A New Wave of Shoe Makers Wants to Cut Out All the Middlemen

Three years ago, Ariel Nelson was working in food and beverage distribution, and Lane Gerson was gutting it out in the finance department at a 3D printing company. The friends were pushing 30 and trying to spruce up their wardrobes for the stream of weddings they were scheduled to attend. That was when they saw it: the gaping hole in the market between the $100 pair of oxfords at Aldo and the $350-and-up monk straps at Allen Edmonds. “I would go shoe shopping and know exactly what I wanted in terms of style, color, and price, but I could only ever get two of the three,” Nelson says.

At the time, “cut out the middleman” were magic words for e-commerce startups. The strategy had worked for razor blades, eyeglasses, mattresses, and dress shirts—why should fancy footwear be any different? The friends started Jack Erwin based on what seemed like a simple premise: Design a $500 pair of men’s dress shoes, make them for $100, and sell them online for $200.