A Step Above

Three-year-old shoemaker Jack Erwin disrupted the footwear market by cutting out the middleman. Can it make the next leap forward?

- Susan Adams

Ariel Nelson’s decision to get a buzz cut in the middle of a sweltering New York summer four years ago was a turning point in his career. After a frustrating May 2012 shopping expedition for dress shoes, he and his friend Lane Gerson, then 29 and 30 years old, had decided to start a direct-to-consumer footwear company. The European brands they loved, such as John Lobb and Edward Green, retailed for $1,000 or more. Why not make the kind of shoes they wanted to buy but couldn’t afford?

“The idea was, let’s make beautiful men’s dress shoes for $100 and sell them for $200,” Gerson says. They named their nonexistent company Jack Erwin, the first names of their fathers, who “wouldn’t pay more than $200 for a pair of shoes”. But Gerson, then a controller at CAD BLU, a 3D printing firm, and Nelson, who was a manager at Beyer Farms, a beverage distribution company, knew nothing about the shoe business. “It was a completely naive and totally simplistic plan,” Gerson admits. After three months of research, all the duo had learned was that they had no idea how to take the first step in this would-be venture.