Ron Heinlein: Hi, I’m Ron Heinlein. I’m the owner and I’m CEO of DT Footwear.com. And I’m privileged to have two gentlemen here with me, then I’ll introduce to you in just a few minutes, that wear our shoes all the time. And that’s Ryan, who is National Marketing Director for DT Footwear. And then Gary, who is got a ministry of pickleball in Payson, Arizona, and plays very high ranked in the tournaments that he plays all the time. Ryan is getting very good. We just played all three of us today. And he did extremely well. He’s getting better and better and better. He’s the newbie. I am the ball boy basically. What I want to talk about is our actual shoes and have two individuals tell you what they think about our shoes. What makes DT Footwear so unique in the pickleball world? Well, a couple of reasons. We have a taller toe box.

Ryan Perry: Show them what that is.

Ron Heinlein:  We’ve get a taller toe box as you see here. And it’s a fuller toe box as you see here. Okay? We have one of the strongest midsections in the shoe business. There’s a few others that have that and that means that we cannot bend this at all.

Ryan Perry: And  what’s the importance of not being able to bend the shoe in an athletic shoe?

Ron Heinlein: We don’t have bilateral movement, we don’t move side to side. And we cut that so if you were another tennis shoe, a pickleball shoe, and you put three and a half miles you actually put five and a half mile so wear and tear. We cut that down. We don’t put it on the sides, the reinforcement, we put it in the midsection, the bottom. And we do a fourth ply counter so it holds you into position. And that’s cuts the wear and tear on your bilateral movement. We have a four flex like you see here, but that is normal in any shoe. We have that. We also have a good gripping bubbling type of grip that a hold. We have slipped resistance and I wish we had it today because I did a tumble hit a water, and it was raining lightly, but still water with my slipping resistance and it did hold I could have been a lot worse than it did. But slip resistance holds you and protects you from that. Especially for an indoor play slip resistance is very good. We have extensions on the bottoms, we have the widths.

Ryan Perry: You mentioned extensions on the bottom? What is an advantage people that don’t understand shoe terminology? What is an extension?

Ron Heinlein: That means our bottom is wider than our top. If this is in a 4E bottom, this is actually on a 5E. If it’s a 6E bottom, it’s on a 7E bottom. We don’t have hangover. We don’t allow you, and there’s people…

Ryan Perry: Are you talking about drinking hang over? What is “hangover” mean?

Ron Heinlein: Foot hangover!

Ryan Perry: Foot hangerover, all right.

Ron Heinlein: That’s why he’s the National…

Ryan Perry: So essentially you’re talking about if the bottom of the shoe is this wide, but your foot is this wide, then you got hang over.

Ron Heinlein: You have hangover.

Ryan Perry: And you don’t want that?

Ron Heinlein: Let me put it…there’s some great tennis shoes out there and I’m not going to mention their names. The widest bottom that they go is a 2E. I know that for a fact. We go all the way to well, we’ll never need it for pickleball, we would go all the way to a 15E on our bottoms. We have extensions on our bottoms. And so you put a 4E top and sit it on a 2E, most of those people hangover. We don’t have that hangover from that aspect of it.  Again, the widths, the grip, the strong midsection, the strong heel, the what these guys love to see me do my toes wiggle, give you rooms together. Yeah, yeah, well, we go together and we’re going to be a wiggle team from that point. So that’s what makes us unique. And we’re very proud of that. But now I want to hear comments. Ryan, what do you think of your footwear that you wear all the time?

Ryan Perry: Well, I’ll tell you so I wear two different shoes because I wanted to try a couple of different pairs out being new the pickleball. And I’ll say that this one here and I don’t know all the style numbers, what style is?

Ron Heinlein: That’s a Propet.

Ryan Perry: Right, but what’s the style number?

Ron Heinlein: I don’t know.

Ryan Perry: Okay, so anyhow, this is not as deep. So, Ron was talking about the depth and the wiggle room. I feel like this shoe is a little bit narrower, which can be nice on the court because it holds your foot but it does, I did notice that it has a break in period. So that break in period, it’s a little bit tight on the on the sides of your feet here. Once that loosens up, it’s great. The one thing I did notice was that the inserts that you provide with the shoes, I was able to fit in the shoe but my custom orthotic, this is not tall enough. So the toe box is not tall enough in this particular style to fit that orthotic. But it’s a very grippy shoe. It’s lightweight for me, and it works. Now you will notice that there’s fringe in here. So I would not say that this is an ideal pickleball shoe per se, simply because it doesn’t have any protection of the canvas or whatever this is, yeah, the toe cap here. But as far as a walking shoe running shoes is very comfortable. And because I am playing pickleball, three to five times a week, I like to rotate through my shoes. So I do wear this on a regular basis. Now this is my preferred one, you call this the Cadillac. And I don’t know if you know what model this is by chance?

Ron Heinlein: 618 or something like that. It’s 06, we got 1400 styles, so I can’t remember them all!

