Our First Sale - The Magic Behind Earth Sole

When you start a brand, you can't really know what’s coming your way. At least, I certainly didn’t! Earth Sole came to life not from some grand business plan, but because, after months walking around in my very first pair (and after making a second for my then-partner), I realized there was a bigger need for our back-to-basics footwear. I knew absolutely nothing about business, leather, or making shoes, but what I did have was an open mind, a bit of stubborn faith in life, and not that much fear of making mistakes. So, off I went—heart first.

Anouk at Africa Burn festival. Photograph by David Gwynne-Evans

From Inner Change to Handmade Shoes

Let me take you back to May 2022. I’d just returned from Africa Burn—a wild and wonderfully free festival in the South African desert. At the time, I was living in Cape Town and Earth Sole is founded and we still produce our shoes by hand.

Just before this festival, I had done an intense 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat), I realized that it was big-time ready for some changes: a breakup with my partner, moving back to the city, starting my brand, and eventually, moving to Portugal (which, by the way, is where I’m actually writing this blog now!). That was me, a girl on a mission.

So, two weeks after the meditation retreat, one week after the festival it was time: let’s start the brand! Not knowing how to start, I just began measuring people's feet, as I wanted the perfect fit for every shoe size. Little did I know there was actually something called a shoe last—a foot-shaped mold used by real shoemakers (and at that point, I was definitely not one of those yet 😉). And when I finally discovered them, I realized most weren’t the right shape for our barefoot shoes, as usual barefoot shoes still leave space around the foot, but ours are designed to hug the foot’s natural form.

Anouk on top of a lot of shoe lasts - looking for that non-existing perfect one.

The Barefoot Leap

Anyway, I have always loved video and photography (hello other passion project!), and I had started to take a couple of photos of the first pair I had made for myself, and the second for my ex-partner by then. With those shots and videos, I thought—why not just try to put them on Etsy, an online platform for handmade products? And so I did, for a price I had never dared to ask for them (I didn’t know back then what it would take to produce the shoes and build a brand, remember?). So I put them online for €75. No expectations, just the hope that some natural souls would see them and think “looks interesting,” and hit favorite. Then about a week later, late in the evening - being surrounded by measurements, trying to create my first patterns and making sense of it all, I checked my email before bed  (which I usually never do just before I go to sleep)

And… there it was: my very first Etsy order. Okay, hold on, that was not the synchronicity, but for me it was pretty big that a new product out there, with just a couple of photos and a pretty story, got a sale within a week.

Anouk's very first pair of Earth Soles

The Synchronicity I wasn’t quite ready to ship a shoe all the way to my first American customer. I didn’t even have any standard sizes ready, let alone I could ship a shoe to a person across a couple of oceans. But I played it cool. I asked her for her measurements, and I planned on making her a custom pair based on these. In the meantime, my dear friend Lenerd was being so helpful and patient, testing pair after pair as I fine-tuned the design, and finding out how to get a drawing with measurements on a piece of paper, into a perfect-fitting Earth Sole. And now the synchronicity comes in - my new customer took two months to send her measurements. By this time, I was nearly ready to send out her shoes. If she’d been quicker, I might have ended up with a first customer who wasn’t entirely satisfied. Instead, the timing worked out perfectly—and her feet were happy. If she had been, a day after her order "Here you go, chicka, the measurements of my feet" I would have gotten a very unhappy customer. Not great for the first sale. So, that was the story of the day! I hope you enjoyed the read, and if you did, please leave a comment! Always nice to read and to hear some aliveness from our readers. And if you like to be part of our journey, please make sure to check out our beautiful designs! Forever changing and unique, as we work with sustainable, repurposed leather, for a better footprint. 🌿To our Collection 🌿 With warmth

Anouk Anansi - Founder of Earth Sole Ps. Like to read the whole story of the start of Earth Sole? Check out our blog The Start Of Earth Sole!