This week is National Small Business Week, which acknowledges the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners to the economy and their communities. The inspiration to start a small business can come from the most unlikely moments. For Haley Pavone, it came at a spring formal when her high heels were killing her feet and she ditched them to dance barefoot – only to end up having her foot impaled by another woman’s stiletto.
That moment led her to launch Pashion Footwear, the world’s first fully convertible high-heel. Almost nine years later, Pashion Footwear’s products have expanded to include boots and bridal wear and the company has repeat customers from all over the world.
Unfortunately, that success is in jeopardy due to the impact of the Administration’s recently announced tariffs. This led Haley to begin sharing with her customers and others over social media about what tariffs could mean for the future of Pashion Footwear.
She recently sat down with me to discuss her journey as a business owner, how these policies affect her directly, and why other entrepreneurs should tell their story. I am grateful to her for taking the time and below is our conversation, edited for clarity.
Rhett Buttle: What inspired you to launch Pashion Footwear?
Haley Pavone: Pashion Footwear is a very innovative fashion tech company that really has created an entirely new category of women’s shoes called convertible high heels. If your high heels start hurting, which they are prone to do, you can just take the heel off and turn the same shoe into a comfortable flat, utilizing our innovative, flexible sneaker material mid-sole. We also let you customize your shoe over and over again with different, swappable accessories, which is both fun for the customer and also kinder on their wallet and the environment. We have utility patents in 30 countries and the company will have its nine-year anniversary in October.
I actually started this when I was a 20-year-old junior in college at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and really I got into this just wanting to solve my own pain point as a consumer. High heels are a critical aspect of my style. I love the way they look, but I hate the way they feel, and this came to a head for me actually in my sophomore year when I was at my sorority spring formal. I’d worn six-inch stilettos, as one does when you’re 20, going to a sorority spring formal and you can’t dance in six-inch stilettos. So I solved that problem the way most young women do and ditched my heels and went barefoot. Then, unfortunately my inspiration struck quite literally when one of my sorority sisters accidentally stomped the ballpoint of the stiletto she was still wearing and impaled me through the foot. Looking back, I have no regrets because that very literal pain point was what got me thinking about how odd it is that we have this whole category of products marketed to women that really is quite painful and inconvenient. And now here we are, eight and a half years later.
Rhett Buttle: We have been hearing stories about how the tariffs set by the White House are affecting small businesses across the country. How are they impacting your business?
Haley Pavone: I think that they are weighing on the forefront of every small business owner’s mind, but particularly for people in consumer goods sectors. In particular, I’d argue quite confidently that our technology is the most complicated shoe on the market today and as such requires very specialty injection molding in conjunction with craftsmen footwear upper assembly. Right now, those two processes only coexist at scale in China. There is no manufacturing capability for what we do in the U.S. whatsoever. There’s varying degrees of opportunity in other countries, but not without their own restrictions. The only straightforward path to producing a product like this is in China and so we feel very trapped and confused by these tariffs. Theoretically, the point is to onshore more manufacturing, but we fundamentally don’t have that infrastructure and to build out that infrastructure would take three to five years and for one scale footwear facility, probably $30 to $40 million. That is something a small business like mine can’t hope to execute in any kind of near term horizon. So, a lot of business owners and I feel like the government’s policies are specifically designed to squeeze us out. It’s saying you have to eat this and absorb this or go out of business. Actually, those end up kind of being the same thing because trying to absorb it would bankrupt a lot of businesses, especially at the rates we’re seeing today.
Another thing that’s going on is the Administration is actually eliminating a very popular section of import code called Section 321. Section 321 essentially has enabled direct consumer businesses to participate in free trade, so it allows us to warehouse our goods actually in a free trade zone in Windsor, Canada. Then we ship every order directly to the consumer and through this section 321 we’re able to do so without incurring a tariff whatsoever. This has allowed our business to be much more profitable, which inherently lets us hire more people, create more U.S. jobs and reinvest more of our profits into growth. It actually allows us to provide a better price point to our U.S. customers than customers from any other country because those orders still incur their localized duty rate, whereas our U.S. business is basically free trade. This allows us to post more profit and increase our corporate income tax base. We actually posted our first ever corporate income tax last year, which is a nerdy thing to be excited about paying, but it is still a great feeling.
Rhett Buttle: What would you say to the people who say that the current system favors countries like China too much?
