By making the removable heels interchangeable with different styles and heights, the company built a recurring revenue model. Customers buy the base shoe (the "razor") and return to purchase new heel accessories (the "blades"), driving high margins and customer retention.
The founder understood that women wear heels for the look, despite the pain. Any comfort-focused innovation that compromised on aesthetics would fail. The product had to be a "perfect dupe" for a traditional heel to solve the actual problem, not just create a "weird looking shoe."
Founder Haley Pavoni advises young female founders to accept they face a harder path. Instead of letting this breed resentment, she suggests reframing it as a challenge to conquer. This mental shift turns systemic disadvantages into a source of personal motivation and resilience.
Founder Haley Pavoni realized previous convertible heel attempts failed because they only addressed the removable heel. The key innovation was creating a flexible midsole with a removable support shank, allowing the shoe to properly function as both a stylish heel and a comfortable flat.
Unable to find footwear experts online, founder Haley Pavoni drove to a premier biomechanical testing firm. She walked in, pitched her idea to the CEO, and immediately got a shortlist of the exact development partners she needed, bypassing months of searching.
Explosive growth after a Shark Tank appearance created a massive cash flow problem. The four-month lead time on inventory meant the company had to fund orders 8-10 times larger than their current bank balance, pushing them to the financial brink.
At pop-up events, founder Haley Pavoni saw a 90% purchase rate when she demonstrated her convertible shoe, versus near-zero otherwise. Realizing the demo was key, she scaled that experience by filming TikToks, creating a highly effective, zero-cost customer acquisition channel.