Ryan Perry: I like about this one is that the custom orthotic which has cork so it’s very cushonable, plus I’ve got a couple of spacers in here. I’m not going to pull them all out. But that’s how much room is in there. Ron talks about the wiggle rooms and he likes to wiggle his toes here his fingers. So there’s actually a lot of room in here. There’s there was actually initially too much room. And I had to put extra spacers in here. So if you have bigger feet than I do, this is great because you have the flexibility to adjust the shoe to match your specific foot. So I really liked that it’s got more protection up front. So I would consider this a better pickleball shoe also, and it breathes very well for me.

Ron Heinlein: Were you the one on the court today that said you didn’t like mesh? Or was it you Gary?

Gary Heinlein: No, that was me. In the beginning I didn’t think I would like mesh.

Ron Heinlein: Yeah, because he most people, they don’t think they there’s enough support. And I we did a video in the past about somebody explaining that he needs a leather, leather material around here to give the support. With our midsection, you don’t need to. So we have the soft…

Ryan Perry: So you’re saying the support is built into the base…

Ron Heinlein: …the face of the shoe where it doesn’t move. And like it says here even this is what I call the Chevy in the world. It’s still and this is just, I mean, I’m not playing. I can’t bend that thing. If I got another shoe line. I could bend it like a pretzel in most cases and so on from that point. Gary, what do you think?

Gary Heinlein: I like them for the comfort. Biggest thing is, they’re the most comfortable sport shoe that I’ve worn. All the other things that describe really are in there, I actually have this one. And I have this one I have three pairs. My third pair is a leather pair that took a little bit of time a break in. Just like any leather shoe would. And once it was broken, these were comfortable right away as soon as I got into them and all the support and then when they you started me out and we ordered the custom orthotic insert inside. And once that got there like Ryan had said there was plenty or toe room. I from other sports shoes and I won’t mention any brands but at a sports shoes I basically had black toe on the front big toenail because of jamming into the front. This does have a wider bigger toe box gives you more room, I actually use a memory foam custom insert on the bottom. Then I put the custom orthotic they insert on top of that and then I have a gel insert I put on top of that. So I have plenty of cushioning and they’re comfortable already. But that even extra cushioning because I also had plantar fasciitis for a long time. Once I started wearing these, it took away that pain of the plantar fasciitis. And so that’s why I was putting extra cushioning in them and all but that had plenty of room for all that, you know for my feet for the inserts everything else to give it the comfort and all and like say in the mesh. Like I say I wasn’t really sold on it when I first started another I try it and I did and I like it. As they’ve loosened up a little bit just like any shoe would I just tighten the laces a little bit tighter. And because you always want a tighter grip when you’re playing pickleball to support your foot. And these shoes have great support. But you know keep them tight and so that you’re not slipping or any slippage which cause a ankle roll or something like that. So the shoes take care of that. So I’m sold on them.

Ryan Perry: Yeah.

Ron Heinlein: So this is opinion of two players that play all the time.

Ryan Perry: And I just want to clarify, so I’m like a struggling 3.0. Is kind of where I consider myself I think I’ve got enough to get better getting your ranked on Dupr at where?

Gary Heinlein: 4.0 in Dupr but I’m playing 4.0 in 4.5 tournaments so…

Ron Heinlein: And he’s got quite a few gold medals and we’re playing a tournament. We have the number one player in the world, Mattias Johansson, we sponsor and…

Gary Heinlein: Senior pro.

Ron Heinlein: Senior Pro, yeah, and loves our shoes. And we’re going to be doing recordings. We’re in Atlanta here, as we’re the corporate offices is and we’re in our sound studio right now recording and from that point. But why I wanted to say is, I want you to hear from guys that play. I play periodically, I’ll probably be in traction…

Gary Heinlein: We’re going to him out more often.

Ron Heinlein: Yeah, I’m gonna try to… I’ve been building the DTF Footwear program very strong, and with his help and with both of their help, it’s going to be a huge program for us. We also have a bundle program that no shoe line in the world is going to offer will offer you three pair or four pair free. And we’ll also…

Ryan Perry: You’re giving away free shoes?! Three or four pair? I’ll get the four pack Ron!

Ron Heinlein: You’re gonna have to pay for it. Okay, well,

Ryan Perry: You said it was free.

Ron Heinlein: Yeah, well, it’s free. The shoes are free for a certain fee. Okay. And you also get a custom orthotic as you see here, and you get a few other things that are free. And it’s the way it’s a big savings. We’re going to offer that where no one else in the shoe world does that. And for from that aspect. And like I says, I appreciate the support support. We’ve had a number of few pros that we have provided footwear and I haven’t had them thrown back at me or anything else from that point. And so we’re very happy with it.

Gary Heinlein: Actually. Most of them are saying that it’s the most comfortable sport shoe that they’ve worn pickleball shoe sports Yeah,

Ryan Perry: if I’m if I know I’m gonna be walking around all day, this is my go to shoe.

Ron Heinlein: Oh, ya know that it’s the 0 series. Anything in the 0 series is my Cadillac or Mercedes. And it really makes a difference. It’s, I wear mine all the time. And they’re great shoes from that point.