The playbook for retail success often comes with big, buzzy promises about “disruption” and “reinvention.” But in a keynote fireside chat, Elizabeth Drori, CMO at Kizik, made a case for something both simpler and harder: nailing the fundamentals.
Her conversation with Suzy Davidkhanian, VP of Content at eMarketer, unpacked how a high-quality product, a smart pricing strategy, and an uncompromising focus on convenience can not only carve out a category, but keep you ahead once competitors arrive.
Build on an unshakable product advantage
Kizik was born from a simple question: Why haven’t shoes really changed in hundreds of years? Founder Mike Pratt’s answer was to eliminate the most basic friction, putting them on, with a patented hands-free design.
Today, backed by 200 patents and a parent company (HandsFree Labs), Kizik has turned a functional breakthrough into a lifestyle proposition. Hands-free shoes don’t just serve those with mobility challenges - they offer independence, speed, and ease for anyone.
But innovation alone doesn’t hold a category lead forever. As Drori explained, the shift from functional education to emotional storytelling has been essential:
“It’s not just about how they work. It’s about how they enrich your life.”
Listen hard, expand smart
For a product best experienced in person, try-ons are the conversion engine. In Kizik’s own stores, 75% of people who try a pair walk out with them. That insight fuels much of their channel strategy:
Expanding into wholesale to meet customers in their existing shopping journeys.
Opening brand-owned stores to control the experience.
Launching a mobile “Try-On Tour” to bring the product to eight U.S. cities resulting in 1,500 live try-ons and social halo far beyond each stop.
Expansion isn’t just about new doors. It’s about adjacent categories, hiking boots, waterproof winter styles, and performance lines, all shaped by search data and customer requests.
Make convenience a multi-channel experience
Kizik’s “magic moment”, slipping a shoe on without bending down, translates beautifully in-store, but needs thoughtful storytelling online.
The team leans heavily on:
UGC and influencer testimonials to show real-life value.
Video content from homepage to PDP, always demonstrating the step-in feature.
Paid ads that lead with first-person use cases, matched to on-site conversion content.
Live formats like QVC provide another way to combine education with a personal touch, replicating the immediacy of a store try-on for a national audience.
Price around personal value
Kizik’s premium price point isn’t a barrier if the story matches the customer’s definition of value. And value, Drori noted, is “highly personal”:
A healthcare worker sees hygiene and comfort.
A pregnant customer values the ability to put shoes on without bending.
A parent sees independence for their child.
The brand’s content strategy reflects this diversity, fueling segment-specific storytelling rather than a single “one-size-fits-all” value message.
Turn customers into a salesforce
Kizik’s Facebook “Insiders” group is a self-sustaining community where super-fans answer each other’s questions, trade style advice, and evangelize the product to friends and family.
That advocacy extends into gifting, a category most footwear brands can’t crack, where utility trumps size/style hesitations.
Social listening, both structured and organic, feeds product development decisions, from adding wide widths to launching new toddler-friendly designs like the Squeeze-It shoe.
Measure the halo, not just the sale
The launch of Squeeze-It has already proven its worth beyond direct sales. Its giftable appeal is driving traffic, raising AOV, and bringing new audiences into the brand’s ecosystem.
As Drori summed up, sometimes the win is energy for the brand, even if the customer buys something else:
“Success comes in different ways. The KPI you thought was the goal might not be the one that ends up mattering most.”
The Takeaway for Retailers
Kizik’s path from category creator to competitive leader rests on a few deceptively simple rules:
Protect your innovation but keep evolving the product line.
Invest in the conversion moment and take it to the customer if they can’t come to you.
Tell value stories that meet customers where they are, not where your product team sits.
Turn fans into advocates and let them amplify your reach.
Measure impact broadly, beyond the immediate transaction.
For retailers facing rising acquisition costs and a crowded market, this back-to-basics approach, executed with relentless attention to detail, might be the most future-proof strategy of all.
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