Phl is Asia's biggest market for this US sandal brand

MANILA, Philippines - American businessman Jeff Kelley looks more like anything except a businessman.

A native of southern California, he comes off more like a beach boy. That’s because he is actually an avid surfer, complete with a tan.

So how did this surfer and former dishwasher found a sandal company in the mid 1990s that is now in 50 countries and worth $120 million? He had three main ingredients for success: his passion for surfing, his creativity and his constant urge to fiddle or, in his own words, “always messing around with stuff.”

And Kelley cooked up the idea for it while walking barefoot.

One morning in 2006, Kelley was at Swami’s Beach, an internationally famous surfing spot in Encinitas, California. He ran the long wooden staircase leading from the cliff top to the sand in his New Balance running shoes.

Later in the afternoon he came back down those stairs – barefoot this time – with his surfboard. That was his eureka moment. “The efficiency of being able to use all the muscles in my feet as opposed to isolating them in shoes was night and day,” Kelley says. “It was so much more comfortable on my entire body.”

Kelley went to his garage, sewed a deconstructed shoe upper made of canvas that was lying around in the sample room onto a soft sandal footbed. The result was an entirely new category of footwear. The idea behind the Sidewalk Surfer is simple: to enjoy the comfort and benefits of walking barefoot without walking barefoot.

Discussions among experts over the benefits of going barefoot, particularly in running, have been going on for decades. In the 1960 Summer Olymics in Rome, Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila won the gold in the marathon but the biggest attention went to his feet.

Bikila ran barefoot after trying a pair of running shoes provided by the sponsor that didn’t fit comfortably. It was no problem because he trained barefoot for the race.

Experts have concluded that going barefoot develops muscle strength because all of the muscles in the feet, legs and hips are put to work. Shoes change the way the foot lands on the ground.

Researchers have found that runners in shoes strike the ground with their heels, the body absorbs the shock. In some cases, the pounding causes knee injuries. One study led by Dr. Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, found that shod runners land on their heels 1,000 times for every mile, causing a “very large and sudden collision force” each time.

But barefooted runners tend to land on the middle or front of their feet, softening the touchdown.

“Humans have engaged in endurance running for millions of years, but the modern running shoe was not invented until the 1970s,” Lieberman and his team reported in the January 28, 2010, issue of the scientific journal Nature. “For most of human evolutionary history, runners were either barefoot or wore minimal footwear such as sandals or moccasins with smaller heels and little cushioning.”

Of course, going barefoot has risks, mostly from injury and disease. That’s why footwear was invented.

Following his feet as well as his gut, Kelley knew that he was on to something when he stitched together his prototype Sidewalk Surfers. Sales figures later bore him out: $100,000 in his first year, around $500,000 in his second.

Kelley’s proof of success may be Brad Pitt, who once told Vogue magazine in an interview that Sanuk was one of his favorite footwear brands. Pitt was once spotted by paparazzi sporting the sandals.

Sanuk’s success eventually got the attention of shoe company giant Deckers, a billion-dollar global brand, which bought Sanuk for $120 million last year. Kelley remains in control of product branding, which he describes as “even more fun” because he gets to use his creative juices more.

Kelley’s choice of brand name describes his view of life in one word, not to mention his out-of-the-box way of thinking. Sanuk means “fun” in Thai (the Philippines is the biggest Asian market because of the tropical climate and its mixed East-West culture ).

Ask him to describe himself, Kelley will readily reply “goofy”. Photos of Kelley usually show him clowning around, like sitting on a floating beach lounge chair with beer can in hand – and a starfish on his head. Not the typical image of a CEO.

Kelley’s message is this: life is short, so enjoy life and put your best foot forward. He told interviewer Jenne Marie Bostock of Alister & Paine magazine in 2010 minutes before skydiving out of an airplane: “We don’t know if we’re going to die tomorrow. I could splat right now out of this plane.”