Kofuzi: King of the ShoeTubers

Are running shoes sustainable? How do they fit into sneaker culture? I spoke to Mike Ko AKA Kofuzi of Kofuzi Run Club about being one of the most influential people in the running world.

May 23, 2024

Remember back in 2014 when we pivoted to video, and every laid-off journalist was shaking their fist at technology?

It marked the end of a decade of every publisher trying (and failing) to figure out how to successfully monetize online content, while many physical publications ceased to exist. As a person who professionally trained in magazine journalism, both saddened me greatly.

I love the smell of ink, and the way that high-quality paper feels in my hands, but mostly I love the magazine format (something I do with Running Sucks). Video can provide that format just as well, of course, and with each iteration of technology, more and more video can be consumed. Here we are watching super HD videos on the 5G phones we keep in our pockets. It’s great.

You might be wondering why this running newsletter is giving a potted history of the 21st century media landscape. Well, some creators who 1) had their finger on the pulse of technology and 2) weren’t afraid to try something different have been able to build a magnificent following for their work.

One such creator is Mike Ko AKA Kofuzi. I speak to him about the commanding and kind community of running shoe enthusiasts in his corner of YouTube.

Mike Ko AKA Kofuzi reviewing some Asics Metaspeed shoes on YouTube

Originally starting out as a dad vlog with personal, family, and life content, he pivoted to running “in 2016 or 2017” - he’s unsure exactly when, but I can tell you that his very first running vlog was on 27 May 2016, documenting a run along the Chicago waterfront while training for the Soldier Field 10 Mile race. That was vlog no.138. It’s reasonable to say that numbers 1-137 were just necessary practice for the next phase of Mike Ko’s life.

Through 2017, more and more running content appeared. It was June 2018 when the videos became more purposefully running-oriented, however. That was the first mention of Kofuzi Run Club. It was as whimsical as it was sincere. The credits and graphics started to look more professional, but the content retained its vibe of openness, and reflected Mike’s views consistently. A year ago, he moved his daily livestream to a second channel - Kofuzi Run Club. The brand was expanding.

The result is almost 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, two or three detailed shoe reviews every month, appearances at races around the world, and a legion of fans who care about the content as much as they care about Kofuzi - the “non elite runner who reviews shoes.”

The Kofuzi origin story

Like me, Mike wasn’t great at team sports as a kid, but with running track, “if you show up you get to be on the team. It was a sport that accepted [him] early on.” He went on to pole vaulting in college before taking a complete break from all running.

It was with an old friend that Mike came back to the sport. Both were adults, married, with jobs. They chose a race to sign up to and train for together. Mike noticed that even in those six years away from running, shoes were better now. Also, the emergence of GPS tracker technology helped him to gamify his training. He was hooked, and those things that he noticed - those aspects of running that spoke to him so much more strongly now, in adult life - were things that he chose to start documenting.

Building a fanbase on the back of shoe reviews as thorough as they were personal, Mike Ko made sure to engage with his community. Yeah, he reads the comments, and he replies to everyone. And so it grew, and grew. Problems came, of course, on the occasions when his videos went viral, exposing him and the Kofuzi community to the wider public - people with different views.

“During the pandemic was where a lot of those lines started to get drawn, so all the people that are anti-vax, anti-mask? They're not here anymore.”

“It was very tough to go through a lot of that, because the pushback was not civil. I do feel like it set me down a different path on the algorithm. Now, only when I make a video that does really well, will I start getting some hostile comments. I'll check, and the video? YouTube likes it, so it's suggesting it to a wider audience.”

“Then I'm brushing back up against those people that have intentionally avoided me because I'm too woke or whatever is offending them. You know: I'm not fast enough or too Asian, or whatever.”

“It's tough to deal with because I want to be able to communicate. We all can relate over running, but some people insist that their running is a conflict-free space. I'll respect that. I'm not going to make you watch my video.”

Kofuzi in front of his legendary rainbow backdrop of running shoes.

Changing with the times

Sitting in front of a shelving unit filled with 80 pairs of running shoes, with more on the floor around him, Mike Ko reflects on seven years of reviewing shoes.

“I started reviewing shoes before carbon-plated shoes became a thing - definitely before supercritical foams and EVA blends. Everything was, ‘What's the stack height? What's the drop? What's the weight? That pretty much tells me all I need to know about the shoe,’ so it was a lot more straightforward in that sense.”

“These days, those numbers mean very little. Depending on how the shoe gets put together, 8oz (250g) in one foam is very different to 8oz in another. Depending on how and where it's compressing, an 8mm drop can be a lot or it can be a little. Now there's a lot more that's required in terms of really running in the shoe to be able to understand what it's about.”

“Also, I feel like consumers are a lot more sophisticated now, because we have a lot more information. The brands are telling us more about what they're doing. It's become much more detailed but in a really good way.”

Unbridled information. Another wonderful (or awful) thing that the internet has provided us. The way everyday people are now able to dial in their nutrition macros, their sleep quality, their training programs, and other metrics that are so much more measurable now. They’re likely all more important to your performance than the shoes on your feet.

Either way, I know what’s going to help my running the most right now: more sleep. My kids say no to that, however. You try telling them! That’s been my reality for the past seven years, so it makes sense that so far in this phase of my running life, I’ve never really felt like giving shoe reviews that much reading time. It’s also why you haven’t seen any from me.

Having a strong idea of how I like to run helps, as well. I don’t care about PRs or racing, and I don’t run marathons, so I don’t need the same level of cushioning or carbon plating that others might want or need. I can even indulge myself more in how my shoes look.

