are done and back, you’ve read them, and you know, then you're fine.
Nick: That's a really good point.
Willa: We've been really fortunate. I mean, not fortunate. I mean in a sense - it is. It’s an incredible shoe, and it's there in writing. There are a lot of reviews out this time in advance.
Nick: There were a lot of anxious moments, I think. You [Willa] brought it to life with the media and the consumers, and I brought it to life through the production. We gave the media testers three months to test the shoe, which is very rare. A lot of the time, a shoe isn’t given to the testers until it's about to launch, which [doesn’t] really give you a proper test. And we kept them under embargo, and everybody respected it, but they were getting very anxious. Probably three weeks ago, Willa and I were very anxious, [but] it's been phenomenal. I think they were just so excited, because there was such a long embargo period, they wanted to put it out there.
Would you say the 005 is your favorite shoe?
Willa: No. I love the OG, the 001 - I love that shoe. It's still the shoe that I reach for on an everyday run. It's the everyday runnable shoe. The 005 is special. It's a really race-day shoe. The 001 is probably my favorite, but the five feels really good to run in. It’s hard to pick - it's like choosing between your children.
Nick: Every one of our shoes is designed for a very specific purpose, so they're not really intended to replace one with the other. The 005 is scientifically and technologically much more advanced than the others, but it's not an everyday running shoe. Although the problem is, once you've driven in a Lamborghini, you only want to drive in a Lamborghini. I'm far too slow to benefit from that Lamborghini every day. [laughs]
Your shoes are always compared to Porsches or Land Rovers. So is the 005 comparable to a Lamborghini?
Nick: Yeah. Well, a lot of people said, even in the media at the beginning -
Willa: I would really like him to stop associating the shoes with the cars. Because I'm like, where did that come from? [laughs]
Nick: It’s really weird. I don't mind the comparison, because people have said to us, “Do you compare yourself to other shoe companies?” And I always say, “No, I absolutely don't.” Because we don't aspire to be like anything else that has come before us. And, you know, I feel like, if you're just looking at other shoe companies, you're just settling for what they've done. What we're doing, we're just trying to do something so infinitely different to break the mold. And I like the idea of car companies or bicycle companies, because they're just totally pushing the industry.
Willa: If you're always comparing what everyone else is doing, for me, at least, it's fairly disruptive to your vision and your focus. And for me, I prefer to have blinders on, just focusing.
I feel like your mindset since I spoke to you last year is much more “in your own lane.” Last year, you talked briefly about not wanting to follow other brands, but I feel like talking to both of you now, you’re very much focused on your own craft and your own art.
Nick: I think it comes with confidence. And it doesn't hurt that Willa and I, along with Louis, our head of design, bring our own aesthetic and our own vision. And I think over the last four years, it's clear other people like what we're doing, and I think they connect with that. So I think it gives us more confidence to continue and stay on our path, whereas maybe if things were not working, we would have doubts. We don’t have doubt, in fact, quite the inverse. Thank you for recognizing that, because I think when we speak together as our team, we're just very confident with every product that we release to do what we think is within us.
The 005 has a Vibram Megagrip ELITE sole. Can you explain a little bit about the technical elements of the 005?
Nick: The upper of the shoe was our proprietary Dyneema, so it's the same material, and it feels like silk. It's almost 100% Dyneema, so that was a big innovation. The midsole, the foam, if you squeeze it, that's a real super foam, so it gives you bounce. This is a brand new compound called Mega Grip ELITE. It's really like a Formula One race car tire. It's meant to have the ultimate traction and tackiness.
Willa: It's really sticky, if you put it on and wear it inside, you can hear me walking in my shoes.
Nick: It's crazy squeaky. This is the foremost technology that Vibram has ever created, and it's exclusive to norda. With the 005, they gave it to us first. So this compound is the first release to market. They've had it in the lab for like 10 years, they just didn't know how to bring it to market. And so we helped them test it with our athlete team, and they tested it for about a year. They said that it was amazing. So that gave us the confidence to put it on the shoe.
