A trip of a lifetime was just crushed by something so simple. How pathetic is that? That really fired me up to do something about it Walk On founder Lucas Smith.
A trip of a lifetime was just crushed by something so simple. How pathetic is that? That really fired me up to do something about it Walk On founder Lucas Smith.
Lucas Smith may have been the worst shepherd ever to set foot on Simons Hill Station but the experience proved life-changing.
The young entrepreneur is now at the helm of a foot-care business, using merino wool, that has plans to expand into the United States, Canada and possibly Australiain the next year.
Walk On was designed as a natural, biodegradable product to prevent blisters and "make foot care glamorous again".
Mr Smith's aim is to be the leading performance foot-care business in the world, supporting "locals" and increasing returns to farmers, through taking a New Zealand-made product to the international market.
Not that the former mountain guide, with infectious energy, ever dreamed he would be "looking after people's feet at 21".
Originally from Timaru, Mr Smith said it became apparent when he left school that his parents were not going to pay for his tertiary studies.
On a quest to pay his own way, he ended up at Simons Hill Station, between Tekapo and Twizel, over the summer of 2013. He demonstrated loads of enthusiasm but limited expertise in the farming field and candidly admits he was probably the "worst shepherd they had ever had".
But from farmers Glenn and Sarah Fastier, he learned about sustainable farming and that was where where his passion for the merino industry started.
From there, he headed to Victoria University in Wellington to study political science and anthropology.
Having dyslexia meant his learning was "not possibly as good as it could be in the traditional sense" and he was getting distracted.
He kept thinking back to his time at Simons Hill and how it was a shame that the "incredible job" that Mr and Mrs Fastier were doing could not be shown to the wider public.
So he left university to build a software company with the aim of allowing consumers to trace their food.
It was a "terrible" business model, he recalled, although he did learn some valuable lessons from it.
To recoup himself, Mr Smith headed to the hills and became a mountain guide on the Routeburn and Milford tracks. About halfway through the first season guiding, he realised he was sick of dealing with people's feet, especially infected feet.
"The problem was it really cut me up," he said.
People were coming from all over the world and all walks of life to walk the tracks. Many had saved up their money for years or were marking a special occasion.
But after arriving with a pair of new hiking boots in an "incredible part of the world", all they would be thinking about was their feet, potentially ruining the experience.
That frustrated Mr Smith, particularly when he saw several people evacuated due to infected blisters. He got thinking about why petrochemical pads were being used for blister prevention and protection.
The final straw came on the Mackinnon Pass, the highest point on the Milford Track, when he was walking with an American woman who had saved for the trip for about six years.
Her feet had been "torn to shreds" by petrochemical pads and she was incapable of walking anywhere. He had to call a helicopter to fly her out.
"A trip of a lifetime was just crushed by something so simple. How pathetic is that? That really fired me up to do something about it," he said.
Walk On founder Lucas Smith.
He thought there must be a better way to make an environmentally friendly blister protection and prevention product that worked. He started doing some "serious homework" and his research led him to the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, where he discovered that such a method was used by Anzac soldiers in the trenches during World War 1.
Mr Smith left guiding behind in April last year and started Walk On from a cold, draughty garage in Christchurch in May.
Since then, the business had "grown in leaps and bounds", moving out of the garage and to offices in the central city.
Torpedo7 was Walk On's main retail distribution partner and the business was eyeing international expansion.
He had been in talks with some large retailers in the US and Canada. People often asked how he got those connections. The answer was simple - he rang them until they picked up the phone, he said.
The business was designed to be sustainable at scale. The larger it could grow, the more it could be sustainable, the more wool it could buy, and subsequently the more that could be paid for it, giving farmers more money to ensure they were more sustainable.
Walk On products were packaged in Christchurch by Kilmarnock Enterprises, which employed people with disabilities. It was an honour to support such a venture, Mr Smith said.
Walk On was designed to be single-use and, after being used, could be buried and would disappear in 10 months.
His flatmates were using them in the vegetable garden and he reckoned they boasted the best lettuces around.
The business had several directors and several mentors but everything it did was contracted out.
Asked the potential of Walk On, Mr Smith said "she's going to go big".
"My main aim is to support local and be able to pay farmers more for their wool so they can set about making things more sustainable. It's only going to get more fun, I suppose," he said.
