The Contour of Luxury Summer 2019 | Page 205

Upon your move to Europe, you began a blog, The Shoe Snob, which is well known and is rich in knowledge for your shoe enthusiast followers. Tell us what led you to develop The Shoe Snob blog, what is the signifi- cance of the name, and what do you hope people gain from reading it? The name came from my father. He was a brilliant salesman and knew how to captivate people. I told him of my idea to start the blog and how I wanted it to be the biggest blog in the world and I told him that I was thinking of a name to call it and told him that the only thing that I had come up with was ‘The Shoe Aficio- nado.’ He laughed and said that it was so boring and said, ‘who the heck is going The Shoe Snob Blog was to want to read ‘The Shoe Aficionado? created for two reasons. No one Just,’ he said. ‘You have to be The Shoe Snob!!! You have to go out 1. I wanted to be the there and evoke reactions out of peo- voice of the industry. ple. You have to be like Howard Stern My first goal was to see men because I guarantee that the people that wearing better shoes. That’s why I hate him come back to watch him more wanted to start a shoe brand. I was, than the people that love him.’ I said, and to be honest still am, disappointed ‘wow, you are right. Okay I will be The by the poor choices we make as men in Shoe Snob!’ And that was it. My Dad regards to our footwear. So my goal gave me that brilliant name and he was with the blog was to become an expert completely right. I started the blog by and grow the largest shoe blog in the being a bit crass and stating my opinions world in the hopes to amass a grand of sartorial blunders that were all too common and was not afraid to be a audience and start to make a change in the way that men saw and purchased bit explicit. And it drew in a big audience. Even to this day, nice dress shoes would come with a if I write a rant piece, it customer base to launch my shoe brand gets way more readership from. I knew that I could at least get than anything else. Brilliant 5-10% of my readership to become but sad. Sad that the world thrives my customers and instead of on negativity. launching a brand with no customer base at all, the blog helped me have customers waiting for my shoes to come out to make a purchase.