Regardless of the technical aspect of shoes, I find the level of detail that goes into running reviews in 2024 somewhat overwhelming - it’s so much to think about; so much to not be right for me - but 79% of consumers now prefer watching a video about a product than reading about it, and 84% of consumers have been convinced to purchase a product after watching a video.

I’m in the 21%, and if you’re reading this, you might be as well. Video is over 80% of internet traffic, and increasing with every technological advance, but here I am, still writing away. Pathetic! What a dinosaur I am.

Sneaker culture vs running culture

“There's a lot of overlap. They're things that we can acquire relatively frequently, which gives us more chances to really experiment and express ourselves through the things that we are running with or wearing casually”

“For instance, car culture is very different to sneaker culture and running culture because you might upgrade a car, you might modify a car, but you may only own a handful of cars your entire life. So what it takes to be obsessed and immersed in car culture is a little bit different to what it takes to be obsessed and immersed in running shoe or sneaker culture.”

The way Ko talks about sneaker culture as an art form versus the functionality of running shoe culture is telling. While rare sneakers can stay in their boxes, never biodegrading (more on that in a moment), running shoes are primarily purchased to be worn. They’re maybe the bottom rung, artistically speaking. It’s not quite the same, but it reminds me of the Lipstick Effect - the phenomenon where even during economic downturns, people find enough money for small pleasures. Necessities of life.

screenshot of google search for unsustainable shoes — A quick search around the topic of the sustainability of shoes yields some other thinkpieces.

The runner’s quandary: sustainability

Running is said to be the cheapest sport to take up. The implication is that we don’t need much - just a pair of shoes. We can run in any old t-shirts, shorts, and socks, but we need a good pair of shoes that last 350 miles or 500 km before the cushioned midsole stops providing sufficient protection to our bodies.

The issue that we simply have to keep wringing our hands over is that shoes are not sustainable items. Not in their current incarnation, anyway.

“They're petrochemicals, wrapped in rubber, and topped with polyester. It's some of the most unbiodegradable things that man has ever created. And we're buying it regularly. It's unfortunate.”

We don’t have a solution

“For us, at 300 miles, the shoe might not be usable anymore [for running], but I do feel like some of these materials are lasting really well, and if you're just running in them they might still be in really good visual shape. If they're still wearable, you could consider donating to people who don't have access to good shoes, and need something to protect their feet.”

Indeed, my run club has partnered with Stride Society LA - an organization that collects old and unwanted shoes from runners and then distributes them to local charities that serve the city’s unhoused population. They’re a valuable conduit between running communities and organized charities - neither of which have the resources to reach out to one other under normal circumstances.

“I wish it was as easy as bringing them back to your running store, drop them in the bin, and then they get recycled. That would be ideal, but unfortunately, we're not there yet.”

As I highlighted a couple of weeks ago, there are increasing numbers of brands trying to make more eco-friendly foams, and trying to do things that have a smaller carbon footprint. A big criticism of products using recycled materials (by the public) is the issue of slightly lower performance.

“The best thing that I think I can do is to help highlight those efforts, and say how it's a daily trainer. If it's a little bit less amazing than its fully fresh virgin petrochemical counterpart, let's try it. Let's keep making it better and better. That's something that I'm very excited about.”

Remember how I mentioned that sleep, training, and nutrition were more important than the shoes you’re wearing? Still true. Unless you’re training for the Olympics, of course.

What’s the most difficult part of running?

“I really enjoy running every day - I don't really schedule a lot of complete days off. Sometimes, whether it's with work, family life, other scheduling things, I end up with maybe 15 to 20 minutes. That's always the worst. If I have to reschedule a run to a different part of the day, mentally, I can deal with that, but if I’m 5-10 minutes short on it, that always gives me a lot of mental distress.”

“When I don't have the amount of time to do the run that I want, that's really difficult for me. Not because it makes the run hard, but it just is a signal that I procrastinated, or I didn't schedule things well.”
“When you're out there running, you have a lot of time to think about all the things you've done wrong, so that starts to swirl a little bit. I'm working on it.”

The work that he’s doing is treating his current life as a running shoe expert creator like a job. He’s working to treat it as seriously as he treated his previous businesses.

Mike doesn’t “have the luxury of being able to take a shoe to 300, 350 miles” any more - how he started out reviewing shoes. Now, he runs in each pair for 100 miles or so in order to review as many shoes as possible. By that 100-mile point, he has a good enough understanding of how well they’re going to last, as well as the performance aspect.

Last year, Mike tells me that he ran 3,100 miles - the most he’s ever run in a year. I ask if he’s running more because he feels compelled to review more shoes, but he simply cites the increase in big “adventures” and “opportunities” that have come his way.

Those opportunities are surely going to come thicker and faster with every year. It’s 2024: the world has pivoted to video, and Kofuzi is on our screens telling us what’s up with a new pair of shoes.

Thanks for reading. Really.

Ways to make running suck less covered this week

Get some sleep
Eat the right food
Follow your training regimen
Organize your day so you don’t miss out on running time
Yeah, sure, find some nice shoes to run in

Running Sucks Haiku of the Week

Ran a local race,
But I forgot to race it.
Had some nice chats, though.

This is true commitment to the bit of really, really not caring about PRs etc. I am a prime candidate to use a shoe where I can care more about sustainability rather than performance!

I took over five years off running organized races before the Run The 110 last autumn, where they shut down a portion of a usually-manic Los Angeles freeway so we could run along it. It was a very fun reason to accidentally stick four safety pins into my stomach, but I didn’t race that one either.

Now that I’m over 40, however, I realize that I’m in the Masters category in these races, so there is a new chance to win a trophy again. Will I? Won’t I? Something for me to think about, anyway.