On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Sarah & Chris Rhoads. Sarah & Chris are the Co-Founders, Inventors and creators of Commbi, a lifestyle footwear company that believes looking good starts with feeling good. They created the first modular insole system in footwear that works like a capsule collection for your feet. We talk about launching from a place of need, building momentum by putting yourself out there, fighting resistance as an entrepreneur, and so much more!
Sarah and Chris Rhoads have spent the last 15 years as renowned fashion and lifestyle photographers and Creative Directors, partnering with Fortune 100 brands to develop, produce, and shoot highly successful advertising campaigns.
Their creativity and a unique, moment-driven approach have helped shape iconic global campaigns for brands like Sony, Google, Levi's, and Keds. From photographing Taylor Swift for Keds to leading product releases for Meta, their work has taken them around the world, creating standout content for some of the world’s biggest companies.
Driven by Sarah’s personal experience of working long hours on set and struggling to find stylish yet supportive footwear, they channeled their creative expertise into founding Commbi footwear. Their goal was to create footwear that offered the perfect blend of comfort, support, and effortless style.
After years of innovation—designing, prototyping, and collaborating with podiatrists on footbed development—they brought their vision to life. In August, they launched Commbi, a brand that merges style with functionality, and it has quickly gained momentum in the market.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Sarah Rhoads
You can't learn the things you need to learn until you are just in it.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce.
Today, I'm welcoming to the show not one but two founders. They are coming to us from Commbi, Chris and Sarah Rhoads. Welcome to the show.
Chris Rhoads
Hey, Chase. How are you?
Chase Clymer
I am very excited. You guys are not only founders, but you're inventors and you're creators. For those that don't know, could you quickly tell us about the types of products that you're bringing to market over at Commbi?
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah. So we are in footwear. So we basically innovated on casual lifestyle shoes, slides, clogs, and mules. And we have an innovative way and approach to that that's patent pending that allows people to modulate the footbeds across the whole line. So it's like a capsule collection for your feet.
That's what we do at Commbi. Very, very interesting.
Chase Clymer
Now, you're gonna have to get into it a little more for me. So how exactly does the modulation work? What's the buying process like? Is it more difficult to buy than a normal shoe?
Chris Rhoads
Great question. So let's go back a little bit. Sarah and I, we've been married for almost 20 years now. We go way back. We met in college when we were little babies. And we've always worked together in different creative avenues.
Before this world, we were lifestyle photographers and directors for Fortune, you know, 100, 500 companies doing their kind of ad campaigns. And you should share a little bit about your experience on set.
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah, so we were, we came out to LA by way of Seattle and basically to work in LA on large scale photo shoots that we were shooting for different companies. And I, that meant like, I'm on my feet all day. We're on our feet all day.
I don't love wearing athletic shoes. I still have to look cute because I'm working with creative directors from London and Paris and all this kind of stuff. And I wanted to look good, but also I wanted shoes that felt really supportive.
And I tried everyone in the game, all of them. I would wear my slides or my clogs to set and I would come back with a really sore back. And so Chris, I think got tired of me.
Chris Rhoads
The real answer to that is Sarah was putting insoles into her open back shoes. So you would see a great looking shoe, but you'd see this little tongue flopping around in the back of the shoe. And as time went on, we're like, “There's got to be a better solve for this,” and started to go down this.
Sarah Rhoads
And I think you're probably sick of me buying every single shoe brand in the game. So we started to just play with innovating and playing with like, “What would it look like to make our ideal shoe?”
Well, it would be super supportive, it would be comfortable, and it would be in styles that we ourselves liked, and it would be highly versatile. Like I hated that I would have to throw away my Uggs after a season because the shearling would go flat.
I was like, “What if we could modulate this section and simply allow somebody to put in shearling when the seasons change or put in a different memory foam if that's what they like? Or stylistically change their shoe up without totally tossing the whole shoe.
So we developed it with podiatrists. So all of the footbeds are super supportive. They have a deep heel cup, all that kind of good stuff, but they're also in styles that are easy breezy and comfortable. So yeah, that's kind of how it sort of came to be.
And we sort of started in our back studio, riffing on AutoCAD, 3D printing, and literally we have no experience in shoes, but we have a lot of experience in creative stuff. And we just started messing around, really, is how it began.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Yeah.
And then just for those of you that are watching this, or for those of you that are listening, I'll tell you what they just did. They had a product in front of them on the video. So you should check out the YouTube video.
But it is modular. So the base of the slide, and then the insole or the memory foam or what have you, that's the middle part, just pops in and out. Very, very easy. I think on the How It Works part of your website, there’s a GIF that shows you what's going on there as well.
This is an idea that when I hear it, I just go, “Why didn't anyone else think of this first?” It's so obvious once you see it.
