That shoe is now shaking up decades of ballet tradition, and pitting a young Melbourne company, MDM, against the big guns of dance footwear.

Heathcote had worked as a senior footwear designer following his retirement for some of the world's biggest dance companies, including Capezio and Bloch.

But sitting at his desk in 2010, after he had gone out on his own, Heathcote was daydreaming. He was running through an entire dance sequence in his mind, thinking of what a dancer needed and how a shoe could prevent injuries.

"Seventy per cent of all dance-related injuries are in the lower leg ... [and] may originate from alignment issues or technical faults in this region," said Mr Heathcote, who began studying ballet when he was three.

Within an hour, he had thought of his shoe It challengedthe traditional full leather sole ballet slipper and put him in direct competition with his former employers.

"We see ourselves as a young disrupter," he said. "Naturally we have a fight on our hands."

Not long after Mr Heathcote began working with professional dancers to develop the product, Bloch began sponsoring the Australian Ballet. The deal banned its dancers from endorsing any other brand, including Mr Heathcote's shoes.

"So we have changed our tack," Mr Heathcote said. "It's more of a guerrilla tactic since we do not have access to Australia's biggest company."

Instead of seeking professional endorsements, MDM is targeting dance studios across Australia.

Mr Heathcote hopes focusing at grassroots level will pay off, , with after-school ballet classes attracting 400,000 children across Australia each week.

Australian Ballet artistic director David McAllister defended the Bloch deal, saying the manufacturer had supplied the dance company for "many years" before becoming the official pointe shoe sponsor last year.

"Some dancers can wear up to three pairs of pointe shoes per performance and if they aren't customised correctly, foot injuries can occur," Mr McAllister said.

"The company relies on Bloch as we dance through over 5000 pairs of pointe in a year."

But some professional dancers have been wearing MDM's shoes. The Australian Ballet's longest-serving ballerina, Lucinda Dunn, wore Mr Heathcote's shoes in the month before her retirement in April.

"I found them highly supportive, very flattering and comfortable and easy to wear," Ms Dunn said.

Mr Heathcote's design has a split sole (instead of one strip of leather running across the bottom) with a strengthening substructure in between that is designed to provide more support for the foot and ankle.

It also forces the foot to sit straight in the shoe, preventing misalignment, which commonly leads to injuries, Mr Heathcote said.