After more than a decade in agency life, Victoria found herself facing a very different kind of brief once she became a mother. Her toddler refused to wear shoes, despite her investing in well known brands, and that daily battle led her to question how children’s footwear was being designed in the first place. That question became Little SOHLS, a children’s shoe brand built around healthy foot development, comfort and design that parents can trust.
In this episode, Victoria walks through the realities of building a footwear brand from scratch without prior industry experience. We talk about educating herself alongside paediatric podiatrists, cold emailing manufacturers, navigating multiple sampling rounds and knowing when to walk away from a factory that couldn’t meet quality standards. She shares how the business was initially bootstrapped with a modest budget, why she launched using existing moulds and how reinvesting early revenue allowed her to later create custom designs.
The conversation also explores what growth actually looked like in the early stages. Victoria reflects on launching without a formal marketing plan while caring for a newborn, building community through direct conversations with customers and personally collecting reviews to strengthen trust. We discuss the role of Shopify, review incentives, Meta advertising, brand collaborations and trade shows in scaling the business, alongside the unexpected moment Vogue reached out just months after launch. You can explore Little SOHLS online or follow along as the brand continues to grow here.
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