1장
When Passion Meets Perseverance: The Shoes of Prey Journey
In a world where most entrepreneurs carefully curate their success stories after the fact, Jodie Fox offers something refreshingly different. Her book "Reboot" chronicles the raw, unfiltered experience of building Shoes of Prey-a revolutionary company that allowed women to design their own custom footwear online. From its meteoric rise (raising $27 million in funding and expanding to 220 employees across four countries) to its ultimate closure, Fox's journey represents the entrepreneurial rollercoaster in its purest form. What makes this story particularly compelling is that Fox isn't writing from the comfortable position of having "made it." Instead, she's documenting the messy, beautiful process of rebooting after a public failure-something that resonates deeply with both aspiring and established entrepreneurs. The book has become required reading in many startup accelerators and business schools, with even Mark Cuban citing it as an example of the transparent leadership modern business needs.
2장
From Law Books to Shoe Designs: Finding Your Authentic Path
Despite her natural inclination toward the arts, Fox initially chose law for its practical benefits. University became a painful struggle-sleeping until 2pm, fueled by six cups of coffee daily, and barely passing classes. After landing at a top law firm but feeling like an impostor, Fox's turning point came during dinner with a friend who genuinely loved his work. His enthusiastic "I had an awesome day!" contrasted sharply with her own misery, triggering her realization that she needed a change.
"I was trapped in a career I'd chosen for practical reasons rather than passion," Fox explains. "I'd forgotten to keep making conscious decisions about my life path."
Fox methodically interviewed everyone she knew about their careers while creating a values-based checklist of what she truly wanted-creativity, commercial focus, fashion, and travel. This led her to advertising at The Campaign Palace, where she took a 50% pay cut but finally found work that aligned with her creative spirit. This early lesson in following her authentic path rather than conventional success would later inform her entrepreneurial journey.
The transition wasn't just about changing careers but discovering the importance of conscious decision-making. Fox's approach demonstrates that finding meaningful work often requires methodical self-reflection rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. Her willingness to take a significant pay cut also highlights an important truth: financial security sometimes comes at the cost of personal fulfillment, and recognizing when that trade-off no longer serves you is crucial to authentic living.
3장
The Purple Cow Moment: From Beach Conversation to Business Concept
During a summer beach day in 2008, Fox and her then-husband Michael, along with their friend Mike Knapp, began brainstorming business ideas inspired by Seth Godin's "Purple Cow"-the concept of creating something so remarkable people couldn't help but share it. The conversation turned to shoes when Fox mentioned her recent experience with a custom shoe maker in Hong Kong.
"When I mentioned designing my own shoes, Mr. Tin brought out swatchbooks and a sketch pad," Fox recalls. "I designed 14 pairs in just 1.5 hours, and when they arrived ten weeks later, my friends were immediately intrigued."
Their questions about finding shoes in their size, making lower heels, or finding specific styles became key consumer insights for the business. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by all the unknowns-manufacturing, marketing, e-commerce, business models-the trio approached each question methodically, researching whether their custom shoe idea could become viable.
They discovered only one competitor doing something similar (with poor user experience) and learned that Nike's customization program had grown to approximately $100 million in revenue, validating the market potential. To test their concept, they developed a Minimum Viable Product approach with detailed research questions covering everything from customer demand to industry size and potential profitability.
This initial phase illustrates the power of starting with curiosity rather than certainty. Fox and her co-founders didn't know if their idea would work, but they were willing to systematically explore it. Their approach demonstrates that entrepreneurship often begins not with a lightning bolt of inspiration but with a series of questions and a willingness to find answers through research and experimentation.
4장
Crafting Identity: The Art of Building a Brand
As their idea progressed, Fox approached naming with the same methodical rigor she'd applied to her career change. She studied brand names she admired like Google, Zappos, and Mimco, analyzing what made them memorable while considering practical factors like domain availability and potential competitor confusion.
