etail. The brand has 276,000 followers on Instagram –  nearly 100,000 more than R.M. Williams – and its pre-loved styles are in high demand on Facebook Marketplace. With a high rate of repeat customers, the brand doesn’t need to spend a lot on advertising.  “Social media has been our only marketing tool for the last seven or eight years,” Baird said. “The product is desirable – you want to wear it – but you keep coming back because it’s really comfortable, so you get this love for the brand,” she said. Bared shoes feature a biomechanical footbed, with an arch that is shaped to aid foot function and reduce pressure on the heel, and a heel cup designed to provide more support than standard. While not all of Bared shoes are considered ‘podiatrist approved’ – it makes sandals and high heels, which are generally considered no-gos – Baird said every new style is thoroughly tested to ensure it’s comfortable on 99 per cent of people’s feet.  “We don’t want to be a comfort brand that makes slightly better looking shoes,” she said. “We’re a fashion brand first.”  The Bared difference  Unusually for a footwear brand that is so focussed on fit, the majority of Bared’s sales occur online. Pre-Covid, 70 per cent of sales were made online; today, it’s 80 per cent. That is likely due to the fact that, for much of the brand’s history, customers had to travel to Melbourne to try on shoes in person. “Our stores have always been destinations. I’m still blown away by how much we sell online,” Baird said.  While she declined to share any details about the brand’s financial performance, she said the business is growing at a “crazy rate”. Two years ago, she took on BBRC, Brett Blundy’s private investment company, as a partner.  Baird credits the brand’s success to its customer service. Live chat is available on the website from 8am to 10pm every day of the week, and if customers are unsure about fit, they can get extra pairs delivered to their house to compare sizes and styles at no additional cost.  If customers have an issue with the fit or quality of their shoes down the road, Bared takes a generous approach to solving the problem, from providing free gel inserts, to replacing shoes that don’t meet expectations.  “Customer service is 100 per cent the most important thing in the business,” she said.  Baird would rather her staff talk customers out of shoes than into shoes that aren’t right for them, and said there are no sales quotas or policies around the amount of time team members can spend with individual customers.   “Anyone who works for us from day one is allowed to do anything they want to make the customer happy,” she said. The brand currently employs around 150 people across the business.  Focus on natural materials  Sustainability is a growing focus for Bared. Over the last few years, the brand has switched to more environmentally friendly packaging, including hemp-based shoe bags, compostable shipping satchels and eco-tape, and started working with Greenfleet to offset its carbon emissions.  It’s currently running a pilot program to reduce waste in its factories in China, which also use renewable energy, and recently became a Certified B Corp. It’s also a founding member of Sustainable Choice, a new platform that aims to help consumers find and support environmentally friendly brands. “Treading lighter on the planet is at the forefront of everything that we do, but we’re still nowhere near good enough,” Baird said.  Her top priority is finding and using more natural materials in Bared shoes, so they can be disposed of safely when they reach the end of their life.  The brand’s biomechanical footbed is now 72 per cent plant-based; the goal is to make this 90 per cent in future. And the product and design teams are exploring the use of vegetable-tanned leather and non-petroleum-based leather alternatives.   “We want [our shoes] to be really durable and last forever, but also break down quickly. It’s almost an impossible task, but it’s something we’re really excited about,” Baird said.