Jodie Fox
2017 Hall of Fame Inductee
Shoes of Prey
- Director of Fashion and Co-Founder
About Me - My Biography
Coming from a background in advertising and law, Jodie now applies her communication savviness and sense of style to her true passion: outfitting women around the world in beautiful shoes. Her role at Shoes of Prey encompasses product development, public relations, and being the global face of her brand.
Shoes of Prey is a website where women can design their own shoes – the first company to the global market with this concept. Just two years after its 2009 launch, Shoes of Prey had already become a multi-million dollar global enterprise. Women from around the world have spent over 20 million minutes designing shoes that are a perfect expression of their own personal style.
Her work on Shoes of Prey has been recognised many times over, including receiving the national Telstra Business Women’s Awards (Australia), Hudson Private and Corporate Sector, 2014 Top 30 Most Influential Women In Australia Retail, 2014 Top 10 Australian Female Entrepreneurs, and 2015’s Top 8 Entrepreneurs To Watch.
Her Story
‘I decided to go into business because I couldn’t stand the idea of “what if”.’
Jodie always liked shoes, but she didn’t love them until she realised she could design her own.
She started commissioning her own designs, and as her collection became more and more fabulous, her girlfriends started asking where she was getting them and asking her to commission some for them, too.
At the same time, her would-be co-founders, Michael Fox and Mike Knapp, were at Google, and saw a real opportunity in the online retail space. With the marriage of the two ideas, Shoes of Prey was born.
‘I love pretty much everything about being a businesswoman. I love the independence, the responsibility, the challenge of finding an answer to something that’s never been answered before. I love the rallying of friends around ideas and possibilities I’m thinking of. And at the end of the day, I love when it all comes together and hits the target. Then, it’s time to focus on the next one.’
Jodie currently lives in the USA.
Strategies for Success
Seek Mentors. I’ve sought mentors for managing growth, creating an architecture for culture, considering funding, better understanding our customer and improving data analysis.
A mentor can fast track a small business by saving you from mistakes, providing foresight that comes from experience and helping you to see the forest for the trees!
Mentors are able to give a great objective opinion.
The wonderful things about a good mentor are that they have had the same experience before you, they understand your business (and most importantly, your vision for it) and they are able to give a great objective opinion – which often leads to the light bulb moment you’ve been struggling to get to.
A mentor is crucial for businesswomen!
We see very few women in executive roles in larger organisations, so we naturally have less access to mentors in our friendship groups than men do. This is why it’s so important for businesswomen to look for mentorship in a more structured way. Additionally, women today have more opportunities than we ever have, which is enormously exciting. The tricky thing for my generation of businesswomen is to realise that when they said “you can have it all”, what they really meant was “you can have it all, just not all at once” – and that kind of wisdom really only comes from experience… so a mentor is crucial for women!
