From Olympic Trials to Your Front Door
Mark's Journey
Mark Sisson's story starts on the roads and tracks of competitive distance running. A qualifier for the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon and a top finisher at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Mark spent his early career pushing the limits of human endurance — and paying the price with chronic injuries that conventional footwear only made worse.
After retiring from elite competition, Mark channeled his obsession with human performance into education. He pioneered the ancestral health and primal living movement, authoring The Primal Blueprint — a bestselling book that reshaped how millions think about diet, movement, and lifestyle. His work argued that modern humans thrive when they align their habits with evolutionary biology — and that includes how we use our feet.
Mark didn't just write about it. He founded Primal Kitchen, a real-food condiment and supplement company that grew from a garage startup to a household name, ultimately acquired by Kraft Heinz in 2019 for $200 million. It was proof that Mark could build a brand around conviction — that doing things the right way and building a great business aren't mutually exclusive.
Through it all, Mark lived barefoot whenever possible. Decades of personal experience — walking, hiking, training, and recovering without traditional shoes — gave him an intimate understanding of what feet actually need. And an equally intimate understanding of what the shoe industry was getting wrong.
The Shoe That Didn't Exist
For decades, Mark searched for the perfect barefoot shoe. He tried everything. Vibram FiveFingers proved the core concept — separating toes changes how you move, stand, and feel — but they lacked any real cushioning and looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. You couldn't wear them to dinner. You couldn't wear them to the office. Most people couldn't wear them at all without getting stared at.
Then came the wave of “wide toe box” brands. They were an improvement over traditional shoes — more room for toes to spread, less compression. But they didn't separate individual toes. Without true toe separation, feet still couldn't function the way they were designed to. The arch couldn't fully engage. The stabilizing muscles between each toe stayed dormant.
The gap in the market was glaring: a shoe with true individual toe separation, real cushioning for all-day comfort, and styling you wouldn't be embarrassed to wear in public. A shoe that took the biomechanical truth of barefoot living and made it accessible, practical, and — yes — actually good-looking. That shoe didn't exist. So Mark decided to build it.
Building Peluva
Mark partnered with his son Kyle to turn the vision into reality. Kyle brought the operational muscle — supply chain expertise, brand-building experience, and the relentless drive to get every detail right. Together, they founded Peluva in 2021 and spent two years in development before launching their first shoe in late 2023.
The design process was painstaking. Creating a five-toed shoe that actually fits well across thousands of different foot shapes required rethinking everything from last construction to material selection. They prototyped relentlessly — testing different knits, leathers, sole compounds, and toe-slot geometries until they found the combination that delivered on every front: true toe separation, 9mm of cushioning, and a silhouette that looks like a modern lifestyle shoe, not a piece of medical equipment.
Based in the United States, Peluva is a family-built company with a simple belief: the best shoe is one that lets your foot work the way it was designed to.
Our Mission: Reconnect Humanity with Their Feet
Peluva isn't just a shoe company. We're on a mission to change the way people think about their feet — and by extension, their entire foundation of physical wellbeing.
Your feet contain 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments. They're one of the most complex and capable structures in the human body. And for most people, they've been locked in padded, narrow boxes since childhood — weakening the very muscles that are supposed to support every step, every squat, every jump.
We believe that reconnecting with your feet is one of the most impactful things you can do for your health. It starts from the ground up — literally. When your toes can spread, grip, and stabilize independently, everything above them benefits. Your ankles, knees, hips, and spine all align better. Your balance improves. Your proprioception sharpens.
Our mission is to make that reconnection accessible to everyone — through shoes you actually want to wear, education that empowers you to understand your own body, and a community of people who refuse to accept that foot pain is just a normal part of life.
Experience the Difference
Join thousands of people who've rediscovered what their feet can do.