Can you explain a little bit more about your athlete team? Are they full-time employees or full-time athletes?
Willa: So we have a team of 12 sponsored athletes, which means that they have careers of their own, doing whatever they do and and in their free time, they like to run trails, and they are very good at it. So they're not full-time professional athletes. They all have careers. One is a dentist, and there are a couple of engineers.
Nick: Another is an emergency room radiology technician. It's interesting - these alternate distance runners are often very intelligent, cerebral, intense professionals.
Willa: And then a few of them are coaches and coach other athletes. That's part of why they're chosen to be a norda trail athlete, because they have a kind of 360 approach - they're well-rounded. It was important for us when we were building the team, that the type of person we were looking for was someone who was doing something more than just running in other parts of their life. Since norda was founded, there’s been a huge evolution in the sport of trail running, where you now have very big brands that were previously focused on road running, now they're focused on trail running.
Why do you think there's such a big increase in trail running in particular?
Willa: It really started around the pandemic, where people turned to running outside, and then, because things, I guess, were limited in urban settings, we weren't allowed in a lot of places to go out and run. So people went out into the countryside and started running there.
Nick: I mean, it's just, it's a really cool sport, and it’s growing. If I’m not mistaken, there are something like 500-plus trail races in China alone each year. 500 - that's more than one per day. So it's just tremendous growth in the sport. And that's a cool sport. It's just a cool sport.
I saw your brand film recently and I thought it was really funny.
Nick: [the actor in the film] was not an actor-model - that's a real runner. His name is Matt Seidel. He's from California and he's an engineer. He's known in the running industry, but nobody outside of it would know him, so it's one of those 'if you know, you know' type things.
Willa: He does hold the world record for fastest marathon in a banana suit, though.
That's such a niche record.
Nick: A full banana costume. He has the Guinness World Record for the fastest banana.
Where did the concept ‘Speed for a Lifetime’ come from?
Willa: So the 005 is built and engineered for race days. The 005 is a race-day super shoe, meaning it has superior foam. But most of the other brands that put out a race day super shoe are intended for one-time use, if you can believe it. So people are buying a very expensive shoe, and it's intended for maximum power for that one day. We are deeply committed to durability and being responsible for our planet. So we decided to create a super shoe that was engineered for multiple race days. And so ‘Speed for a Lifetime’ was the idea that you just keep and run forever - your whole lifetime -in a 005.
Nick: We don't take ourselves too seriously. If we wanted to be like every other brand, we'd be like, “Okay, this is like the fastest. It gives you the most power.” But instead, Willa wanted to make a cheeky video.
Willa: Our videographer and our marketing director are both very inspired by David Lynch, so if you go back and watch it, there are a lot of references to the way that things sequence in the video, the color, and the motion.
Since the last time we spoke was just over a year ago, I want to ask: what do you hope for in the next year?
Nick: Should we put a note in the bottle and hide it, and then come back to it and see if we got it right? [laughs]
Willa: With norda, there’ll be more products added to the range. More offerings, and we’ll expand our product categories.
Nick: That’s a really good question. We're just so focused on the day-to-day, I’ve never thought about that. I think I'm excited for the journey to continue. I hope that we can continue to bring this message around the world. It's awesome.
Willa: It's funny when you’re in a bubble, you think everyone knows about Norda, but there's so many people who don't know about norda. So, for me, [I hope for] more people to know about the brand, and I hope the brand grows to a point where people can identify and recognize the brand.
Nick: If you asked us a year ago, I would have said, “I hope we're here.” It's early stages, but I think Norda has hit that inflection point, and I hope we can hang on, physically and mentally. Because, you know, businesses today, there's no more slow and steady growth because of social media, it’s just the pace of the way everything goes. The pace is 24/7 and seven days a week. So what do I hope for? I just hope we can hang on to this.
Thank you to Nick and Willa Martire for the interview. Shop norda now on HBX.com.