I love that you're trying to make a super comfortable, light-weight, barefoot safety boot. Most of the boot is great, but the one thing that went wrong ruins the whole deal. The upper, when laced up snuggly, pushes my foot so far back that my heel is forced over the crack/crease between the insole and the leather back, and it digs at my heel with every step. I had to buy new barefoot insoles to try and correct the problem, and unfortunately it's only made them tolerable. For the price that I paid for these boots, I'm disappointed. And it's not even worth the return thanks to the tangerine tyrant's tariffs.

Boots are a little goofy looking, but that just comes with the territory. However, the boot was crazy uncomfortable at first. The leather bunched up bad behind the steel toe when bending the foot at the toe, and dug into the top of my foot, which ended up peeling off a small patch of skin. Soaking the boots in hot water, wearing them for an hour wearing about 4 pairs of socks, then drying them and putting on a thick layer on mink oil and wearing em on a hike with 3 layers of socks stretched them enough to leave em comfortable.

I did also replace the insole with a northsole insole as someone else here did. The amount of work needed to get these boots comfortable enough to use regularly was disappointingly high, but they're still decent boots, and there's nothing else like them

All I can say is thank you for bringing these boots into existence. I try to live my life in the most holistic way possible; I train barefoot and exclusively wear barefoot shoes but only when at work would I find myself wearing footwear that betrayed this principle. Not only my mobility and comfort are improved but my mood as well.

First off, I ask a lot of these boots. I work in industrial areas full of hard concrete floors, grease, solvents, and metal shavings. I also work at aggregate sites trudging through rock, sand, and mud. All these, followed by several hour drives, yet I’ve never even thought about changing out of them because they’re so comfortable.

They clean up nicely even after being beat to hell, and I even wear them to some customer’s offices without anyone making a fuss. Because they’re so flat and wide, they make for great dancing shoes as well, on or off a polished dance floor.

This review wouldn’t be quite honest without a few knocks against them. These boots were not comfortable out of the box, and required about a couple weeks of daily use and high mileage to become comfortable. Additionally, I had to cut the heel pull off the boots because of the angle they stuck out. They were always catching my pants, keeping them from falling over the top of the boots. I also had to cut notches into the tongues, as they wouldn’t contour to my ankles otherwise.

The thin leather insoles were not great, either, as they provided no cushion and slipped around frequently. I’m no noob when it comes to barefoot shoes, but those slips leather aren’t nearly enough for stomping around rough rocks and uneven ground for hours on end, especially carrying a 30lbs tool backpack. I replaced them with Northsoles, which don’t slide and provide much better comfort.

Durability wise, within a month the outsoles began to separate from the boots, and now for the second time in 2 months, I’ve had to take them to a cobbler to have them re-glued. The cotton stitching and lacing hasn’t held up against my lifestyle, either, and both are falling apart. I’ve replaced the laces with a Kevlar variety, and my cobbler is restitching the boots with nylon thread to prevent the quick abrasion of these components.

Overall, these boots fit me perfectly, work great for, well… work, amongst other things, and are actually the most comfortable pair of shoes I own (including barefoot tennis shoes, slippers, and other boots). They’ve got some odd design issues, some clear durability issues, but are luckily easy for my local cobbler to work on, as they’ve needed a good bit.

Even with the flaws, these boots are the best I’ve tried (I’ve tried all the barefoot safety boots on the market as of July 2025), and if I managed to destroy them, I’d likely get another pair, because no other safety boots comes close on comfort.

The short version is that the fit, the materials, and the construction make these boots the most comfortable and ergonomic (and, I'm anticipating, the most durable) shoes I've owned. This statement feels even stronger to me, because these are safety shoes which I can wear in my workshop! I wear size 44 extra wide, and I'm thoroughly satisfied.

Slightly more info: It's quite difficult to find off-the-rack shoes of any kind with enough overall width and toebox space to not squeeze my feet or hinder motion. The toebox issue is especially important with safety boots, since the protective cap doesn't allow any form of stretching. Toe boxes are tapered for appearance only, and when you consider that a "streamlined" shape is prioritized over toe motion and joint health, the industry standard begins to seem bizarre. These boots have the most ergonomic silhouette I've found, including around the small toe. And Gaucho Ninja >still< manages to make a body-friendly design with a handsome appearance; the contour of the toe plus the seam over the toecap makes the overall form seem interesting, not clownish or like a compromise. I get positive comments about the style of my boots all the time.

If you're particularly interested in their minimalist properties, the zero rise sole offers a great balance of sensitivity, flexibility, and protection. I suspect that a low-profile supportive insert would also make these effective at 'training" before going completely zero rise.

I also want to emphasize that the weight and tan of the leather is excellent. My boots needed almost no breaking in (I've even danced in them!) The construction also means that I can get them repaired. I want to add less to landfills, and I imagine you do, too!

A pair of daily-wear Gaucho Ninja sneakers is my next purchase.