When Todd Meleney left Nobull in early 2023, a training footwear company he called home for a decade, he was eager to create something atypical in the hypercompetitive and crowded marketplace.
“I was ready to build something new and was fortunate enough to have a team of the best people come with me to join in whatever would be next,” Meleney, co-founder and chief executive officer of While on Earth, told FN. “We did, and we continue to do agency consulting work for brands in the fitness and wellness space, but we took time to assess the marketplace, where we are in our careers and the opportunities to build something we were passionate about. That attracted us to this category of wellness, and led us down a path of what wellness means to us now versus 10 years ago.”
That path led Meleney and his team to create While on Earth. According to Meleney, While on Earth is not a traditional training footwear and apparel brand. Instead, they are calling it a performance wellness brand.
“We joke that it’s a new category, but the reason we call it performance wellness is because wellness is hard to describe, but performance wellness has more intention to it,” Meleney said. “It requires taking active steps to improve your well being. That may be training for your first 5K, signing up for your first CrossFit class or taking your first cold plunge. We want to inspire people to have the courage and motivation to do those things because we believe they will feel better if they do it.”
The brand is focused on creating products for all types and levels of fitness and wellness enthusiasts.
“They’re active three-plus days per week, and active can mean in the gym, doing high-intensity training or yoga or barre. It can also mean breath work and meditation or sauna and cold plunge,” Meleney explained. “The range is people who are just starting — it can be intimidating to do something new, but we want to inspire people to just start — all the way up to competitive high-intensity training.”
Meleney is surrounded by familiar faces at While on Earth, which is slated to launch on Sept. 18. For instance, three people on his team — Alexis Callahan (vice president of business operations), Jed Magnusson (vice president of marketing) and Chris Yonuss (vice president of operations) — are from Nobull. Also on the While on Earth team is Sam Kelly, formerly of the ad agency Fair Folk, who is the brand’s creative director.
The While on Earth founding team includes a pair of CrossFit legends: Brooke Wells and Mat Fraser. Wells is a nine-time CrossFit Games competitor, as well as an author, releasing “Resilient: The Untold Story of CrossFit’s Greatest Comeback” in January. As for Fraser, he is a five-time CrossFit Games champion, earning the “Fittest Man on Earth” title consecutively from 2016 to 2020.
Before While on Earth, Wells was a longtime Nobull athlete and Fraser was backed by Nike. Both Wells and Fraser, according to Meleney, have joined While on Earth as co-founders and investors.
“As we thought about building a brand that had relevance from the beginning and having people involved that inspire movement and people, the possibility of having Mat and Brooke involved was something I was super excited about,” Meleney said. “Mat had been one of the faces of Nike training for 10 years. He had a shoe drop every year that sold out globally through his retirement a couple of years ago, and Brooke is one of the faces of fitness and CrossFit on the female side.”
Meleney said Wells is heavily involved in the female product creative direction, and Mat is as well, with an emphasis on the brand’s footwear development.
The first shoe from While on Earth is the Move Trainer.
“It is your all-purpose fitness shoe for movement, whatever that looks like for you,” Meleney said. “If you’re going away for a long weekend and can only pack one pair of shoes, you should pack the Move Trainer. It’s versatile, comfortable, and most importantly, it’s wearable in the gym and outside of the gym.”
While on Earth built the Move Trainer with its own knit technology, dubbed ThriveKnit, which is “heavily reinforced” internally for stability and support during intense environments. Also, the shoe, which Meleney described as “extremely comfortable and lightweight,” has a TPU guard that wraps around the outside of the shoe to provide lateral support and abrasion resistance.
The While on Earth Move Trainer will arrive in four colorways — “Dune,” “White,” “Seaport Blue” and “Beet” — and retail for $150 via Whileonearth.co. Meleney said more colorways will debut later in the year.
Looking ahead, Meleney revealed the brand’s broader footwear plans.
“We have a multiyear roadmap for footwear development that’s underway, and we’ll be rolling out a variety of new styles beginning in 2025,” he said. “We want to meet our audience in all of the areas of activity that they do. That can be running, recovery, high intensity environments where you need things different from what current trainers offer. We run, we lift, we’re in the sauna and the cold bath, and we’ve got product coming that will meet those needs.”
In terms of its retail strategy, Meleney said While on Earth is going to start direct-to-consumer and with strategic retail wholesale partners, and the brand will also ship internationally from its onset. What’s more, the exec stated the team will pursue wholesale partners “where the customer is” that fits the brand’s DNA “at the right time in 2025.”
“The goal for year one is to build awareness and relevance for the brand and express the meaning behind While on Earth,” Meleney explained, “so the folks that engage with the brand really connect with its meaning and start to build community.”
Peter Verry is the Senior News and Features Editor for Athletic and Outdoor at Footwear News. He oversees coverage of the two fast-paced and ultracompetitive markets, which includes conducting in-depth interviews with industry leaders and writing stories on sneakers and outdoor shoes. He is a lifelong sneaker addict (and shares his newest purchases via @peterverry on Instagram) and spends most of his free time on a trail. He holds an M.A. in journalism from Hofstra University and can be reached at peter.verry@footwearnews.com.