Chris Rhoads
Thanks, Chase. Yeah.
It was one of those things that for a good year and a half, when we were researching and trying to go through this whole process. We kind of had the same thought of, “Surely someone else has done this.” Especially when we're going through the patent process and trademarking and all of the kind of less sexy legal side of things, we kept expecting to find it somewhere. And we really didn't.
There's slightly different versions of it, but not quite what we've created. And so going through that process of creating that new thing was interesting even from a supply chain perspective and manufacturing because shoes tend to be pretty legacy. There's a way that they've been done for a long time.
And to be like, “Hey, I love what you're doing here, but we want to change this one part that's kind of always been done a certain way.” There was a process to get that worked out.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
So talk me through what was the timeline from conception of this modular shoe or slide, however you want to refer to it, to like you have your first production sample in hand.
Sarah Rhoads
I would say from the start of the granularity of the idea to the production sample, wouldn't you say like two years?
Chris Rhoads
Yeah, two and a half years of kind of from ideation to doing our own kind of testing of 3D printing and being like, “Hey, does this even work? Is this even viable?” To then do some small testing and then find manufacturing.
And then we just actually launched in August of 2024, which was 3 months ago. So it's been a wild couple of years, to say the least.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Let's talk about 2024 this year. Obviously, you have the sample. Well, you've had the sample and now you're going into full production launch.
Talk to me about how you supported that launch. How did you try to find new customers? How are you putting it in front of new eyes?
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah. So given our background in the world of photography, directing, content creation, that sort of thing, we approached this with utilizing... I'm a big fan of how if you are going to do a pivot, utilizing your skill sets in that pivot to serve you. And so that's what we did.
We are really accustomed to doing creative campaign work. So we ask our friends, “Can we shoot you in them?” Our models that we know, that sort of thing. And people were so kind and so nice. And we built an image library base from there.
And we do a Commbi journal, which features interesting people around LA and New York, friends of ours that like our shoes and that we will interview. And we started from there, utilizing our previous skill set.
And then there's obviously the performance marketing side and the social side and all of that that has supported our growth and our scaling because we've really been able to scale 250 growth month after month since we launched in August which I think is really great.
Chris Rhoads
I think the biggest push is kind of between this balance of brand building and performance marketing. And that's been, I think, one of the most interesting things to really unpack because in the past we've done a lot of work on the billboard out of home level.
And to learn and really study the difference of the type of marketing for billboards and out of home and that kind of work versus new customer performance marketing, whether it's meta targeted ads, or Google, or whatever it might be. They're such different spaces and to identify what connects with the audience in different ways has also been really, really interesting.
Chase Clymer
In all this trial and error of building and launching this brand, is there any advice or any mistakes that you made that you could share with the audience to help them potentially circumvent?
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah. What would you say? Is there anything that comes to mind?
Chris Rhoads
I mean, I think having a reason why and a story behind things is really important. With Commbi, it was… every shoe company thinks that their shoe is a little more comfortable, they're a little better for this reason.
And for us, there's a reason why.
Sarah Rhoads
We came from a place of need. It came from, “This is what I want to see. And there's got to be other people like me in the world that also want shoes like this.”
And sure enough, it is a little bit of an act of faith, you have to have such a step out in extreme faith. It's an audacious thing to do something when you haven't done it before, and launch something into the world. But I do feel like when it comes from a place of real desire and want, I feel like that has served us really well.
Is there anything that you would like to do differently though?
I think I'm, I mean, honestly, maybe built up our email based on social even more beforehand, but because we wanted to have the first mover advantage in space and no one was doing shoes like we were doing, we were kind of, at the time, a little… I don't want to say cagey about it, but probably a little more protective than we needed to be. When really, we could have probably spent that time building a more solid email base and that sort of thing.
But I really feel like for the most part, I don't have any regrets necessarily about how we launched things.
Chris Rhoads
I think it's always putting ourselves out there more as well and sharing the story and not making it just about like, “Hey, cool. This is great. I love the fact that I'm showing how the footbaths can interchange,” but connecting to the why and like building a brand as a whole.
I think I'm always pleasantly surprised to get emails from people that connect to that or relate to that story or relate to the journey of building a new company. And kind of the humanity of it all.
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah, I would say, Chase, now that we're like…
Chris Rhoads
Going around.
Sarah Rhoads
We're just chatting. I would say I waited to do my why like founders video for a month and a half, mostly just because we were so busy. Getting a business launched and off the ground is extremely demanding as you know.
But once I did that video, you put that out into the world, and it's like we started to see real traction start and momentum.