Fox developed the brand identity by imagining it as a person, using the concept of brand archetypes she'd learned in advertising. After studying the twelve archetypes (caregiver, creator, explorer, hero, innocent, jester, lover, magician, outlaw, regular person, ruler, and sage), she identified their business as a combination of creator and lover-helping women create something that made them feel amazing while building community without exclusivity.
With this foundation established, Fox defined specific "territories" to explore for naming: actual names, hunting concepts, myths of female huntresses, words from other languages, and wordplay combining shoe-related and hunting terms. Despite this structured approach, the breakthrough came unexpectedly during a casual conversation with a friend.
"After a trance-like back-and-forth of name suggestions, Lisa blurted out 'Shoes of Prey!' and I instantly felt that romantic connection I'd been hoping for," Fox remembers.
They tested the name with friends-women connected immediately with the hunting metaphor while men needed more explanation. Though they worried about limiting themselves to shoes, the perfect URL availability sealed the deal. When trademark issues arose, they discovered the existing trademark was approaching its "use it or lose it" deadline and successfully negotiated with the owners.
This naming journey illustrates how brand building requires both analytical thinking and intuitive connection. Fox's approach combined strategic methodology with openness to unexpected inspiration, resulting in a name that perfectly captured their vision of women hunting for their perfect shoes.
5장
Building Supply Chains: The Hidden Backbone of Innovation
After establishing their concept, Fox and her team faced the challenge of creating a supply chain that could produce one-of-a-kind shoes at scale-something that had never been done before. Their journey began in Hong Kong, where they visited potential suppliers first as casual customers to assess quality, then returned in business attire to pitch their concept.
"When I explained our concept of making one custom pair at a time, suppliers were perplexed-their entire business model was optimized for large orders," Fox recalls. "I felt like the crazy person in the room, pitching something that seemed insane but could be amazing."
Despite language barriers and cultural differences, they secured initial agreements with suppliers including Mr. Tin and Jennifer. These relationships began without formal contracts-they needed to prove themselves worthy partners over time. As their business grew, they established a team in China to bridge language, cultural, and industry gaps, hiring Alice through personal networks who helped them find Vanessa Iron-quick-speaking but true to her surname in negotiations.
The challenges were immense. Fox spent weeks at local sourcing markets-tiny smoke-filled stores stacked with snakeskins, leather piles, and colorful suede rolls. She developed methods to quickly evaluate factories, making unannounced visits to check for ethical standards and verify that specific orders were being made in-house rather than outsourced.
As order volume increased, they faced an unexpected problem: their growing business actually strained supplier relationships instead of improving them. Mass production factories optimize for making identical items, not unique one-offs. Their orders required multiple machine reconfigurations daily rather than one setting for weeks, making production costlier and more difficult. As orders increased, suppliers deprioritized them, slowing delivery times and increasing errors.
The situation became untenable when their China team faced repeated emotional outbursts from suppliers. Fox flew to China to establish their own factory-having clandestine meetings and even paying a factory space bond to a man smoking in an alleyway. They secured their own space with green floors (an auspicious color) and began testing machinery-even using an ice cream freezer to test cooling processes in shoemaking.
This phase of the journey highlights how innovation often requires reimagining entire systems, not just products. The team had to create a new manufacturing paradigm that contradicted established industry practices-a challenge that would ultimately lead them to build the world's first large-scale factory dedicated to on-demand shoe production.
6장
Testing the Market: From Beta to Reality
With their supply chain taking shape, the team needed to validate if their concept would work in practice. They invited women from their networks to be beta testers, delivering shoes to Google Sydney employees, Campaign Palace colleagues, and friends who designed shoes using their early software. In exchange for cost-price shoes, these testers provided candid feedback-including blunt comments like "If you stuff up you should just own it" from a customer whose shoes arrived late.
They also set up a stall at Bondi Beach markets, which not only generated sales but provided invaluable customer feedback and caught the attention of fashion editors who would later recall seeing them in their early days. These real-world tests revealed several challenges, particularly around sizing.
