SOUTH SHORE ENTREPRENEUR - HARRY SHAMIR
Raymond Weil WatchIf the shoe fits, wear it - then go exercise with it. Plymouth entrepreneur Harry Shamir recently developed a prototype of an exercise shoe that he says adds a new dimension to its wearer's workout.
"It's a type of shoe that looks and smells and tastes and weighs and feels like any other good sneaker, or exercise shoe," said Shamir, a 71-year-old who teaches fencing and is a mechanical engineering consultant. "The difference is, in addition to being comfortable, it also induces the wearer to actually exercise a little more during a walk or a jog."
Shamir declined to reveal the specifics of the element that he adds to a shoe to force its wearer to expend more energybecause he is still going through the patent process. "There is a calorie- expending mechanism so that weight loss will be experienced throughout the whole body," Shamir said.
Shamir, who calls his innovation TREXS (True Exercise Shoe), has approached New Balance in Brighton in hopes of having that company work with him in manufacturing the shoe.
"Harry's is a very interesting concept, and we're still evaluating it," said Edward Haddad, vice Rado Watch Replica president of intellectual property and licensed products at New Balance. "I've been speaking with our development people about the idea to see if the concept itself has merit."
Haddad said the absence of a patent could be a roadblock.
"With a patent, it's a whole different thing," Haddad said. "You have legal protection. When it's not issued yet, it becomes much more complicated, almost impossible to work with unless as a company you wanted to take a risk on it."
Should a major company such as New Balance decide not to take on Shamir's shoe, he would seek investors to serve as partners in the drive toward mass production. "What we have now is a modified commercial shoe," Shamir said, "so we need to create a prototype which would be completely our own from start to finish."
Shamir estimated that it could cost him as much as $100,000 if
embroidered patches he was going to patent, manufacture, market and distribute the shoe independently.
In the early stages of his research, Shamir said he bought a pair of standard shoes and modified the left, leaving the right as purchased, and he walked with them for about an hour.
"Ten or 15 minutes into the walk, depending on how briskly I actually went, I felt it in my left leg, that it was actually working more than the right," he said. "The set of muscles in the rear of the upper leg (hamstring) is the first to be affected. Then the bum, the ankle and the calf, in that order."
Shamir said others tested the shoes and had similar results. "My objective is to make it between 5 and 20 percent more effective than if you were wearing standard shoes or sneakers," Shamir said. "I would like to target it at the office worker, students and housewives who are not working physically and having them use these shoes. ... They will automatically exercise while doing the standard things they do, anyway."
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