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Scott Savitz describes his family's shoe inventory as "lots," stored in pairs inside walk-in closets.
"We have fallen prey," he says.
Unlike the cobbler's kids with no shoes, the Savitzes have fallen prey to the family business, ShoeBuy.com, an online shoe shopping extravaganza that's not merely surviving the dot-com bust but marking three years in business with 100 percent year-to-year growth and hitting the $1 billion "accessible inventory" mark.
If It's clear the shoe-buying public is ignoring Al Clethen's advice that "you can get shoes for 85 cents at bowling alleys," because Bostonbased ShoeBuy.com is moving 220 brands and 150,000 products through 1.5 million visitors to its site every month. The company adds a new shoe brand to its virtual inventory monthly, has been profitable since a year after launching in 2000 and takes in more than $1 million in business for every employee on the payroll.
"We're very shocked by our traffic numbers," Savitz says.
When he first thought of selling shoes online, Savitz figured it would succeed because housing the volume of...