User:SalamanderCusack/sandbox

Atheist Shoes is a project of The Meaningful Shoe Company, a collective of shoemakers based in Berlin, London and Porto.

Designed in Berlin and handmade in Porto, the shoes have the statement ICH BIN ATHEIST embossed on their soles, with the aim of increasing the visibility of non-believers in a subtle, tasteful way. (Irish Times)

Their minimalist, utilitarian design is inspired by the Bauhaus and each shoes is marked by a "black hole" logo. (Fast Company)

Atheist Shoes is the brainchild of David Bonney, a former advertising copywriter and psychologist. "It's like Grindr for the Godless", said Bonney, in an August 2014 interview with the Guardian. (Guardian)

A picture of the first Atheist Shoe was posted on Reddit.com in January 2012, and made "front page", (Fast Company) resulting in 650,000 page views in 24 hours (Irish Times) and 100s of requests for shoes. In April 2012, Atheist Shoes raised $60,000 via Kickstarter and its website opened for business in June 2012. Atheist Shoes have since sold an estimated 7,000 pairs of shoes, with most of its customers being in the USA. (Tagespiegel)

In 2013, Atheist Shoes published the results of a scientific experiment it conducted, to determine whether the US Postal Service would deliver packages branded with "ATHEIST" packing tape would travel at the same speed as neutrally-branded packages. The results suggested a bias against ATHEIST-branded packages, with those packages taking on average 3 days longer to arrive and being ten times more likely to disappear. (Time)

On April 1st, 2014, the founder of Atheist Shoes claimed to be closing the business, due to having found god, only to admit, the following day, that this was in fact an April Fool's joke. (The Blaze)