Solemates

Marketplace where people with unevenly sized feet and amputees trade shoes

Fashion • Health/Medical

Overview

Founders

Lisa Sommerhuber CEO Architect and community leader turned Entrepreneur: I use my creative skills to develop clear concepts, and my experience with communities

Sumeet Sarangi CFO Entrepreneur | Oxford MBA Candidate'16 | VP, Consulting Club | Oxford Finance Lab | Ex Business transformation @ RBS

4 more related

Did you know that 10% of the population have a full shoe size difference or more?
SoleMates is a social enterprise that helps people with unevenly sized feet and amputees get shoes that fit.

THE PROBLEM:
People with unevenly sized feet have to buy 2 pairs of shoes to get 1 that fits, the leftover pair stays in the cupboard.
Amputees wearing only 1 shoe always have 1 spare shoe collecting dust.
The main pain points are:
1. Paying double
2. Pain and even health complications due to badly fitting shoes
3. Frustration about unsuccessful shopping marathons and ignorant shoe sellers

MARKET:
+ In the UK and the US alone, our 2 initial target markets, there are almost 20 million women with a full shoe size difference who require a snug fit for wearing ballerinas and high heels.

+ There are 2.4 million people with major size difference (2-4 sizes difference), typically due to congenital disorders, who have to buy 2 pairs of shoes every time they buy shoes.

+ We also help amputees who w...

Did you know that 10% of the population have a full shoe size difference or more?
SoleMates is a social enterprise that helps people with unevenly sized feet and amputees get shoes that fit.

THE PROBLEM:
People with unevenly sized feet have to buy 2 pairs of shoes to get 1 that fits, the leftover pair stays in the cupboard.
Amputees wearing only 1 shoe always have 1 spare shoe collecting dust.
The main pain points are:
1. Paying double
2. Pain and even health complications due to badly fitting shoes
3. Frustration about unsuccessful shopping marathons and ignorant shoe sellers

MARKET:
+ In the UK and the US alone, our 2 initial target markets, there are almost 20 million women with a full shoe size difference who require a snug fit for wearing ballerinas and high heels.

+ There are 2.4 million people with major size difference (2-4 sizes difference), typically due to congenital disorders, who have to buy 2 pairs of shoes every time they buy shoes.

+ We also help amputees who wear only 1 shoe but have to buy pairs.

OUR SOLUTION:
SoleMates is a community marketplace where shoe shopping is fun and where people with special feet trade shoes so that everybody can afford a healthy fit.

USER ACQUISITION:
We will leverage the marketing reach of shoe retailers:
Our retail partners incentivise customers with unevenly sized feet to use discount codes provided by us to buy 2 pairs of shoes and then sell the spare pair on our marketplace.
+ The retailer sells more shoes.
+ The customer finally gets shoes that fit and an opportunity to sell the spare pair.
+ We get a revenue share, a new customer, and a new item available on our marketplace.

People with unevenly sized feet due to congenital disorders and amputees are well connected through social media, charities and hospitals, which we also use as marketing channels. We have already partnered with several UK and US charities.

REVENUE MODEL:
+ through discount codes we get a revenue share.
+ community members pay a membership fee for buying and swapping shoes. Selling is free.

While we expect the initial growth to be modest, the launch of our full fledged marketplace and partnerships with multiple retailers will accelerate our growth.

COMMUNITY:
Our community loves us! They are highly engaged and swap shoes in our Facebook group and when they fill out a detailed profile we match them manually. More than 30 pairs or single shoes have been exchanged and we now have matches for almost 1/3 of our subscribers.

More information

Investors

FFWD PreAccelerator - Spring 2016 Cohort Leading pre-accelerator, preparing teams for first funding & acceleration

Advisors

Guetg-wyatt Loredana

Jakob Sommerhuber

Jakob Sommerhuber

Loredana Guetg-Wyatt

Recommendations

Juan Herrada CEO at Ubuntu Power

SoleMates is an innovative solution for a well defined problem faced by a highly engaged consumer group. Lisa's drive and determination will allow them to rise to the challenge and meet this growing demand

Jordi Fernandez Engineer at newwaves.design

Solemates is an amazing product. It focus in an specific niche and its USP is clear. Lisa seems a CEO with an amazing drive to make her business to succeed!

Cheryl Chaves Kelly

SoleMates is so important to so many people who find it difficult, if not impossible to shop for shoes - shoes we want to wear not have to wear. Please support SoleMates.

Lorraine Lavelle

My first experiences with Solemates was ver positive. The service was clear and helpful. I found a match, but unfortunately we didn't have the same abilities and our shoes didn't match. I'm looking forward to finding a new Solemates soon

Desislav Kamenov Solutions Architect at Paysafe Group

I've met Lisa at FFWD2016 and I got inspired by the idea in minutest. She is so passionate about it, that I'm sure she will drive this endeavour to a roaring success and will help many people around the world.

Had a great experience with exchanging shoes via solemates. I've never been able to find any other source to easily locate my shoe size opposite but now it's easy!

Martial Cijs CEO at Kindred Solutions Ltd

Lisa brings an incredibly positive attitude to her activities and her brand. Very impressed with all the little things in what she does - from great logo and brand name to how she presents her pitches and tells the story.

Jakob Sommerhuber Advisor at Solemates

Lisa and Sumeet have gained a thorough understanding of the problem they are solving through Lisa's personal experience and ongoing interviews of their enthusiastic community members.

Their Facebook group shows how they manage to draw attention and grow an active user base without any marketing spendings so far.

I have been mentoring Lisa and Sumeet for a few months now and it's a pleasure to meet them: They actively seek advice and they put it into action.

Sandra Costa Marrero

Solemates is an excellent and innovative solution for people as me (amputee) who can offer or asks for a single shoe to share with other person with same size.
I wish Solemates the best success!!!

Would recommend Solemates for anyone who have a problem with footwear due to different sizes of feet, I as yet have not found my soulmate but I am sure there is one out there for me. I have struggled with footwear all my adult life, having to buy two pairs to get one pair so how nice it would be to have someone to take the footwear I do not need. Brilliant idea should have been done years ago I am sure it will be a great success and help many people.

Iskren Kulev CEO at KindLink

Together with Lisa we participate in the Fast Forward London Accelerator and as my startup buddy she is so brilliant and passionate about SoleMates it leaves me no doubt about their success.