Ned Buckley: From Boot Containers to the Hilton
Season 2 • Episode 7
Before Boot Solutions Japan became one of the country’s best-known specialist boot-fitting businesses, it operated beneath a Niseko lodge and then from a couple of demountable shipping containers.
Its founder, Dr Ned Buckley, had a simple policy: if more than 30 centimetres of snow fell overnight, customers needed to collect their boots the night before. The shop would open after the powder had been skied.
Twenty years later, Boot Solutions operates across Niseko and Hakuba, including a fitting lab within Village Sports at the Hilton Niseko Village. The path between those two points is anything but conventional.
From Cooma to Niseko
Ned was born in Cooma into a family steeped in Australian skiing, although much of his childhood was spent in Vanuatu. After returning to the snow as a young adult, he worked at Perisher before following his future wife, Erin, to London.
A forklift job in Brixton was clearly not the long-term answer. Ned walked into a ski shop in Fulham, talked his way into a tuning role and began learning boot fitting from a French colleague. Work in Telluride followed, along with exposure to some of the most respected technical boot fitters in the industry.
Then Rhythm Japan co-founder Matt Hampton suggested Ned visit Niseko. An almost one-metre snowfall in April made a persuasive argument.
Ned launched Boot Solutions in 2006 from a tiny space beneath Lodge Bamboo. The business soon moved into shipping containers, grew alongside Rhythm Japan and later expanded into Hakuba and purpose-built stores of its own.
From boot fitter to foot surgeon
Ned’s curiosity did not stop at modifying plastic shells and building custom footbeds. He wanted to understand the anatomy, physiology and biomechanics behind the problems arriving in the shop.
He returned to university to study podiatric medicine, then completed a Doctorate of Clinical Podiatry and trained as a specialist podiatric surgeon—all while continuing to build Boot Solutions in Japan.
That clinical expertise became a genuine point of difference for the business. But after years of moving between surgery in Perth and winters in Japan, Ned realised the ski industry was not the side project. It was the work and community in which he felt most at home.
The risk that nearly ended it
One of Boot Solutions’ biggest investments was its expansion into Village Sports at Niseko Village, offering rental, retail and specialist boot fitting in a major resort location.
Then COVID arrived.
Japan remained closed long after many other markets reopened, and the business experienced a 90–95 per cent downturn for three seasons. Ned and his partners faced a stark choice: let the business go or borrow, negotiate, adapt and keep it alive long enough for tourism to return.
They chose to keep going.
More than a business story
This episode is also a reunion between two people whose careers overlapped for years. Austin first met Ned in Niseko in 2007/08 and later worked alongside Boot Solutions through Rhythm Hakuba.
Their conversation moves through early Niseko characters, the craft and theatre of boot fitting, twelve-hour ski-shop shifts, powder days, the realities of seasonal businesses and the challenge of creating career paths that allow good people to stay in the snow industry.
Ned also speaks candidly about family, being more comfortable in ski culture than the conventional professional world and trying to balance hard winters in Japan with being genuinely present at home.
It is funny, technical, nostalgic and honest: the full story of a skier who kept following the next question until a boot-fitting experiment became a life.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen through Spotify, Apple Podcasts and your favourite podcast app.
About Ned Buckley
Dr Ned Buckley is the founder of Boot Solutions Japan, a specialist podiatric surgeon and a master bootfitter. Boot Solutions operates in Niseko Hirafu, Niseko Village and Hakuba, combining technical boot fitting with medical and biomechanical expertise.
Find Ned and the businesses:
Boot Solutions Japan: https://www.bootsolutionsjapan.com/
Village Sports Japan: https://villagesportsjapan.com/en/
