Shoes of Prey

Three lawyers on a beach in Australia in December 2008 had an idea that would disrupt custom manufacturing. Jodi Fox, who had transitioned from litigation to advertising, couldn't find shoes she loved. While traveling, she discovered a service where she could design her own shoes. When the custom shoes arrived, her girlfriends were immediately impressed and asked her to design pairs for them too. Meanwhile, her co-founders Michael Fox (her ex-husband, who moved from law to retail operations at Google) and Mike Knapp (their former groomsman from law school, who had studied law and IT at Google) were convinced that e-commerce was going to explode. When Jodi shared her shoe-customization experience with them, the lightbulb moment arrived: design your shoes online.

The trio launched ShoesOfPrey.com in October 2009, starting as a pure-play online business with minimal capital. Jodi described the early days as sub-$50k in first-year revenue (they started late in October), but the concept proved immediately sticky. What made the platform work was the obsessive focus on the design experience—customers could rotate 3D models of shoes, click on any part, and change materials and colors from a palette. The business model was elegant: every shoe is custom-made to order. They took inspiration-gallery designs from their merchandiser and customers, but never manufactured inventory. Instead, users either started from scratch or tweaked gallery designs to their liking.

By mid-2012, something remarkable happened: customers literally showed up at ShoesOfPrey's headquarters asking to see shoes in person. "Women just started turning up at our headquarters saying, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm just here on holidays and I wanted to see some shoes,'" Jodi recalled. This customer feedback loop revealed the critical insight: they needed physical retail presence. The first store opened in January 2013 and doubled its forecasted revenue in its first 12 months. Rather than a sterile showroom, they created an experience—sculptures built from shoes, every surface made from actual shoe materials, custom fragrance, curated soundtrack. The store went on to win the World Retail Award for best retail experience.

The growth engine was relentless word-of-mouth. By 2016, 75% of traffic came from organic referrals—not paid ads. To amplify this, they included referral cards in shoeboxes offering discounts. Their "52 Shoes" contest (win a pair of shoes for every year of your life) became a viral acquisition tool, capturing thousands of email addresses for pennies, while getting customers engaged in the design process itself. Average order value settled at $220, with cart sizes slightly higher due to product mix ($130 entry price to $400+ for premium designs). What they didn't disclose—COGS, exact margins, valuation—they protected fiercely, citing competitive reasons.

The toughest operational challenge was manufacturing. Standard suppliers refused to make single pairs at scale. So ShoesOfPrey built its own factory in China, where 75% of global women's shoes are manufactured. This required significant capital investment but became a competitive moat—they could guarantee 365-day returns or remakes and maintain the speed of custom production at scale.

By June 2016, ShoesOfPrey had raised $24.6M across multiple rounds, with investors including Greycroft Partners, Costler, and Nordstrom (who also became a retail partner). The team had grown to 220+ employees. Over 6 million shoes had been designed on the platform. They had secured placement in major retailers like David Jones and Nordstrom, expanding beyond pure-play e-commerce. Jodi's vision was bigger than footwear—she wanted to become "the Amazon of design your own," stretching into clothing and homewares. Rather than entertain acquisition offers, she was focused on scaling the manufacturing and retail footprint while maintaining the creative identity that had made the brand iconic.