Moondeck Footwear: From Kickstarter to a Real Brand

Welcome to the first Moondeck newsletter!

Each month, we’ll share updates as Moondeck moves from idea to Kickstarter to fully commercial, along with a look behind the scenes at how we’re building the brand.

For our first update, we’re excited to share a major milestone: our new website is live. Check it out at moondeck.co

 

With that launch comes a question we hear all the time — what kind of shoe is Moondeck? This month, we’re starting to answer that by sharing how the Lunar Tide is actually being worn, and why it was never meant to fit neatly into one category.

People always ask us what kind of shoe the Lunar Tide is, and after years of thinking about it, we still don’t have a great answer!

Will lives near the coast in Florida and wears them for easy days around the beach or heading out at night. Joe lives in the mountains and reaches for them after long trail runs, ski days, or whenever he wants something comfortable that doesn’t slow him down.

Our wear testers have taken them even further — as recovery shoes after long runs or workouts, all-day shoes in the hospital, fishing shoes (that one surprised us), golf shoes, and what more than one person has called the best travel shoe they’ve ever owned. RVs, airplanes, cruise ships — if you’re in and out of shoes all day, they just work.

That range is exactly why the question is hard. Moondeck wasn’t built to live in one bucket. It was built to adapt.

 

So what is Moondeck?

At its core, Moondeck is a backless, athleisure slip-on built on a running-shoe platform. It’s designed for comfort, ease, and versatility, with enough adjustability that the wearer can decide how it fits and how it’s worn.

It isn’t strictly a deck shoe or a recovery shoe, and while some people reach for familiar labels, none of them quite capture what it becomes once you start wearing it. We’ve learned to stop forcing a definition and let people make it their own.

 

Design was the hardest part

The biggest challenge was designing a shoe versatile enough to support very different ways of wearing it without losing stability, comfort, or style.

Some wear testers cinch the laces down and wear the Lunar Tide snug and secure. Others relax the laces, remove the insole for extra room, and let the shoe feel more open while still staying on the foot. Removing the insole also keeps the heel locked in more like a traditional shoe. Others want something they can step in and out of with effortless ease.

 

All of those approaches had to work.

There’s no universal standard for how a shoe like this “should” fit, and people come in with very different expectations. Some want it to feel closer to a sneaker. Others want something more relaxed. Our goal wasn’t to tell people the right way to wear it, but to design a system that gave them options.

 

The decisions that made it work

That flexibility came from very deliberate design choices.

The removable insole allows the shoe to adapt to different foot volumes and instep heights, and gives wearers the option to change how relaxed or structured it feels. The lace system paired with elastic gore provides light, responsive compression that helps the shoe stay on the foot without forcing your toes to grip or your foot to work overtime.

On their own, these choices sound straightforward. In combination — especially in a backless design — they’re difficult to execute well. Getting that balance right took time, iteration, and a lot of real-world testing.

 

What gave us confidence

We started to feel confident once wear testers began giving us consistent feedback across very different use cases. Both men and women have said things like, “These have become my favorite shoe,” or, “I never leave the house without them.”

That confidence grew when longtime footwear industry professionals told us the design and style were the best they had seen in years. One of those was Brian Smith, the founder of UGG, who became a customer and told us our biggest challenge would be keeping them in stock. That would be a nice problem to have.

Retailer interest reinforced that signal. We’re expecting to be in about twelve stores with our first production run, including casual footwear shops, independent running stores, and technical gear retailers. Many of these partners placed pre-orders without seeing a full size run because they recognized the gap Moondeck fills.

We’ve also had early media exposure, including ILoveTheBurg, and heard from podiatrists and healthcare professionals interested in how the shoe could support people who spend long days on their feet. So far, healthcare workers have been common buyers.

 

What’s next

We’re heading into our first production run now and preparing to get Moondeck into the world. What we’re most excited about isn’t just shipping shoes, but seeing how people define them in their own lives — how they lace them, loosen them, travel in them, work in them, or wear them in ways we never expected.

We’ll continue to focus on comfort, thoughtful design, versatility, and responsible materials, without trying to force Moondeck into a category it doesn’t need.

If you’re here early, thank you. We’re excited to keep building.

 

Joe & Will
Moondeck