Fulton is making the world's most comfortable and supportive insoles. The company was founded in 2021 by Libie Motchan and Daniel Nelson, and aims to be “anti-Dr. Scholl’s in almost every way possible.” True to its mission, Fulton is introducing proper alignment for 80% of our population who suffer from foot, knee, hip, or back pain.
Motchan and Nelson first spoke about creating a wellness-focused insole after meeting at Wharton’s Welcome Weekend, where their conversation soon turned to achy pains in their backs and feet. While they both knew of insole brands that existed, Nelson soon realized that the insole brands he knew of didn’t feel very approachable or wellness oriented.
"They very much had the skiing brand and the hiking brand and the running brand, or Dr. Scholl’s (a more reactive case than proactive wellness case), and there wasn’t really anything that resonated with me."
Daniel Nelson, Co-founder @ Fulton
At first, Motchan and Nelson considered making custom insoles by asking customers to send in foot imprints. However, the founders soon discovered that miracle-material cork, sourced from Portugal, would do the job just as well as custom insoles. Fulton’s cork has other benefits too; It is moisture-repelling, anti-microbial, shock-absorbant, and sustainable. Since the cork forms to your feet after around 10 hours of wear, the company has one flagship insole product for now, which can be ordered purely based on a person’s shoe size.
Insoles aren’t just for foot pain! Proper arch support can help with knee, hip, and back pain, too.
Fulton insoles morph to your feet like magic
The brand’s founders, Motchan and Nelson, understood the preconceived notions many people had towards insoles. Typically, unless they have specific concerns regarding shoe comfort and pain-reduction, people don’t consider their shoes when seeking our preventative wellness.. This is especially true since most stylish and on-trend footwear doesn’t always have great arch support. Motchan and Nelson came to the conclusion that the mission of healthy footwear should not only be geared towards improving people’s arch support, but also towards targeting just about every other part of the body, including the knees, hips, and back. The body is interconnected, and Motchan and Nelson knew that their insoles had to improve overall body health, plus aches and pains.
Figuring Out the Right Strategy
Soon, Fulton needed to figure out the right positioning for their product since their demographic was different from Dr. Scholl’s. Fulton aimed to target a generation of modern, sustainability and wellness minded consumers.With their specific audience in mind, the team knew they had to launch new product pages for their innovative insoles to go with their organic and paid marketing strategies. They wanted something that was fun but also educational.
Building on Shopify
When the team started Fulton, they knew they had to build on Shopify; it was the only platform to manage not only orders and inventory, but also complex ecommerce workflows like shipping and returns. Initially, Fulton used an agency to design a brand and build out their website. However, despite the amazing job the agency had done, the content built on Shopify just wasn’t customizable enough to fit into different ideas Fulton wanted to test on the storefront. At the same time, she saw a ton of inspiration in other up-and-coming D2C experiences that she wanted to test both for landing pages for paid ads but also creating editorials and listicle templates.
Truthfully, when I first started using Shopify, I envisioned that all pages would be easy to customize, modular, and intuitive to build out yourself. I'm sure I'm not alone in being disappointed by how challenging it is to build a custom Shopify site. It’s basically impossible without hiring an incredibly expensive dev agency.
Libie, Co-founder @ Fulton
Enter Replo
Editing Fulton's product page in Replo's visual editor
The team evaluated several solutions, between page builders and working with folks on Storetasker, and each of them had their own benefits. But, once the Fulton started using Replo, they were able to create new landing pages which conveyed their desired story despite not having the budget to hire a developer. With Replo, the team was also able to build sections that could be rearranged to fit new content and create new pages for experimentation.
Replo is super intuitive, enables you to customize everything, and is so affordable. Replo saved us tens of thousands of dollars and so much time. Plus the most amazing thing is we can make any changes we want moving forward without having to outsource a designer.
Libie, Co-founder @ Fulton
Rather than using Liquid, the team was able to build completely customized size selectors, carousels, tabs, instagram embeds, reviews, and scrolling text elements. As the team launches new products, they plan to leverage Replo for even more sections including embedding products in blog articles, upselling, and using Replo to re-engage users to re-purchase products.