This footwear exec envisions a better way to make kids’ shoes

He grew up playing basketball and sought after Air Jordans. But when he went to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, he got talked into playing rugby, which meant needing a different type of shoe. 

Gugat found himself at a local running gear store, where he was eventually offered a job. Gugat started to work with representatives from big brands like Nike. For more than 20 years, he worked in the athletic industry, serving as an executive at Mizuno and Adidas. 

Eventually, the resident of DC’s Lincoln Park area caught the entrepreneurial bug and cofounded the kid shoe company jbrds in 2018. Now, the company’s CEO is using the signature accelerator of one of Maryland’s biggest public universities to make the company the go-to brand for children’s footwear.  

jbrds, based in a distribution space in Baltimore County, Maryland, said it approaches kids’ shoes differently than other brands. The shoes are specifically designed to support kids’ feet, including the cuboid bone. Babies develop it around their first year, and it’s a key part of stability for babies to start standing, balancing and walking. 

Companies often take their adult shoe design and shrink it down to a kids’ size. But properly designing shoes for kids is much more complicated than that, Gugat said. 

He wanted to start his own business and was connected with jbrds cofounder Dr. Jay LeBow, a former Baltimore Orioles podiatrist and a foot and ankle surgeon. From that first meeting, the plan began to unfold. 

“He saw that there was a better way to make shoes,” Gugat told Technical.ly. 

LeBow and Gugat together came up with the idea for a shoe to be a sock and shoe in one. The design supports the cuboid bone and stabilizes the heel for kids. The first product released is dubbed the “Stand2Walk” shoe, which is for kids ages six to 18 months. 

Gugat’s own son took part in the research process. 

“As my son likes to tell everybody, his footprint is on the inside of every shoe,” Gugat said. 

Jbrds is based out of the 42,000-square-foot Baltimore County building for Holabird Sports, which was founded by David Hirshfeld. Hirshfeld, who is also a cofounder of jbrds, allowed the company to tap into that existing infrastructure and to incubate the company there, Gugat said. 

Gugat, LeBow and Hirshfeld founded jbrds in 2018, but the shoe itself didn’t launch until 2022. This was largely because of the pandemic, Gugat said, with factories shutting down and a major supply chain crisis plaguing distribution networks worldwide. 

Now, about a year and a half later, the company plans to make new colors of the Stand2Walk available by Labor Day, Gugat said. The company is also set to release a new design for kids aged 18 months to three years. 

To get better established for these plans, jbrds is participating in the sixth cohort of Towson University’s StarTUp Accelerator. The eight-week intensive provides mentorship and a $10,000 equity-free stipend to all participant companies. The cohort only just formally started, but Gugat said he can tell he’ll get a lot out of it. 

“Once it was announced, the cohort, we’ve already been communicating with one another,” Gugat said. “We’ve already assisted one another. So what’s been most exciting to me is I already can tell [that] what I give to it, I’m going to get back.” 

The company is currently a direct-to-consumer business, but soon, the shoes will be available in other stores, Gugat said. He is specifically targeting running stores, with commitments from local outlets like Pacers in the DMV and Charm City Run in Baltimore and other Maryland areas. 

“Our vision is to really become, from cradle to eight years old,” Gugat said, “an athletic lifestyle brand for kids.”