Finding the Right Fit: Lessons From Bert Shoes Founder Juliana Mantilla

Some founder stories start with a business plan. Juliana Mantilla's started with a rescue dog, a broken elevator routine, and a country with almost no outdoor industry to speak of.

Juliana joins the podcast from El Retiro, a small town outside Medellín, Colombia, known for drawing elite European cycling teams for altitude training. She's the founder of BERT, a pre and post activity shoe built for the moments before and after your workout — but the road to that product looked nothing like the brand you see today.

A Mission Built on Rescue

BERT started as a slipper concept for dog owners tired of changing shoes every time they took their dog out, a real problem in Colombia, where most people live in apartment buildings and don't have easy access to a yard. Juliana had recently adopted a rescue dog and gotten close to local animal welfare foundations working to address the country's stray dog population, which doesn't have the shelter infrastructure the U.S. does. The original plan: for every two or three pairs sold, fund one sterilization.

Then Juliana launched in January 2020. A month later, COVID hit and the entire premise of a shoe meant to move seamlessly between inside and outside your home became a hard sell overnight.

Selling the Mission vs. Selling the Shoe

Even before the pandemic complicated things, Juliana was running into a deeper problem: she was pitching the cause instead of the product.

Her husband, who runs his own cycling brand, Scarab Cycles, had been wearing early prototypes on bikepacking trips for their packability and comfort. When his friends started asking where to get a pair, he pushed Juliana to see what she'd been missing.

"I think you have to become obsessed with what your customer tells you about your product."

That shift from leading with mission to leading with product became the turning point for the brand.

The Cheapest Focus Group You'll Ever Run

To stress-test the redesign, Juliana posted photos of the shoes in bikepacking and gear Facebook groups and on Reddit, fully expecting the internet to be blunt about it. It was.

"It's the easiest, fastest and cheapest focus group that you can ever have."

She credits that unfiltered feedback — not friends and family — with actually shaping the product into something the outdoor market wanted.

"Your friends and family they are always going to love it. And no one is going to say the truth."

Building a Booth (and a Brand) From Scratch

With no U.S. warehouse to ship display materials ahead of time, Juliana and her husband built their first trade show booth for Switchback in New Orleans entirely from Home Depot supplies, on-site. It took 17 hours. Their neighboring booths took two.

It also became the moment two years of remote relationship-building, PR outreach, and LinkedIn conversations turned into real, in-person business.

What's Next for BERT

Juliana and her team are using their next few months in the U.S. to keep building that in-person momentum — walking Outdoor Retailer as visitors and returning to Made Show in Portland with Scarab Cycles. For a brand built almost entirely on relationships formed online, she says nothing replaces getting in a room with people face to face. It's a reminder that even in an industry full of gear and specs, the thing that actually moves a brand forward is still trust, built one conversation at a time.

Follow Along

BERT Shoes: thebertshoe.com
BERT on Instagram: @thebertshoe ‍

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