Shoe artist: this Quebecer’s unique, fully personalized models are all the rage

Unique examples of fully personalized shoes are what a Quebec entrepreneur is offering who decided to combine his passions for art and fashion during the pandemic. This has allowed him to shoe several stars from the world of professional sport and show business in recent years, notably Cole Caufield.

David Leroux has designed several goalkeeper masks, some of which are professional, for around twenty years. In 2020, however, he decided to start online shoe reconstruction training; he was far from suspecting that he was going to swap masks for shoes.

“Every time I came into the workshop after that, I had a couple of masks to make, but I wanted to experiment a lot more with the shoes,” explains the former defenseman for the Shawinigan Cataractes in the QMJHL. .

After a year of trial and error, struggling to believe in a business opportunity, he finally decided to approach Fouki and Olivier Primeau in 2021. Word of mouth then did its job leading to the creation of his company , RAVI Design, named in honor of his two sons, Raphaël and Victor.

“It still took off quickly with word of mouth, and then with social networks. It’s fun because the wind has changed direction. Before, it was me who offered my services, but now it’s the people who come to me,” explains the man whose shoes retail from $2,300.

No preferential treatment

Even though he has made shoes for big names in professional sports, such as Cole Caufield and Tage Thompson in the NHL, Max Scherzer in the MLB as well as for several artists since, he assures that this does not change anything in the way he work.

“It’s definitely fun on my artist resume, but I treat all my clients the same way. I have as much pleasure, if not more, in making shoes for a business owner because he will come get them himself and I will see his reaction.

“The fact remains that it’s still flattering and funny to say that Max Scherzer earns $58 million per year and that he orders his shoes from Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu,” he adds with a laugh.

He also specifies that it is important for him not to try to go “beyond professional” since he is fully aware that stars are extremely in demand and that the last thing they need is is having “another little kid.”

Ideas of grandeur

Although he currently customizes all of his pairs using Nike shoes, the latter explains that he only keeps the outsole and the insole.

The rest is completely torn off to allow him to reconstruct the entire shoe, but he admits that he would like to operate differently in the years to come.

“I would like to have my own shoe silhouette and no longer have to live off Nike. The plan would be to make small, limited edition batches, but still without selling them in stores. I have already met with two factories because I would like it to be done only in Quebec, even if I have to make less profit,” he concluded.