Xero Shoes: Steven Sashen and Lena Phoenix

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2023

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2007, Steven Sashen went on a 5K run in his bare feet, an experience that felt so surprisingly natural that it led him to launch one of the best-known minimalist shoe brands in the world. After reading the best-seller Born to Run by Christopher McDougall and fashioning his own, thin-soled sandals that helped him fully feel the ground, Steven noticed he was running faster and having fewer injuries. His friends began asking him to make sandals for them, and soon enough, he convinced his wife Lena to help him launch a do-it-yourself sandal kit business. As their minimalist shoe line slowly expanded to ready-to-wear sandals and closed-toe shoes, Steven and Lena faced every imaginable obstacle for a small business: manufacturing meltdowns, a mountain of debt, anxious investors, a trade war with China, and an appearance on Shark Tank that resulted in an insulting offer. But more than a decade after launch, Xero Shoes are sold around the world, with nearly $50 million in sales and a near-evangelical following.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.2	What if the greatest tragedy of your life was just covered up?
0:12.5	I have never seen anything like that before or after.
0:15.7	This is the story of the worst marine-on-marine friendly fire in modern history.
0:20.0	A story kept from the public.
0:21.9	It's like, what did y'all have to hide?
0:24.6	We started shipping our first brand new households and I got an email from a very sweet woman.
0:38.8	So she had put her kit together and gone out for run and the laces had torn through that
0:47.4	little hole on the side.
0:49.2	We discovered that a good chunk of the production run, they hadn't packed enough rubber into
0:54.6	that part of the mold and they were too thin and they just ripped.
1:00.2	And I literally sank onto the floor.
1:04.9	I thought I was going to throw up.
1:08.2	I was like, we're going bankrupt.
1:17.2	Welcome to How I Built This.
1:18.7	A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:28.8	I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how a 5-kilometer run in bare feet led Steven Sashin
1:34.9	and Lena Phoenix to build zero shoes.
1:37.7	A minimalist shoe brand that's grown into a multi-million dollar business.
1:49.7	I used to hate running.
1:51.7	It always hurt my knees.
	...

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