A decade of selling trail (and road) shoes in Seattle at Seven Hills!! October 2nd marked our tenth year of being open and of course I’ve been daydreaming off all the shoes we’ve had. Here’s our list of the Top 7 Trail shoes of the past decade. The list isn’t in terms of actual sales numbers, but in terms of how they helped the shop exist. We might not still be here if it wasn’t for these 7 shoes:
- Pearl Izumi Trail N2 – We opened with high hopes that Pearl Izumi could be our flagship brand. We had their shoes, apparrel and winter accessories. It felt like we were a PI show room on day 1. I didn’t like the Pearls from 2012…Kisaka was ok but the Peak and Streak were much too minimal for me. But I saw the e:motion line in the summer of 2012 and was blown away. Luckily the trail N2 and a lesser degree trail M2 did not let us down. Really having the N1, N2 and M2 all together made us a go to destination to try on cool new stuff.
- Altra Lone Peak 1 – We’re not saying the LP1 was the best LP of the bunch, but in the early days, people came to us from all around to try the new brand Altra. It put us on the map of wide feet everywhere and we haven’t been dissappointed by their patronage.
- Hoka Speedgoat 2 – After dissappointing Rapa Nui sales and a total bust of from the Speedgoat 1, Hoka finally nailed it with the SG2.
- Merrell All-out Peak – This was a shop staff favorite and one of the first shoes we knew off to feature Vibram Mega Grip. This shoe really dropped off after it changed to the next version, but the OG All-out started to make us feel that as a shop we could make a shoe happen. Meaning, if we liked it, we could make it trend no matter what the name or brand.
- Topo Terraventure – The first main stream Topo trail shoe. Really we could have put many Topos on this list. Topo as a brand continues to keep our shop door’s open. They fit and feel well to the most wide-ranging audience of customers and most importantly: they haven’t been bought by a bigger company. They still look and feel like a small company and treat a small shop like us well.
- Altra Olympus 2.0 – the Olympus added Vibram Mega Grip here and ultra runners with wide feet finally had a go to ultra distance shoe.
- Hoka Mafate Speed 4 – The current best-selling shoe at the shop. We feel like these are setting the bar high for the next decade of trail shoes–for ultra runners seeking maximum cushion at least.
There are so many honorable mentions here and this list is just for fun, but I definitely want to mention the original Scott Running Kinabalu. It looked funky but it was so good. It was one of our best-selling shoes the first year we were opened.
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