"We tried creating YouTube videos with detailed foot-measuring instructions using paper, pencil and ruler-but discovered this was tedious, time-consuming, and wildly inaccurate with only 16% consistency," Fox explains.
After exploring complex solutions like measuring lasts, creating a database of brand size equivalents, and even considering foot-molding kits, they returned to the simplest approach-just asking customers their shoe size-which gave them 80% accuracy on the first try.
Setting their price involved understanding their Cost Of Goods Sold (materials, labor, shipping), which was challenging since no two pairs of shoes were identical. They factored in returns, overhead costs, marketing, and currency fluctuations. While the apparel retail industry typically used 200% margins, they opted for smaller margins since they weren't selling wholesale and had high production costs they expected to reduce over time.
Their first website was built in Flash with a black background and hand-drawn shoe outlines. Unable to afford professional photography, they attempted DIY product shots using white bedsheets draped over kitchen chairs. Despite the rudimentary imagery, they sold millions of dollars worth of shoes using these early photos-proving that perfect execution isn't always necessary for initial traction.
This testing phase demonstrates the importance of real-world feedback in refining a business concept. The team's willingness to put their imperfect product in front of customers early allowed them to identify and solve critical issues before scaling.
7장
The Unceremonious Launch: Embracing Imperfection
By early October 2009, everything was "ready enough"-not perfect, but functional. Despite Fox's reluctance to launch before everything was polished, they went live from a Rome hostel without ceremony. Their first sale came after Michael exchanged 20 emails with a customer who finally purchased. To drive traffic without a marketing budget, they created a $50 referral credit that generated 10,000 visits, and by day five, they'd sold four pairs in one day-showing real potential.
Once Fox started working full-time on Shoes of Prey, time warped completely. Days blended into nights, weekends lost meaning, and she'd work from the moment she woke until she fell asleep with her laptop. She became so engrossed that she'd forget basic necessities like breakfast. After embarrassingly taking a video call while still in bed wearing just underwear and a singlet, she started setting meeting alarms.
Financially, life became austere-no drinks with dinner, home-brewed coffee, Maggi noodles for meals, and no new clothes. The pressure was particularly intense because both Fox and her husband Michael were in the same financial boat, with neither able to support the other.
Their first Chinese New Year caught them completely unprepared. They lacked cultural awareness about this two-week holiday and naively assumed suppliers would maintain skeleton staff. For mass production, this wouldn't matter, but their on-demand business model meant customer orders would be delayed. This experience planted the seed of eventually building their own factory.
As they grew, they branded their customer service team as "Customer Happiness Wonderpersons" to reflect their inclusive, honest approach. Each team member had budget autonomy to offer credits, discounts, and refunds based on their judgment. They emphasized personalization-using real names, thoroughly reviewing customer history before responding, and offering phone support despite its inefficiency.
"These approaches built incredible rapport with customers who would share their experiences, show off their shoe designs, answer other customers' questions, and even defend us against undeserved criticism," Fox notes.
This early growth phase illustrates how entrepreneurship often requires embracing imperfection and learning through experience. The team's willingness to launch before everything was perfect and adapt quickly to challenges allowed them to build momentum while continuously improving their offering.
8장
Marketing Magic: Finding the Right Audience
In March 2010, just six months after launching, Shoes of Prey had attracted 200,000 website visitors and was looking for free marketing opportunities. They discovered 16-year-old US makeup video blogger Blair Fowler (Juicystar07), who had over half a million YouTube subscribers with highly engaged viewers. After contacting her Hollywood agent, they gifted Blair the shoe design experience.
"Blair loved it and created a video reviewing our shoes and running a competition requiring viewers to design shoes and comment where they would wear them," Fox explains. "Her video generated 200,000 website visits in a single day-matching our entire previous six months of traffic."
