We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leontyne Ashmore. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leontyne below.

Hi Leontyne, thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

One question I get asked a lot is why I called the company Lisbeth Joe as there is no obvious connection with minimalist shoes. My mother’s name was Elizabeth Joe. She was a strong but generous woman, who overcame many challenges and disadvantages yet always triumphed through love and giving. She inspired me to follow her example in many ways, her amazing fashion sense and desire to help others being particularly admirable qualities. I dedicate my business to her memory, memorializing her in the joy and comfort people feel when they wear Lisbeth Joe shoes.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

​​When I was pregnant with my two children I developed diastasis recti, I had constant back pain from when I woke up until I went to bed. I also had the dreaded pooch belly. It was so bad a neighbor asked me when I was giving birth to my third child yet I wasn’t pregnant. I had physical pain and emotional pain so I started on a journey to improve my health. The physical rehabilitation centered on targeted exercises to close the separation of the abs.
It was at this time I discovered barefoot shoes – I tried multiple core-restorative exercise programs, and while they had many differences they universally advocated for barefoot shoes. The rationale being that when wearing barefoot shoes the body is in natural alignment and puts less stress on many parts of your body including the abdominal muscles.

The trigger to start the business came when I was working in corporate finance for Gaia Yoga TV. The challenge was I couldn’t find barefoot shoes that were remotely fashionable – sport designed shoes simply didn’t make me feel confident in the workplace, they didn’t compliment my personality nor did they look right with my outfits. That’s when I decided to address this obvious gap in the market.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I self funded through the initial design phase of the business which consisted of mostly flights and hotels as I began to explore and understand the sourcing and manufacturing side of the business. Once I had a manufacturer lined up and the designs agreed, I conducted a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo that pre-sold the shoes, and this provided the capital to purchase the initial stock for the business. I chose to run this crowd-funding by myself rather than hire a marketing company as I analyzed the results and this seemed to fit me the best.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process./

Finding a manufacturer seemed daunting, however I struck gold when I attended the The Magic show in Las Vegas. I was talking with a manufacturer and happened to be standing next to the representative from the Overseas Development organization for Canada, helping Indonesia grow their international trade. He approached me as soon as I finished talking and asked me to tell him about my shoes and their unique concept. He had been in the shoe business his entire career and proceeded to help me to find a manufacturer in Indonesia and helped fund travel to Indonesia for factory visit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lisbethjoe.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisbeth.joe/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LisbethJoe1
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leontynemazinyi/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisbeth_joe
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2MkV9eWBb4Zw0IBawqTnSw

Image Credits
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