Necessity—and some seriously chafed ankles—proved to be the mother of invention for entrepreneur Jennifer Walsh. Working as an executive leading a team at a top insurance firm meant that Walsh had to wear dress shoes to the office. But even her favorite pair dug into the back of her heel, often rubbing it raw.
Walsh knew what she needed: a comfortable, no-show footie that would stay put to protect her heel and, if it happened to peek out of her shoe, look intentional and attractive. To her surprise, all she could find “were boring footies that looked frumpy and ugly,” she says. “So I decided to go out and make the product I wanted. I figured if this was happening to me, it had to be happening to other women.”
Walsh broke out a sewing machine she’d been gifted years earlier, taught herself to use it, and started buying fabrics at local stores. Despite a busy work schedule, she spent mornings, nights, and weekends experimenting with different designs. Prototype after prototype came up short. They were all too bulky, too shapeless, too constricting, or so slippery that they ended up bunched down inside her shoe.
“Finally, I realized the kind of material I needed was in my own underwear drawer—shapeware with a little stretch, a little shimmer, and a lingerie look,” says Walsh. She started searching for factories with fabrics that fit the bill in her home state of New Jersey. When she found one, she devoted months to perfecting the spandex/nylon ratio and the design.
“I wore them around my house in my heels for hours, doing jumping jacks and walking to make sure they didn’t move,” says Walsh. (Her footies are equipped with thin, nonslip silicon strips in the back to secure them on the heel.)
She also used Nextdoor to invite local women to try the prototypes and give feedback in exchange for Amazon gift cards, adjusting sizing based on their comments. “I was very particular about the size range,” says Walsh. “It drove me crazy that people made footies as one-size-fits-all. I bought plastic feet in different sizes, researched average women’s foot lengths in inches in various shoe sizes, and tested the prototypes to see how far they would stretch. I designed the product so that if you want more coverage, you can go up a size and they’ll come up a little higher. If you want less coverage, you can size down.”
She rolled out Arbella—“lingerie just for feet”—less than a year ago. The semi-sheer, breathable, quick-drying footies come in black and sand in three size ranges and are now carried by nine boutiques in New Jersey. They’re also available online through the startup’s website. Walsh hopes to expand them to footwear retailers and boutiques nationwide.
“The response has been very positive,” says Walsh. “I’ve had three reorders already in three months. When people see them, they realize they’re different. They’re shapewear, so they literally mold to the shape of your feet.”
For more information, go to arbellastyle.com
