• #145: Xero Shoes – Invisible Shoes You Can See

  • Mar 20 2024
  • Durata: 19 min
  • Podcast
#145: Xero Shoes – Invisible Shoes You Can See copertina

#145: Xero Shoes – Invisible Shoes You Can See

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  • How does a serial entrepreneur turn into the owner of one of the largest shoe companies in the minimalist category? One shoe at a time... Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Simple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Waukee Feet Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast... Stephen Semple: Do I have you stumped this time? Dave Young: Well, I don't know. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. I'm stalling... I was talking about the podcast. This is the Empire Builders podcast. Stephen Semple just interrupted me, got me off my train of thought because he just, just before I started yammering, you whispered the topic and it is... Stephen Semple: That's correct. Dave Young: Xero Shoes, but zero with an X. Zero with an X. There's something tickling my memory that says, maybe I know it, maybe I don't. Stephen Semple: Well, they are a private company. The best I could find as it's estimated that they probably do around $50 million a year in sales. They have 61,000 reviews on their site, and they were launched on November 23rd, 2009 by Steven Sashen and Lena Phoenix out of Boulder, Colorado. They're in a small space in the shoe market 'cause they are a minimalist shoe, and minimalist shoes are basically 1% of the shoe business, but is a growing part of the shoe area. Dave Young: Mm-hmm. Stephen Semple: And this shoe was, it was actually kind of a bit of an accidental business for them, and it was not their first business. They did a lot of different things, and Steven was, when he was in school, did a lot of running and things like that. And when he turned 45, he decided to get back into sprinting and he'd been reading the book Born to Run, and in the book Born to Run, the author of the book talks about this whole idea of minimalist shoes and really allowing the natural body to govern itself in terms of running and that you'd have fewer injuries and things along that line. So he decided to make his own sandals. But again, as I was saying, he did a lot of different things. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Like he was an athlete in high school. He did magic shows to make money. He went to Duke University and he did stand-up comedy when he was at Duke. And when he graduated, he went on the road for 10 months doing comedy, and he moved to New York and did stand-up comedy there. And when he was doing his comedy, he created a software for helping write screenwriting because back in the day, auto-pagination was really, really hard to do. So he wrote the software that did that. Then he moved to Boulder, Colorado and he started another business there. So he did a whole pile of different things. In '92, '93, he got into internet marketing and he was doing this internet marketing- Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: ... and then he was doing this mortgage brokerage stuff on the side, and they were doing real estate investments, and he got back into running. When he got back into the running, he was getting a bunch of injuries. He read the book and started to run barefoot, let the body do what it does naturally. And he loved the experience of feeling his feet on the ground. And when you run wrong when you're barefoot, it hurts. When you run right, it feels good. And minimalist shoes at the time did not fit the shape of his feet and his wife, she did not like him doing the whole barefoot thing around the house because basically she was like, Lena was like, "You know, you come home after barefoot running and you walk around the house bare feet and...
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Sintesi dell'editore

How does a serial entrepreneur turn into the owner of one of the largest shoe companies in the minimalist category? One shoe at a time... Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Simple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Waukee Feet Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast... Stephen Semple: Do I have you stumped this time? Dave Young: Well, I don't know. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. I'm stalling... I was talking about the podcast. This is the Empire Builders podcast. Stephen Semple just interrupted me, got me off my train of thought because he just, just before I started yammering, you whispered the topic and it is... Stephen Semple: That's correct. Dave Young: Xero Shoes, but zero with an X. Zero with an X. There's something tickling my memory that says, maybe I know it, maybe I don't. Stephen Semple: Well, they are a private company. The best I could find as it's estimated that they probably do around $50 million a year in sales. They have 61,000 reviews on their site, and they were launched on November 23rd, 2009 by Steven Sashen and Lena Phoenix out of Boulder, Colorado. They're in a small space in the shoe market 'cause they are a minimalist shoe, and minimalist shoes are basically 1% of the shoe business, but is a growing part of the shoe area. Dave Young: Mm-hmm. Stephen Semple: And this shoe was, it was actually kind of a bit of an accidental business for them, and it was not their first business. They did a lot of different things, and Steven was, when he was in school, did a lot of running and things like that. And when he turned 45, he decided to get back into sprinting and he'd been reading the book Born to Run, and in the book Born to Run, the author of the book talks about this whole idea of minimalist shoes and really allowing the natural body to govern itself in terms of running and that you'd have fewer injuries and things along that line. So he decided to make his own sandals. But again, as I was saying, he did a lot of different things. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Like he was an athlete in high school. He did magic shows to make money. He went to Duke University and he did stand-up comedy when he was at Duke. And when he graduated, he went on the road for 10 months doing comedy, and he moved to New York and did stand-up comedy there. And when he was doing his comedy, he created a software for helping write screenwriting because back in the day, auto-pagination was really, really hard to do. So he wrote the software that did that. Then he moved to Boulder, Colorado and he started another business there. So he did a whole pile of different things. In '92, '93, he got into internet marketing and he was doing this internet marketing- Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: ... and then he was doing this mortgage brokerage stuff on the side, and they were doing real estate investments, and he got back into running. When he got back into the running, he was getting a bunch of injuries. He read the book and started to run barefoot, let the body do what it does naturally. And he loved the experience of feeling his feet on the ground. And when you run wrong when you're barefoot, it hurts. When you run right, it feels good. And minimalist shoes at the time did not fit the shape of his feet and his wife, she did not like him doing the whole barefoot thing around the house because basically she was like, Lena was like, "You know, you come home after barefoot running and you walk around the house bare feet and...
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