In 2009 I sat in my cousin?s living room and he showed me what he was working on with running shoes. I tested the concept for myself and fell in love right away. It seemed right. The science and technology (or lack thereof) made sense. It was something that I felt that I could get behind. There was sound logic and reason to what he was doing. On that day, I told him, “let?s start a shoe company?. After some laughs and years of hard work, Altra was born from our ideas and strategies. Together, Golden, Brian, and I started a revolution in the running world. We took a risk.

We began developing product and branding a company. As we did, we had many dreams, desires, hopes, and things we knew that we would do. After seven years much of that has been brought to pass. We haven?t reached everything yet. There are still new heights to achieve. We all see this brand being more than it is, even today. Altra continues to grow and thrive. We started a basement brand, as three young amateur businessmen, with the help of others and against all odds, built a 25 million dollar brand. We have done this after only five short years of being on the market.

It has been a fun ride. It has been amazing. I will never forget it. It has been hard, it has been trying, it has been challenging. With the help of many that have followed along, we have established a global brand. We have needed many to help us and empower us to achieve greatness. Altra is now in 46 countries. Altra is a brand that is recognizable to many around the world. We started as a running brand but have grown to transcend that and are known even by those who are not runners. We have grown a household name.

We are doing something great. Altra continues to do great things, but at this time, it is time for me to step down. It has come time to transition from my full-time position at Altra. This has been a challenging decision to make. We have wrestled with this decision for months, but we have decided as a family that it is the best thing for us to move on. There will be more adventures to come. There will be great things to accomplish in the future. I?ll always have Altra to look back upon. I?ll always have the success of building and establishing a brand. I will always be a founder of this brand. I will always retain in memory the experiences and growth that I have with my two fantastic partners, Golden & Brian. We grew up a lot together. We sweat, we fought, we loved, we adventured, and ultimately we excelled together. We butt heads at times, we contradicted each other at times, but we were there for each other along the way. We were there to build this brand. We were there to make Altra successful and help people to run better.

I will miss being daily involved with this brand. I feel a lot like I am sending my first child off to school. I won?t be directly involved. I won?t have a day to day impact. I will watch things from a distance, a close distance, but still a distance. I will miss all those that I have been able to interact with each day. I hope to maintain the many friendships and relationships from Altra for many years to come. This has been a sweet ride and it is bittersweet to see it come to an end. Here’s to new adventures!