So I think what I would say to other founders is don't be afraid to put yourself out there because it was really scary for me, but I think it's really important because people need to connect with the human behind the brand, especially when it's something like this. So yeah.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
Yeah, I think that a lot of founders don't want to be the face of the brand or I've almost seen a secondary kind of founder that's like, in their mind, they're building to sell the business and they haven't even sold a product yet.
And they're like, “I can't be the face because I have to sell this thing someday.” And it's like, “Well, it's never going to be something to sell until you grow it.” And one of the best ways to do this is to put an actual person behind the message.
And founder-led brands is not a term that I came up with. You can Google it. It definitely works. I totally agree that you see results when you start to put yourself out there.
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah. And it's scary. But I had another female founder that I talked with, pre-launch, basically tell me the same thing. And she's five years into our company.
She was like, “You're gonna feel a little cringe about putting yourself out there. But you just got to get past the cringe and you just got to do it.” And honestly, it was sage wisdom. So I'm now saying the same.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. No. Well, I think that you could distill a lot of the just getting started business stuff to just people inventing reasons to get in their own way and not do the things that matter. Because at the end of the day, sell the product. What's going to sell it? Do that.
Sarah Rhoads
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And get out of my own way.
And I think part of what I've loved the most about this entrepreneurial journey is actually the internal journey it is within myself to face my fears every day. It could be simple like, “Okay, I got to put myself out there. I need to do a founder video today.” And that's like something that causes resistance.
But there's something that I think is really, I don't know. I've enjoyed that experience of growing myself through doing that.
Chris Rhoads
Yeah, fighting the resistance and like pushing into that is maybe cheesy as that sounds. I think you're right. Like we like to get in our way with different things. These kinds of enterprises are always very revealing. And they can be like a great mirror and you're like, “Oh, I'm having resistance to this. Okay, I need to do this.” And most times it's…
Sarah Rhoads
And that is entrepreneurship. Find the thing you're scared of, do it anyway.
Chase Clymer
There's always something to do, but is it the right thing to be doing? And I think that's just... That's what comes with the skill of… It's learned as you kind of grow your own business or grow multiple businesses. Your second time around, it's always going to be easier.
But oftentimes, I find that people get caught up in the act of playing business. None of it's actually going to move the needle.
Sarah Rhoads
Totally. Totally.
And you find the things that are moving the needle. There's so much to do when you're a co-founding team and you're in a startup mindset. You just wear like 14 hats. But it's like finding the thing that moves the needle the most. And those are the things we try to focus on each day for ourselves. And sometimes it's hard, but most times it's pretty clear. What's moving the needle?
Chase Clymer
Now, we talked a lot about mindset.
Now, is there anything else I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?
Sarah Rhoads
I would say you can't learn the things you need to learn until you are just in it. That would be my, I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but I think it actually hopefully provides a little bit of peace of mind to some people because there's going to be, there's a lot that we didn't know. There's still a lot we don't know. We are beginner's mind people. And I think that's been part of our success, I would say.
Like just generally speaking across our photo business with We Are The Rhoads to now this.
It's like always approaching everything as a learning opportunity. Whether it's a customer reaching out and saying this or that, okay, how can we improve how we humanize the customer service experience? Basically if we put on our learning caps, I feel like it makes it way more fun. Even frustrations can be fun.
But I feel like knowing that we didn't have to know everything. I remember listening to various podcasts and being like, “Well, I don't understand what this is or that is.” “Oh, no, I need to go and know all of those things before I launch this business.” But you learn it when you need to learn it.
You know what I mean? Like you learn it when you are in there and you're like living it. I think a lot of times.
Chris Rhoads
Yeah, and I think I'll speak for myself. And to echo what you're saying.
I am a big data nerd. I love to know data and see metrics and understand where things are moving and where things are coming from. And we joke that I'm the head and Sarah's the heart. She's the passion behind things and I'm the nerdy data guy in the background. And as that, I sometimes wanna be able to calculate everything before it can even be calculated.
And so I think what Sarah's saying to piggyback on that is the sense of like, you don't always have to have all the information. Don't have decision fatigue from trying to get some more information or solve, having that stop you from moving forward. That's my advice to myself.
Sarah Rhoads
Yeah. Beginner's mind.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Now, if I'm listening to this podcast, and I'm curious to learn more about these awesome products, these super unique products, patent pending products, where should I go? What should I do?
Sarah Rhoads
We are at commbi.co. And then Instagram is commbi_official. TikTok is the same. And yeah, you can find us in all the places. So yeah, that's where we're living.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. We'll be sure to link to that in the show notes. And I would tell everyone, go check out their Instagram. Obviously, their prior lives as photographers, definitely, you can tell that they take a lot of time for the content that they've been curating for that feed.
Chris and Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Sarah & Chris Rhoads
Thank you so much, Chase.
Sarah Rhoads
Appreciate it.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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Until next time!