Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Jodie Fox, co-founder of Shoes of Prey.

For many years this week's podcast guest executed every move from the big start-up scale-up playbook.

She and her co-founders came up with an innovative new idea, and worked out how to do something that had never been accomplished before - they created the technology and systems to allow people to customise shoes, in pretty much anyway you could imagine, and have a one of a kind shoe made and sent to you within about two weeks.

They were profitable from very early on, having found a customer that loved the ability to make their dream shoe. They then attracted top tier investors and partnered with some of the world's top retailers, like Nordstrom, to grow from a niche product to mass market.

They followed every sensible step -customer research, pilots, testing and built the infrastructure to make the leap to the mass-market, attracting $AU35m of funding, winning awards and making something completely new happen. And then...... then it didn't work as they hoped. Maybe it was too much choice to offer, but the mass market visited and didn't buy. They tried to pivot but couldn't make the economies of scale work - and decided to pull the plug. It is a different kind of chat this week - about when success is closing when the signals tell you, and sharing what is hard learnt.

To that end our guest, co-founder of Shoes of Prey, Jodie Fox, is with us at the link below to talk about her journey and new book to share her story, Reboot: Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Starting a Global Business

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices