A Man, a Van, and 700 Running Shoes

It’s only 10 A.M., and Aaron Olbur is already breaking a sweat. Partly to blame is the San Diego sun, which even in December shines hot and hard on the asphalt parking lot. The other reason is Olbur’s hustle. With the help of his team of four, the 39-year-old hauls out big metal rolling racks containing 700 boxes of running shoes from a large sprinter van. He sets up the trademark Road Runner Fit Finder—a metal platform you stand on to get a 3D digital model of your foot. He has boxes of orthotics and something like an oven to heat them up so they can be shaped to your foot—right there on the spot.

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Olbur assembles the mobile running store in a parking lot outside a medical office building, aiming to help the doctors, nurses, and patients there get fitted for comfortable and supportive shoes. He’s not a one-man mission but rather represents Road Runner Sports, the second-largest running retailer in the U.S., with 40 stores in 12 states across the country—including a warehouse-sized store adjacent to its headquarters in San Diego.

“So what we’re really doing is we’re taking a Road Runner Sports and bringing it into your company,” he says.

People are always happy to see Olbur and his team, who call themselves Shoe Force. He estimates they bring the mobile running store to about 200 businesses a year.

“It’s not just runners,” he says. “It’s anyone who needs comfortable shoes or an insert—which is almost all of us do because that’s just the nature of the world.”

Olbur understands this personally. He’s up and moving constantly thanks to his job and his dedication to running. But more than spreading the gospel of running shoes, Olbur is devoted to helping people find relief for their feet.

“If I don’t go for a run, you can tell”

Olbur started running 20 years ago, discovering it helped his ADHD and mental health in college.

“Running has always been that thing to bring my brain back,” he says. “For physical fitness, I don’t know if it’s doing anything for me anymore because it’s just so repetitive. But for my brain, it’s like, if I don’t go for a run, you can tell.”

He began as so many runners do—showing up to a 5-kilometer race in gym shorts carrying two Red Bulls.

“I didn’t know what it was. I just didn’t even know how far it was. Back in the day, I didn’t have a watch or anything. I had no idea,” he says. “I ran this race, and everybody was dressed up as Elvis. It was actually awesome.”

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He was hooked and quickly ramped up to half marathons and fulls. At the same time, he decided to move from Chicago to San Diego based on random advice from a friend.

“I just drove across the country with a bag and a box of Cheerios,” he says.

He got a job as a seasonal part-time call center employee at Road Runner, taking shoe orders over the phone.

“I did that for literally three weeks. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t do this,’” he says.

So he made a change but stayed in running. He’s naturally a performer, and he would put on adventure runs at Road Runner stores.

“There was a big stage that I would stand on,” he says. “We had a mobile van that we used, but we didn’t sell anything out of it. We would only go to places and set up this whole big trailer and just give coupons out.”

Then, a job opened up that allowed Olbur to travel all over Southern California and Arizona doing shoe fittings, and he found his calling. Fast-forward to now, and they’ve built it into a mobile running store and shoe-finding experience. Olbur arranges with management at different businesses in the San Diego area to offer the fit-finding service to employees. Some companies cover the cost of a new pair of shoes or insoles, others provide employees with a discount, and some simply offer the service for convenience.

Fit Finding In Action

Back in the parking lot outside the medical office building, Olbur and his team are finding more clients happy to have their feet fitted. No pair of feet are exactly alike, and almost everyone has some kind of issue—high arches, flat feet, pronation, plantar fasciitis, hammer toe, corns, calluses. Team member Kim Carter walks shoe seekers through the process.

First, the client steps on a machine called the Fit Finder. It’s a foot scanner that creates a three-dimensional scan of their feet. Road Runner says it captures six foot measurements: foot size, length, width, arch height, instep, and heel width. It also maps the person’s balance and pressure points.

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Next, Carter looks at the results on her computer. They show the customer’s size, along with detailed information about their feet, and suggest shoes that would work best.

“It’s like a mobile book fair, but with the technology to see exactly what kind of book you need to read,” Olbur says.

Carter uses the results to create custom orthotic insoles. Using a readout from the scan, she puts insoles into a small oven right there in the parking lot, which molds the insoles to their feet.

She grabs running shoes from the mobile racks that would work, slips the insoles in, and helps customers lace up and try out the shoes.

Olbur oversees and jumps in whenever a team member needs assistance. He says the reception is always positive from people who spend a lot of time on their feet. “I mean, they’re literally like, ‘Oh, my God, thank you. I’m on my feet 12 hours a day,’” he says. “The response that we get is, ‘When are you coming back? When can you come back next week?’”

Shoes That Come to You—a Mobile Running Store

Fitting shoes to feet is nothing new—nor are traveling running shoe clinics. Dick Pond Athletics, a five-store running retail operation in Chicago’s western suburbs, has a Shoemobile that hit the road in 1969 and still travels the greater Chicago area bringing shoe fittings to high school runners and road race participants. Companies like Fleet Feet and New Balance have also dabbled in mobile clinics. And then of course Phil Knight sold the original Nike trainers out of the trunk of his car.

Stu Slomberg, the chief retail officer for Road Runner, says the company is investing in these traveling fit clinics to address challenges in the modern sales environment. People tend to settle into a shoe brand and model and then buy the same type over and over again online. But meet them where they are–literally, at work–and you may convince them to shake things up and try something new, he says.

“The two most important things in life are a good mattress and a good fitting pair of shoes,” he says. “You are on your feet a lot and you spend, hopefully, seven to eight hours sleeping. Those are the most important things.”

But the real key to the success of the mobile running store? Slomberg says that’s Olbur. “Aaron has exactly the right energy and style for this—his enthusiasm is infectious and he knows the process so well. His history with the company really shows.”

Good Shoes, Good Life

Olbur says that getting non-runners into good shoes could motivate them to start their fitness journey, and while getting people into quality shoes is his main focus, he would love for others to find the peace he has through movement.

“Providing them with their first step of getting something comfortable underneath their feet might get them out the door to go through with that 5K walk or a 2-mile walk or walk their dog or walk with their kids or become a healthier human being,” he says. “So we’re just navigating that and providing that for people.”

On that warm sunny morning in San Diego, it is clear Olbur has found his calling. He’s on his feet a lot, too, and was wearing running shoes with his khakis and Road Runner polo. He’s expanded his passion for running into a career of meeting people where they are and getting them into comfortable shoes.

“I found my niche in running shoes where I want to spread that love, I want to spread that to everybody else,” he says. “I feel like it makes me feel better, so why not go out and help others feel better? It goes a long way for me.”

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