This Local Color video, featuring creative small businesses around the globe, is part of a marketing series sponsored by HP

The running shoe industry and the entire world of running really has been dominated by several large shoe companies. These companies and the dogma they professed about the need for shoes that give stability, cushion and control has been challenged of late by a growing movement called the natural running movement.

The realization that there is another, better ways perhaps, to do the accepted is fertile ground for businesses that embrace and seize the opportunity, no matter what the industry.

For this episode of Local Color we meet Patton Gleason, founder of the Natural Running Store and a leading voice in the Natural Running Movement and proponent of something he calls Flow Running.

The Natural Running Store sells what are being called minimalist running shoes and teaches a running form that is more in tune with the natural mechanics of the body.

Gleason’s runs an online store, but his business and service philosophy is more in line with the friendly neighborhood place you go to get good service and great advice along with your purchase.

Gleason routinely sends video messages to customers, includes handwritten notes in their shoeboxes and teams with other “like-minded” companies to distribute samples of their products in every shipment.

Marry these personal touches with his passion to educate and you’ve got the recipe for the kind of word of mouth that can build a thriving business and take on entrenched industry icons.

The Natural Running Store’s approach is a perfect example of the way to merge high tech with high touch.