2026 Retrospective | Where we started and where we are

It has been a little over two years since I started the Mad Shoes brand. Two years of madness, unpredictability, and utter craziness at times, but also growth, increased market awareness, and a better understanding of customer needs.

How it started |  Year One, the Emmys, and a New Direction

It was June 2023, and I was getting ready to return to Romania. I was still working with my team at my employer branding consultancy, but the prospects were no longer as positive. With a massive shift from an employee’s economy to an employer one in IT, it became clear to me that there would not be a lot of companies still investing in consistent employer branding for their teams. Two years later, it turns out I was right, with only the big behemoths considering employee engagement and awareness for their recruitment strategies.

So we did a bit of research and kind of plunged headfirst into an initial order. Made in Romania, handcrafted, adorned with unique accessories created by artists; only rather unsuitable for the vast majority of women. 10 centimeter fuchsia heels, it turns out, are a head turner, but unfortunately only for a brief segment of the population. So we had to switch gears. 

Instead of 10 cm fuchsia heels, we started to work on 7 cm heels - slingbacks and stilettos - in more manageable colours: burgundy, nude, browns, and black. A very good idea, in theory, as this was what our clients were asking for. But, in practice, it takes between 3 and 9 months to create new shoe shafts. There are very few factories that can supply the huge demand for this, so you’re basically stuck in a queue that can last indefinitely.

However, January 2024 brought us the participation in the Emmy Awards in California, where the Romanian Bianca Boieroiu won an Emmy for make-up in Tim Burton's Wednesday. She walked the red carpet wearing our shoes: 10 centimeter satin stilettos, adorned with 24 karat gold glass hearts made by one of our main collaborator artists - Cezar Petryan.

Year 1, second half |  The hiatus, Vogue UK & a very professional photo shoot

As producing the new shafts was proving to be extremely ambitious and problematic, pausing sales for what was actually very valuable months, we decided to take the time and put it to good use by working on a professional photo shoot, which took us from this 

to this:

This ultimately led us to be included in Vogue UK in December 2024 and then to actually be featured during Fashion Week in London. In the meantime, our 10 cm fuchsia satin heel with gold glass hearts remains our flagship product, heavily sold in Romania, UK, California, and the Middle East.

Note to self and to everyone else: follow your intuition! If at some point, you believed something might work (like I did with this particuloar shoe models, which I absolutely venerate up to this day), it will at the right time. Your intuition is never wrong. 

Year 2 | Fashion Week & opening our very first brick-and-mortar store

November of 2025 provided us with the opportunity to participate in two very valuable events. One of them locally and one of them internationally.

Locally, Mad Shoes was a part of Prive Fashion Event, which showcases Eastern European up-and-coming designers, with a focus on sustainability and, of course, creativity. MAD was a part of the show in collaboration with a local evening wear brand - Chouette Couture.

A FEW DAYS LATER, we were present on the catwalk during an event organized by Fashion Crossover London. 

September 21st, 2025 - a day I will always hold close to my heart. As the founder and designer behind MAD Shoes, I had the honour of being selected as one of just 15 emerging designers to showcase a collection at Fashion Crossover London Presents: The World Gallery - Fashion Show, officially part of London Fashion Week, September 2025. This wasn’t just another date in the calendar. It was a dream come true, the result of the hard work my team and I put into bringing the MAD Shoes story to life.

Our very first brick-and-mortar store

On December 1st, 2025, we opened our first brick-and-mortar store in Iasi, Romania, in Palas Mall - one of the most important shopping malls in eastern europe, a masterpiece of both architecture and retail ingenuity.

Despite the short time we had at our disposal to organize everything, the store proved to be an amazing opportunity to:

• Better define our client range,
• Solidify our fan base
• Understand what taller women are looking for and what shorter women are avoiding when it comes to shoes. 

I can not stress this enough! Do you have a business that has just started? OPEN ANY KIND OF PHYSICAL STORE! The amount of validation that comes from physical presence simply can not be equated with anything else.

Especially in the case of luxury goods, people will assess what you are offering online and then they will drop by the store to:

• Verify whether the promised value proposition is real - in our case, almost 100% of the people entering our store and saying “I’ve known you online for so long, I’ve been meaning to try the shoes” end up buying, 
• “Put a shoe on the foot,” or, in a way, put a name on the face - yes, many of them come to meet me, to listen to my story, to see whether I truly believe in what I’ve been preaching.

Not to mention the amount of awareness a physical store will bring. As soon as we opened a physical store, our online orders doubled. Coined as “the halo effect”, I believe it has to do with your entering into a different class, as a business. You’re no longer volatile and online. You’re here, people can come and see you, meet you, touch the product. Invaluable.

Of course, all of the above stands true if what you’re selling is of high value. We’ve respected all our promises - our shoes are flawlessly designed, colourful, creative, and extremely comfortable due to the memory sole shaft incorporated. 

Autumn-Winter 2025: Multiple fashion editorials

As the brand grew, so did its appearances into some of the most sophisticated publications worldwide.  Numero, L'Officiel, Elle, Harper's Bazaar are but a few of the magazines where our shoes were present. We are proud and happy for this.

Yes, we've had some very busy two years. But we look forward to what the future holds, in spite of the uncertainty and the chaos that this brings. Coming up with new accessories, shoe fabrics, and colours is a lot of fun.