Haley Pavone: I personally would disagree with that. I think global trade has so many benefits across the board for all countries involved because it allows us to really specialize. If you think about any given person, no one can be great at everything. If you look back historically, the U.S. actually enacted a lot of policies specifically to move manufacturing out of the country because in doing so it really actually elevated the American economy into being more service-based. Our primary exports are entertainment and services. When I think about my team, I have 12 U.S. employees, 11 of whom are women. None of them work in manufacturing. A lot of them work in marketing, which are inherently higher paying service jobs. This structure has directly allowed us as U.S. citizens to participate in higher wages, and better roles in the large corporate landscape. I think it’s actually incredibly advantageous to pursue a global trade policy and would disagree that it is particularly disadvantageous to the U.S. to have our manufacturing offshored.
Rhett Buttle: Your business’s story has garnered national attention. What made you decide to speak out and what tools have you used to tell your story?
Haley Pavone: As far as making the decision to speak out for me, it was the natural next step. I’ve been very lucky to build a personal platform for myself on social media, and I use that platform to promote other female-founded small businesses and discuss what building a business looks like. Furthermore, I can’t stress enough that this business is my whole career. I started it when I was 20 and I’ve built it up over the last eight and a half years into a profitable business that employs people. This really is my American dream. This invention is my baby, and so I will do whatever I can, and use whatever tools are at my disposal to advocate on its behalf.
The main pieces of advice I would give to business owners is don’t be scared to share your story. I think the modern consumer really appreciates transparency and wants to be involved in that larger business conversation. It’s been really validating for me to see the response to the content that I’ve been posting. A lot of people have thanked me for helping them understand what’s taking place. Obviously, business owners are very confused in a climate this volatile but consumers are confused too, and they don’t want to be. They want to understand what’s happening to trade. They want to understand the impact on the brands and businesses and founders that they support and care about. If you speak out, I think that is only going to benefit you in the eyes of your consumer, you will gain more respect for that, and then also more support. Our customers are very motivated and they want to keep us in business, but they don’t know how to do so unless we transparently share with them what’s going on in ways that they can help.
The only tactical piece of advice I would have is to try to remain as bipartisan as possible. I know it’s very challenging. Obviously we all have our political affiliations, and there is so much tension in today’s political climate. Honestly, I think that there is a need from some entities to make everything so polarizing and this is a big part of why messages aren’t being heard. Fortunately, I’ve been able to put my personal political affiliation aside and just speak from a factual place, and I truly believe that’s why my content has gone as viral as it has. I’m able to really speak to both sides of the aisle and just say, “Hey, political affiliation aside, this is bad economics, and everybody should care about this.”
Rhett Buttle: If you could talk right now to your policymakers or the White House, particularly on this trade or tariff issue, what would you say on behalf of your business and all small business owners at this moment?
Haley Pavone: The first thing that comes to mind is that small business owners like myself are really feeling like pawns in this trade war and we’re feeling largely ignored. When you look at this purely as an economic model, these changes and the speed at which they are happening is going to disproportionately harm small businesses faster and more aggressively. The simple fact of the matter is that your cost of goods is what informs your price, and the difference between the two is what informs your operating margin. That’s what informs your marketing budget, how many people can you hire, and how much you can put into product development. When all those things are yanked out from under you overnight, you need time to be able to pivot those aspects of your business.
I sometimes say anything is possible with time and money, but in the absence of time you need way more money. In the absence of money, you need way more time. Small businesses don’t have the money to buy ourselves the speed of time that’s being asked of us right now. However, Nike is backstopped by billions of dollars and can afford to take a loss for much longer. Of course it’s not advantageous to them either. No business should be losing money, but the fact of the matter is, they have more money to play with to safeguard their interests than a small business that operates on cash flow does.
I would urge government officials to really listen to small business owners. We are the backbone of the economy. We create jobs. We’re profitable. We’re innovative. We’re playing by the rule book and policies like these are going to damage us so unbelievably quickly. If that happens, the downstream effect to the American people as well as the economy at large, is going to be devastating the longer that these policies stay in effect.
Rhett Buttle: Is there anything else that you would like to add?
Haley Pavone: The biggest thing I can share if I can speak on behalf of small businesses of my generation is we are very resilient against our will. I launched this business in June of 2019, we only had about three normal market condition months before the first trade war. Then there was the pandemic, the supply chain crisis, and then the recession. Something that’s been hard for so many small business owners is 2024 was one of the first stable markets small businesses of my generation have seen. To now see our own government for lack of a better description working against us in a way that – when you break down the unit economics – is worse for small businesses than the pandemic is really heartbreaking. My heart just goes out to all small business owners. We’ve already been through so much and we’re being asked to be incredibly resilient and innovative and resourceful. I would like to think that we really are just built differently at this point, and we’ll be able to do so. But it certainly would be nice if our own government would help us in that effort.
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