February 23, 2019.
I'm at Menfluential, a men's fashion conference in Atlanta, when an executive coach looked down at my feet.
"Those aren't proper dress shoes."
He said it in front of everyone.
It was the grown-up equivalent of "what are those?"
I laughed it off in the moment. But that night, alone in my hotel room, I made a promise to myself:
"I'm going to make my own comfortable dress shoes. They're not going to look dumb. And I'm going to use the best materials."
That promise became Brenston, our flagship barefoot dress shoe.
I'm Matt, by the way — the guy with the improper shoes, and the founder of Birchbury.
But to understand why that moment in Atlanta stung so much, I have to back up a few years.
While I was studying mechanical engineering at Cal State Long Beach, I wore flip-flops everywhere.
As I got closer to 30, showing up to dates in flip-flops stopped being charming.
I wanted shoes that made me look professional.
So I bought a pair of Aldos.
They hurt.
(I used to wear flip-flops everywhere, including trails lol)
I spent more money on a pair of Cole Haans.
They hurt too.
Tired of the pain, I dropped $400 on a pair of Magnanni leather sneakers.
Better materials. Same pain.
I felt like I was flushing money down the toilet.
Being an engineer, I examined the problem.
(Initial designs of the sole for Bramford, our flagship sneaker)
The main culprit was the narrow toe box. It was forcing my toes into a shape they were never meant to be in.
That discovery led me to barefoot shoes.
Barefoot shoes had the wide toe box my feet needed. But every pair I found had the same 3 problems:
- They were ugly. Big logos and wonky colors.
- The construction quality was bad. Plastic in place of leather, marketed as "vegan leather."
- They ignored proven shoemaking techniques.
So I settled. I knew the options were bad, and I lived with it.
(Here's a picture of me with my improper dress shoes at Menfluential Atlanta; it was the last time Antonio Centeno and Aaron Marino held this conference.)
Until a stranger at a conference looked down at my feet and said what everyone else was thinking.
Which brings me back to that hotel room in Atlanta.
I flew home, and I got to work.
Matthew Tran
Founder, Birchbury
Matthew Tran is a mechanical engineer who founded Birchbury. He started the company after struggling to find dress shoes that didn’t hurt — and barefoot shoes that didn’t look out of place at work. That gap led him to design his own: a wide-toe-box, zero-drop shoe made from full-grain leather, built specifically to look like a normal shoe. Birchbury has since been worn by lawyers, chiropractors, restaurant managers, and anyone else who spends their day on their feet and refuses to suffer for it.
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