Work footwear durability is incredibly important, and KEEN Utility gets questions all the time about how we test our products before they’re released. Most components and materials we use on our boots, including the outsole and midsole, are subjected to stringent quality control testing.

Considering the amount of walking, kneeling, bending, and climbing you do at work every day, your footwear’s outsole needs to exhibit a blend of flexibility and durability. We use a special machine that bends and unbends an outsole for 30,000 cycles, at an absolute minimum. This provides a good simulation of an average amount of use across the boot or shoe’s lifetime.

Here at KEEN Utility, we don’t stop at just “good enough.” The products we sell need to have rock-solid durability, even for the hardest workers and notorious boot abusers out there. For this reason, we flex test our outsoles up to around 100,000 cycles. This results in a product we can be proud of, and you can depend on day-in and day-out.   

Our flex test is the same, regardless of whether we’re testing our KEEN.TOUGHSOLE outsole or our rubber outsole. KEEN.TOUGHSOLE, used on styles like the Independence and the Fort Wayne, is modern, light, and durable. Our rubber outsole, used on product families like Vista Energy and Cincinnati, has been depended on by countless tradesmen and tradeswomen over the years.