The Boardroom Interviews: Shoe Entrepreneur Justin FitzPatrick

One of the world's foremost authorities on fine leather-crafted shoes is Justin FitzPatrick, author of the famous fashion blog The Shoe Snob. He's the go-to if you want the low-down on fine shoes, and has also been selling them through his website J.FitzPatrick Footwear. As admirers of fine footwear too, we caught up with the man himself lately to understand what it means to a craft-based entrepreneur.

A long time ago in an interview with Hugo Jacomet, you talked about your mission to help American men dress better, starting at the feet. Do you think American men’s feet are better dressed today? 

It’s hard. I don’t feel like I’ve even dented the market even slightly. When I think back to when I sold shoes at Nordstrom, the average guy didn’t know Allen Edmonds. Didn’t know anything. They knew Ecco. They knew, maybe Bruno Magli, they probably knew of Ferragamo, but that doesn’t mean they wore them. And so now with social media, with the internet, I feel like the average guy might have heard of more dress shoe brands, but whether he actually wears them is another story. So you might feel

with the prevalence of advertising and shops that there’s way more access and and maybe people know more, but if you go on the the New York subway, you don’t see anybody wearing leather soled shoes in a suit. When I started this quest, there were actually dress codes, but now there’s not. I think the only people still who have to dress are government workers and lawyers. One time in 2024 a client said he worked on Wall Street, but they just got rid of the dress codes. Guys are just wearing Nikes with a t-shirt and a vest and some chinos. And I’m like, ‘Huh, not even the finance trade has to dress up anymore.’

You were in Singapore recently for the Super Trunk Show. You teamed-up with Jesper Ingevaldsson (Shoegazing site founder) and Kirby Allison. I’m really curious to know how you got into this partnership.

Before the Super Trunk Show existed, it was really just the Swedish Super Trunk Show only. And Jesper used to do this. I would meet up with Jesper and we’d grab a drink or a bite and just catch up. The idea of his show was really smart. I thought ‘This is an idea that can help the industry in various places and cities’. And so I told Jesper ‘Let’s do a London show. I’ll set it all up. I just like to have you on board because I’ll need some help.’ And he was like ‘Yeah sure, let’s do it.’ So we did it in London, and it was a success.

And then I pitched it to Kirby and he was happy. And so Kirby became our third partner and we did New York which became successful and my wheels were turning and I was already thinking about Asia. I had been traveling to Singapore doing my own trunk shows, and the trips were always my most successful. People were very engaged, Normally I would do two-day trunk shows. I did four-day trunk shows in Singapore. People came, people hung out. You could tell they were really interested. And I had quite a large following there. And so when I told [Jesper and Kirby], you know, I was really the one that kind of said I’d  like to do Singapore. 

And I just felt it made sense not only because Singapore is very centrally located to Australia, to Dubai, to all these other places in the world. But at the same time you have pretty lenient visa restrictions. You have Indonesia right there, you have a lot of places that can easily get to you. And so because none of us live in Singapore, CNES helped us out a lot to kind of just maneuver through all the details of it all. It’s just my stubborn entrepreneurship nature that kind of took us to New York and to Singapore.

How does Asia compare to Europe and the United States, in terms of two things, the first one is shoe appreciation. And then let’s talk about the quality of the shoes.

My experience with Asia in general is quite small in the grand scheme of things. I feel like I’m intimate with Singapore and people there appreciate quality. It’s grown, not so much in terms of shoes but a lot of tailors since I last went to Singapore. The owner of CNES walked me around just in his little area and there were like four different custom tailors all within several blocks radius. Footwear’s tough, you know, It’s so hot, it rains, it’s like a lot of people don’t want stiff leather shoes. They like it but it’s hard to wear it in that kind of climate. 

So suede loafers are good. Things are a little bit more casual. But it really seems Japan’s always had an affinity for fine leather craftsmanship and footwear. I don’t know if much has changed. I have no experience. It's really the only country that I’ve not been to that I’d really like to go.

It seems like the most change has happened in China where now they have their own thriving high-quality shoe industry and that’s where I think the renaissance is happening where it’s becoming more and more sought after and prevalent to get high-quality footwear and then the Chinese were quite smart. Before they would shop in either Asia or wherever or Europe to get that, but now they’re making it. It seems like an explosion of trends there but it’s very confined to their culture. 

You worked your way up. You shined shoes. You’ve made your own line of footwear. It’s not an easy apprenticeship to work your way up to where you are today. Do you see talent there and is there room for talent to be groomed?

