Running Store Has This One Weird Brand of Shoe You’ve Never Heard of Before
/
Your local running store has the usual wide assortment of shoes, including models from Nike, Brooks, Asics, Hoka, and Mizuno, sources told Dumb Runner—plus this one bizarre brand that no one, including you, has ever heard of.
The shoe in question, which even looks weird, is from some company called AuFFen or Scorio or something like that, and no one is even sure what country it’s from. The brand’s logo, on the shoe’s tongue and heel, appears to be the silhouette of a spider holding a rake.
“Scandinavia, maybe?” one customer speculated. “Or Australia?”
“I’ll say France,” said another. “I went to France once, a few years ago, and this looks like something they’d wear.”
A salesperson at the store offered little help, saying she wasn’t sure of the shoe’s story either, explaining that “a dozen pairs just showed up one day, with a packing slip in some weird language.”
“It smelled kind of funny,” she recalled.
The salesperson fished around in a drawer and found some sales materials that had come with the shipment.
“Says here it’s a company called ASFALTŌVAT, actually—not sure I’m saying that right—and it has a long history in whatever place it comes from,” she said, squinting. “The Czech Republic? I think?”
“This model, the Křeček, apparently offers ‘muscular fitting’ and ‘extra odpružení, for making many champion kilometers.’”
No one has bought a pair of the shoes yet, she said, but the first five people to do so will get a free ASFALTŌVAT t-shirt.
“They’re all size velký,” she said. “Whatever that means.”
