#389 The Founder of Jimmy Choo: Tamara Mellon

Founders

David Senra

Steve Jobs, Founders, James Dyson, Company Builders, Technology, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Business Professional Biography, How I Built This, The History Of Entrepreneurship, Jim Clark, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurs, History, Founder, Business Autobiography, Jeff Bezos, Entrepreneur, Biography, Biographies Of Entrepreneurs, Biographies, Business, Business Biography

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Tamara Mellon’s father lent her the seed money to start a high-end shoe company, he cautioned her: “Don’t let the accountants run your business.” Little did he know that over the next fifteen years, the struggle between “financial” and “creative” would become one of the central themes as Mellon’s business. Mellon grew Jimmy Choo into a billion dollar brand and her personal glamour made her an object of global media fascination. Vogue photographed her wedding. Vanity Fair covered her divorce and the criminal trial that followed. The Wall Street Journal reported on her relentless battle between “the suits” and “the creatives" and Mellon’s triumph against a brutally hostile takeover attempt. But despite her eventual fame and fortune, Mellon didn’t have an easy road to success. Her early life was marked by a tumultuous and broken family life, battles with anxiety and depression, and a stint in rehab. Determined not to end up unemployed, penniless, and living in her parents’ basement under the control of her alcoholic mother, Mellon honed her natural business sense and invested in what she knew best—fashion. In creating the shoes that became a fixture on Sex and the City and red carpets around the world, Mellon relied on her own impeccable sense of what the customer wanted—because she was that customer. What she didn’t know at the time was that success would come at a high price—after struggles with an obstinate business partner, a conniving first CEO, a turbulent marriage, and a mother who tried to steal her hard-earned wealth. Now Mellon shares the whole larger-than-life story, with shocking details that have never been presented before. From her troubled childhood to her time as a young editor at Vogue to her partnership with the cobbler Jimmy Choo, to her very public relationships, Mellon offers an honest and gripping account of the episodes that have made her who she is today. In My Shoes is a definitive book for fashion aficionados, aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone who loves a juicy true story about sex, drugs, money, power, high heels, and overcoming adversity. This episode is what I learned from reading In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon.

Transcript

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0:00.0	One of the reasons that Tamara wrote this book, and this story will shock and surprise you,
0:03.6	but one of the reasons that she shares her story is because she wants future generations of
0:08.8	entrepreneurs to learn from her experience. And there is a warning in this story. And the warning is
0:14.1	always retain control of your company. This is also something that John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods,
0:20.6	told me.
0:21.2	I got to spend seven hours for John over two days, and I read his autobiography twice.
0:26.3	And it was during one of our conversations that John told me one of the craziest things
0:30.6	that anyone has ever said about the podcast. He had listened to over 100 episodes before we met.
0:36.6	And he told me that if founders existed when he was
0:40.4	younger, that Whole Foods would still be an independent company today. That since the podcast and all
0:45.6	of history's great entrepreneurs constantly emphasized the importance of patrolling costs,
0:48.9	he would have put much more of a priority on it, especially during good times, during boom times.
0:53.8	It is very natural for a company, for a person, for human nature, to just not watch your
0:57.7	costs as closely because everything is going so well.
1:00.6	This is something that Andrew Carnegie actually warned against.
1:03.9	In fact, Carnegie would repeat this mantra.
1:06.4	He would say, profits and prices are cyclical subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace.
1:12.4	Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and any savings achieved in costs were permanent.
1:17.7	This is something I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp.
1:21.6	Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast.
1:24.3	I've gotten to know all the co-founders of Ramp and have spent a ton of time with them over the last two years. They all listened to the podcast and they all picked up that the main
1:31.2	theme of the podcast is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how
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