The video became the fifth most viewed on YouTube worldwide that day with over 90,000 competition entries, but they quickly realized their audience mismatch-teenage girls without $250 to spend on shoes. They pivoted by enabling social sharing and wrote a blog post about the experience that got picked up by The Wall Street Journal, finally reaching their target audience of professional women with disposable income and creating a permanent 300% sales uplift.
Television proved even more effective for reaching their actual target customer. When a reporter from A Current Affair with challenging foot size discovered them and wanted to feature their customizable shoes, Fox agreed despite reservations about the show's investigative journalism reputation. The segment aired to 1.3 million Australian viewers, generating 70,000 unique website visits-fewer than their YouTube campaign but with immediate, sizable sales that permanently doubled their Australian market.
"Unlike the YouTube campaign that attracted teenagers without purchasing power, television reached our actual target customer," Fox notes. "This taught us valuable lessons about who our customer was and where to find her."
These marketing experiments highlight the importance of not just reaching a large audience, but reaching the right audience. The team's willingness to try different channels and learn from each experience allowed them to refine their marketing approach and find the platforms that connected them with customers who had both interest and purchasing power.
9장
Scaling Challenges: From Apartment to Global Business
As their business grew, Fox and her team faced the challenges of scaling in Australia's nascent online retail environment. Unlike the US with its catalogue buying culture, Australia had no established process for e-commerce. They had no suppliers for online image photography and were figuring out best practices through trial and error. The entrepreneurial ecosystem was underdeveloped-venture capital was scarce with typically lower valuations than US counterparts, and there were no co-working spaces or incubators.
"We had to build everything ourselves without a map, reading books, watching videos, reading blogs, and consulting experts," Fox recalls.
The banking system particularly lagged, with National Australia Bank being the only one offering multi-currency capabilities, yet requiring business plans, large deposits, personal guarantees, significant fees, and offering no fraud protection.
When The Campaign Palace needed their space back, their team of eight plus inventory moved into Fox and Michael's one-bedroom apartment during a 40-degree heatwave with no air conditioning. Six people worked at their dining table while others used the outdoor setting. For three months, they searched for office space while working in these conditions-Fox would send staff home when temperatures became unbearable but continue working herself as sweat dripped onto her keyboard.
As they grew, they faced new challenges like shipping companies damaging their products. They discovered their shipping company was opening their shoeboxes, cutting inches off their height, and taping them back up to charge them for higher volume while damaging their products. After testing various options, they found DHL offered the best worldwide tracking and delivery.
By 2011, Shoes of Prey was growing fast and profitable, but they wanted to accelerate growth. This left them deciding between bootstrapping (using only existing resources) or fundraising (bringing in outside capital). As co-founders, they'd always envisioned building a large, global company, which predisposed them toward raising capital.
Their first investors came through networking-like meeting Rick Baker (later founding partner at Blackbird Ventures) and Bill Tai through their hallway neighbor Rebekah Campbell at Posse. Their first round was challenging because they were unproven founders (all 27-28 years old with no previous businesses) with an unproven concept (despite acquiring customers and breaking even).
These scaling challenges illustrate how entrepreneurship often requires building infrastructure and systems that don't yet exist. The team's ability to create solutions where none existed and their willingness to endure difficult conditions demonstrated the grit necessary to build something truly innovative.
10장
The Personal Cost: Navigating Relationships and Mental Health
Building Shoes of Prey took a significant personal toll on Fox. She describes entrepreneurship as an "emotional rollercoaster," which perfectly captured her experience. In the early days, work-life balance was nice in theory but meaningless in practice. She'd become so immersed in work that she'd forget to eat and sleep only four hours nightly.
Just before starting the company, Fox had begun experiencing what she later recognized as panic attacks-episodes of severe nausea, fever, and dizziness that left her searching for cold surfaces and private places to be sick. After settling into their new office for about a year, she experienced multiple burnout episodes that would sideline her for 1-3 days with severe symptoms, yet she'd always jump right back into work afterward.
