Marina Larroude stared at the first shoe samples from her new brand with tears in her eyes. After 20 years in fashion's upper echelons, from Condé Nast to Barneys, she found herself starting from scratch during the pandemic. Now, these samples represented everything – her reputation, her family's financial future, and a bold bet that she could build something meaningful in the worst of times.

Join Bora Celik as he chats with Marina Larroude, the Co-Founder and CCO of Larroude.

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"I couldn't believe the quality," Marina recalls. "It has my name, it has my kids' name, it has my reputation of 20 years in the industry. That's something I hold very dearly."

The path to this moment wasn't planned. When COVID hit, Marina and her husband Ricardo found themselves unemployed with two kids at home. The usual career playbook of networking and freelancing seemed impossible in a locked-down world. "We didn't see any other windows open," Marina says. "We were like, we better take matters into our own hands."

But starting a shoe brand with no manufacturing experience? It seemed crazy. Yet Marina's two decades in fashion had given her an intimate understanding of what was missing in the market – beautiful, high-quality shoes at accessible prices. While she had the instincts from years as a fashion director, it was her analytically-minded husband Ricardo who did the deep research to validate the opportunity.

"You either have this lower market, the hundred-dollar shoe that's not made with leather or high-quality materials, or you have the thousand-dollar designer shoe," Marina explains. "There was this huge white space in between."

The early days were defined by extreme bootstrapping. Instead of raising capital, they invested their 401ks. Rather than spending $50,000 on a fancy website, they designed it themselves on PowerPoint and hired a developer in India for $4,000. Their first "office" was Marina's dining room. For their initial campaign, they called in favors from model friends who agreed to work for shoes instead of money.

"Someone told me back then, 'You helped so many people in the industry. Now, this is your time to ask everyone for a favor,'" Marina remembers. "I'm shameless with all the sense of the word. I have no problem getting no as an answer."

Their first collection launched in December 2020 with 40 styles and a 3,000-pair minimum order – a number that seemed astronomical at the time. They focused on timeless designs: the perfect sandal, the ideal ballerina flat, the essential boot. But then something unexpected happened. As vaccines rolled out in spring 2021, shopping patterns completely shifted.

"There was that splurge, the revenge shopping," Marina says with a laugh. "No one wanted to buy a black shoe. They wanted to buy a lilac sandal with daisies on it." Everything she'd learned in retail about customers preferring safe, basic choices was turned upside down. The whimsical, colorful styles sold out immediately.

Today, Larroude has its own factory in Brazil, where they're hiring 200 new workers to keep up with demand. They can produce reorders in weeks rather than the industry-standard six months. Marina still handles their PR herself, and they maintain the scrappy, strategic mindset that got them started.

"If you're going to wait for the time that you're ready, you're never going to be ready," Marina reflects. "I was an editor and jumped into retail, knowing nothing about retail. You have to make the jump even though you're not ready."

She pauses before adding the most important lesson: "But you have to give your all, no matter what. You are going to have so many curveballs thrown at you. If you know that no matter what, you're not going to give up, I think that's what it's going to take to get a brand going."

The brand's next chapter includes launching sneakers and giving the brand a creative refresh. But perhaps the sweetest moments come unexpectedly, like when Marina makes dinner reservations under "Larroude" and the hostess asks, "Same as the shoes?"

"Coming from someone who has been in the industry for a long time," she says, "that gives me tremendous satisfaction that the brand is standing on its own."

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