Ace Marks is a brand of handcrafted Italian dress shoes that has leveraged a direct to consumer sales strategy to disrupt one of the most established industries. In the past year alone, Ace Marks have sold in more than 80 countries, and has become the worlds most funded footwear project through Kickstarter. Founders Paul Farago and Julian Gonzalez join SalesFounders to talk about their relentless focus on customer experience, the domain expertise behind this disruptive brand of luxury shoes.  On this Episode we Discuss: Leveraging domain experience around the needs of the customer The pro’s and con’s of the direct to consumer strategy Why Ace Marks chose crowdfunding as their initial source of growth  Kickstarter success and their unorthodox approach to building a campaign Life after Crowdfunding - how to find sustainable growth channels Breaking paradigms - educating customers and the cost=value fallacy Influencer Marketing - the algorithm Ace Marks developed to identify the best influencers How to manage cash flow in high inventory startups Competition and the challenge to disrupt highly established industries