The situation became more complex when Fox and Michael's marriage began to struggle. After trying everything to fix their relationship for 12 months-therapy, meditation, talking with friends and family, reading books-they finally ended their relationship in September 2012. The decision brought both relief and fear of the unknown.
"We divided our possessions fairly and agreed that our separation wouldn't affect Shoes of Prey," Fox explains. "Fortunately, another apartment became available in our building, allowing me to move out within a week while maintaining the same commute to work."
They waited two months before telling their team and board about their separation, carefully planning how to deliver the news to avoid rumors or misunderstandings. The board took it professionally, asking practical questions about how they'd continue working together before moving on with the meeting agenda.
During this period, Fox sank into deep depression. She lost the capacity for joy and managed social situations by deflecting attention to others. Life felt like swimming in complete darkness. She stubbornly avoided antidepressants, trying therapy, exercise, diet changes, and meditation, but nothing helped.
"Finally, I spoke to my doctor, prefacing with 'I'm not at risk' but admitting 'I just don't really like life anymore,'" Fox recalls. "After standardized assessments, she recommended antidepressants. Within six weeks, I began to feel hope, joy, and myself once again."
This personal journey highlights the often-hidden emotional costs of entrepreneurship. Fox's willingness to share her struggles with mental health and relationships provides a more complete picture of what building a business truly entails-not just the professional challenges but the personal ones as well.
11장
The Final Chapter: Learning from Failure and Rebooting
Despite impressive metrics, word-of-mouth growth, and industry acclaim, Shoes of Prey ultimately failed to find mass market fit. After testing various strategies-physical retail stores, B2B partnerships with retailers, and targeting customers with specialized sizing needs-none gained traction quickly enough as their cash runway shortened.
With their runway shrinking, they had to make the heartbreaking decision to implement redundancies, more than halving their headquarters team. Fox felt physically ill with the weight of responsibility, especially since 22 of their 24 Australian staff had relocated to the US with them three years earlier-their visas and entire lives would be affected.
"We approached the process with compassion and thoroughness: researching visa issues and providing legal advice, offering severance packages despite no obligation in the US, providing reference letters and job search assistance, and carefully planning the communication," Fox explains.
The final months of Shoes of Prey were grueling and blurry, with funding coming week-to-week. Despite four women on the board (including Fox) contributing personal funds to bridge gaps and her relentless pursuit of deals that never materialized, she constantly questioned if this was truly the end. Finally, on August 27, 2018, the day came when she had to let everyone go.
"The day we ceased trading was emotionally devastating," Fox remembers. "I cried on my way to the factory but focused on the necessary actions, remembering Churchill's attributed quote: 'If you're going through hell, keep going.'"
Though terrified of her public failure, Fox discovered the business community's response wasn't vicious but supportive. She received messages of understanding from people she admired-many who'd experienced similar failures themselves. She felt welcomed into the entrepreneurs' club, though some frustrated customers still awaited refunds from their liquidators.
When Shoes of Prey collapsed and her identity seemed to fall away, Fox discovered that revisiting old diaries revealed she'd actually given considerable thought to who she was beyond the business. She had created a framework dividing her life into wellbeing, career, and relationships, plotting goals for each at one, five, and ten-year intervals. She'd also defined her personal values for each area-values that ultimately guided her through Shoes of Prey's toughest decisions when no clear path existed.
Fox reflects that while finding market gaps creates opportunity, passion drives true success-no one can outperform you at something you genuinely believe in. Yet we often avoid pursuing passions, claiming lack of skills or experience. This self-sabotage ignores that skills can always be acquired through internships, mentorship, or self-education.
"I've transitioned from being 'the girl with the design your own shoe company' to someone who honestly says 'I don't know' when asked what I'll do next," Fox concludes. "I believe in business communities that tell the truth-it lightens your burden and helps others who might face similar situations."
This final chapter illustrates how failure, while painful, can also be transformative. Fox's ability to find meaning in her experience and share it openly provides valuable lessons not just about business but about resilience, identity, and the courage to begin again.
