A sophomore at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo took off her shoes at a spring sorority formal to bust a move on the dance floor. Then another girl stepped all the way through the sophomore’s toe with a high heel. Ouch! The sophomore was Haley Pavone, now the chief executive of Pashion Footwear , a multimillion-dollar shoe business that turns heels to flats and back again.
And that painful incident eight years ago was her “light bulb moment.” “In a lecture earlier that week, my professor had literally said the best products solve a pain point, because people will spend money to not be in pain,” Pavone said in an interview with The Times. “I’m like, yeah, I would have spent money to not feel like this.
” Pavone said she spent weeks as a 20-year-old entrepreneurship major doing research on the gap she saw between fashion and function in the market for women’s high heels. Her studies led her to reject the idea that beauty is inextricably tied to pain. It’s no secret that heels are “violently uncomfortable and inconvenient,” she said.
Rather than shoe manufacturers deciding to make a better product, Pavone said, “they say, ‘We know this is hurting you — and that’s a “you” problem.’” So she made it her problem. Today, the 28-year-old Pavone runs a shoe business with 11 employees and $4 million in 2023 sales out of her San Luis Obispo apartment.
Her journey, which wound through fundraising competitions at Cal Poly, the reality TV show “Shark Tank”.