Definitely. I mean for me I’ve always voiced it on my blog that quality doesn’t come from one country or another. I mean it kind of comes from culture and individual passion. Historically, quality came from Italy because Italians cared about doing things their way that was, you know, very hands-on and beautiful and this and that. Now cultures have changed in Europe. The new generation is stuck on their phone, they don’t care about any of that. So ‘made in Italy’ may not mean something in 20 years because the new young Italians don’t cherish the manual love that goes into a product like their grandfathers did. And that’s a cultural thing. It’s not, oh it Italians will forever be good at making stuff because they’re Italian no, it’s because their culture valued that. It’s like the Japanese, their culture values putting your best into something. And as long as they protect that culture, it’ll always stay that way. 

You have your two lines, you got the JF line of shoes, you got your J. FitzPatrick line, you’ve got your marketplace, you’ve got two websites. Take me into the life of Justin FitzPatrick the entrepreneur managing his brands.

I just work a lot and it’s evolved. When I had a shop, it was really too much. I was gone 13 hours a day and I would come home exhausted. I’m doing emails as I’m on the train, I’m talking to the factory in Spain the second I wake up at 6AM in the morning, because I only have a four hour window to talk to them. I’m fitting the blog in whenever I can. The beauty of being in the city was I was close to other shoe stores so if I had to get some blog work done I could get it, while my business partner took care of the shop. Part of my reasoning for closing my shop in the city was I just felt like it was too much to do everything and I needed more control of my day-to-day life. I’m actually going to be consolidating a lot. And there are certain things I can’t really divulge at this moment, but I will be shrinking the shoe brand. 

Part of that will be me moving from New Jersey back to kind of the area where I’m from which is North Idaho. I used to spend time there and my sisters and part of my family are still there. And so I want to be close to them. I realized that having a shop wasn’t exactly what I really wanted in the end. That was my original dream and I achieved it and then I got it and I thought, ‘You know what, this is not as great as I thought.’ So now my new dream is to work and live in the same area so I don’t have to commute anymore. I feel like I’ve lost years of my life commuting. And I’d rather cut the commute time down so I can do more fun projects and stuff like that. And I need to consolidate it all to be under one umbrella. So you know I kind of say that without saying too much but uh in there could be a day where everything is just The Shoe Snob. 

What’s what’s giving you the most joy when it comes to work? Like where do you find joy in what you do?

Well I’m creative, so I like the creative side, you know. I take joy in filming, photography, and putting that stuff together. That’s what I like. My favorite thing is to be in the shoe factory. That is where I'm happy all day long, creating new styles, new designs, photographing them and videos. All of that. That’s what I enjoy. 

If there was one single advice you could give someone who wants to be the Justin FitzPatrick of Asia, what would you tell them?

It’s all about persistence, that’s it. You just never give up. You take feedback. Um and you keep trying. You practice, you get better, you hone your skills, you make mistakes, you learn from the mistakes and you keep going. And you keep going. And you keep going. And that’s it. It’s a ten thousand rule again. Uh you know I see success from like brands like Bridlen in Asia and India and, you know, I remember when they first sent me the pairs of shoes and they told me, "Justin, please critique the shoes, tell us what we’re doing wrong so that we can work on it." And that kind of mentality is is so rare in the West. We get offended for everything. You tell somebody they could do better and they get offended at you. Whereas I feel like maybe in Asia it’s different. They’ll listen and they’ll learn and then they’ll correct it and and and then they progress. So I think their mentality is smarter. 

Would there be any things that you could tell them not to do? Like, you know, if you learned from your mistakes or seen other people make mistakes, what should someone who’s an aspiring shoemaker not do at the beginning?

Never be discouraged. Never fear failure. Failure’s a word, it’s not real. It doesn't mean anything. It just is an opportunity to learn better and learn differently. Um mmm there’s no I don’t believe in what not to do because I believe when you do what not to do you learn. So it what not to do is to stop learning, is to stop trying. And again, if you feel like you made a failure, don’t let it be a block, go around it and keep going forward and and learn from it and don’t do it again. 

You’ve worked with so many luminaries in the shoe business. Who was one person that gave you a lot of inspiration?

Tony Gaziano.

I was going to say Stefano Bemer!`

I have a vivid memory with my father and a Robb Report magazine. I think I was 19 or 20. My dad used to love to read Robb Report magazine and one day he said, "Hey Just, I saved you something." And it was an article of Gaziano & Girling, in their very beginning, 2015 maybe, so maybe I was 21. And I had not yet discovered Stefano Bemer so I wrote up Tony and I proposed to work with them and they were just starting. And Tony was kind enough to write me back and he said, “Sorry, you know, we’re not really taking anybody, we're just starting the brand and business.” But the fact that he wrote back was kind of him. It was seeing Tony’s shoes that I said, I’m going to make stuff like that and I’m going to work with those guys. And that really gave me that initial drive. 

And Tony in particular. Nice to hear that.

Dean’s a closer or finisher. He puts the shoes together. Tony is more of a designer where my heart is. I love both of them like big brothers. They’re great friends. But if I could only name one, it was Tony who inspired me more for his creations.