Founder Haley Pavone may be young. But she's one step ahead in footwear.
When Haley Pavone slipped off her six-inch heels and hit the dance floor at a formal event in 2016, she had no idea that that simple act would change her life.
Or at least the simple act that occurred a few moments later - when her stiletto-wearing friend stood on her bare foot.
It was as Pavone, then 20, nursed her painful foot that she looked around the room and noticed something. “Easily 90 per cent of the women at this event were also barefoot, and at the side of the dance floor there's a growing pile of heels that have just been abandoned because they were just too painful to dance in,” she recalls.
"It struck me what a market opportunity this was."
“It struck me what a market opportunity there was: here's something billions of women are dealing with every day, it's making them uncomfortable and no one's really doing anything to make it better. And really the only solutions out there were, you go barefoot, you lug around backup shoes in your purse, or you suffer through it.”
With just two years of a business degree under her belt, Pavone decided to go all in on her idea. “I think my naivete was actually a huge strength in the sense that I was not limited by those preconceived notions of how it had to be done. I had no problem throwing the standard for high heels out the window,” she says.
"I think my naivete was actually a huge strength."
It took three years to bring her vision - shoes with detachable heels - to market. But since then, Pavone and her brand Pashion has raised around $4m in funding and sold tens of thousands of shoes.
Despite the pandemic (or perhaps because of it: Pavone observes that customers are more inclined to put comfort first these days), the business grew by 450 per cent last year. Equally importantly, Pashion boasts an impressive customer retention rate: 25 to 30 per cent of monthly business is supported by repeat purchasers.
Early persistence pays off
Fine-tuning the concept for Pashion shoes (it took 10 rounds of prototyping to get the designs perfect), pitching it to Shark Tank and getting investors on board took around three years.
Securing patents was another time-consuming part of the process. However, as the daughter of an attorney, Pavone had anticipated that this would be a challenging aspect of the business.
"The venture capital and fundraising industry is very male-heavy, and very male-favoured."
What she hadn’t anticipated was the difficulties she faced with fundraising. “I was very surprised by the degree of challenges that women face in the venture world. The venture capital and fundraising industry in general is very male-heavy, and very male-favoured. I was 21, I was still in college, I was a young woman, I did not have a background in the industry,” she says.
“It can still be very much an uphill battle to prove why this product is even needed, which is so funny because in a conversation amongst female peers it’s such a no-brainer. But in the fundraising community it has been very challenging at times to prove that this is a viable market.”
Building trust with customers
Then there was trying to prove to potential customers that the shoe actually worked. “We've had to do a lot of legwork from a marketing perspective to build up credibility and earn their trust.”
One solution was to prioritise reviews. “We shipped our first 300 shoes before the website launched so that we could have some initial feedback and star ratings up on the site to help ease people's minds.”
Pashion offers free exchanges, and invested in videos that show exactly how the shoes work. The brand has also worked to secure press coverage in reputable media to strengthen trust in the products. Pavone has also leveraged video content through social media like Tik Tok, where some of their content has gone viral and clocked 20 to 30 million views.
How Afterpay helps convince customers to buy
Another key way to help people overcome purchase apprehension was to introduce Afterpay. “We’re offering a new technology from a new brand, it is at a higher price point, so Afterpay was a really great solution for us to be able to go back to the consumers and say, Hey, you don't have to make this big deposit upfront, it can be in more digestible amounts,” she says.
"Afterpay has allowed us to expand into different demographics."
“I have found that it’s led to higher purchase frequency and higher purchase volume and it's also allowed us to expand into different demographics. We had one consumer in particular that was a really avid user of Afterpay. I reached out to her to learn more about her and she said that if there was no Afterpay she would not purchase because of the price point. So it’s allowed us to expand across economic demographics more so than I think we would have otherwise.”
Today, between 10 and 20 per cent of Pashion customers take advantage of Afterpay’s buy now pay later structure. “I know [customers who shop with Afterpay] tend to have a higher average order value, they’re willing to buy additional accessories on the first purchase and expand that relationship with us from the get go. I see nothing but upsides to using Afterpay, for sure.”
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