Whole Foods - Wholey Nostalgia!

23 years ago when Soft Star Shoes were being made out of Tim and Jeannie's home in Texas, one of our very first wholesale accounts was a small grocery co-op in Austin. At the time it was just a hip small store called Whole Foods Market. Tim would drive over a carload of moccasins every month or so.

Obviously things change... Soft Star packed up when the family moved to California and then later settled in Oregon, while Whole Foods Market... well, they GREW. (Last count they have more than 270 stores in the USA, Canada and U.K.) When we approached Whole Foods this fall with our product, we knew it wouldn't be as straightforward this time as driving up with a trunk full of shoes. Good news is that somethings never change - happy feet being one of them. Whole Foods decided to try out our shoes in a few stores in the Pacific Northwest and even designed their own exclusive vegan moccasins shown here.

It felt really nostalgic - like reuniting two old acquaintances who hadn't seen each other since their childhood days. Just for a fun- above is Tim back in '85 making some of our early vintage shoes. I don't think Soft Star has changed too much since those early days, we still store our inventory in the same cardboard boxes.

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