When I first started DILIKS, I was full of excitement.
I picked a name.
Registered the domain.
Filed for the trademark.
Designed the logo.
And started imagining what it would be like to build a footwear brand of my own.
At the time, the path seemed straightforward:
Create a product. Build a brand. Sell it to the world.
Then I got to the next step.
The reality of making your own shoes
Making a sample is one thing.
Producing shoes at scale is something completely different.
Factories have minimum order quantities. A single style can have multiple colors, and every color needs a range of sizes. Once those combinations multiply, what looked like one product quickly becomes a serious inventory commitment.
And inventory requires cash.
A lot more cash than registering a domain, building a website, or designing a logo.
For a small, self-funded business, that changed everything.
I could build a brand.
I could build the website.
But committing significant capital to factory production before knowing whether customers would actually buy the product was a different kind of decision.
So DILIKS changed direction.
Then it changed again.
Some ideas made it onto the website. Others never made it past a spreadsheet.
I rebuilt pages, reconsidered products, changed the business model, and at times questioned whether DILIKS should continue at all.
If you've come across an older version of DILIKS somewhere on Google, that's why.
DILIKS didn't disappear.
I was still trying to figure out what it should become.
Then a pair of shoes bothered me
The idea that brought DILIKS back didn't come from a business plan or a market research report.
It came from a pair of shoes.
I bought a pair that was technically my size, but something didn't feel right when I wore them.
One foot felt comfortable.
The other didn't.
Eventually, I measured both feet.
They weren't the same.
The difference was only about half a size.
It wasn't dramatic. I could still wear ordinary shoes, as I had for years.
But it made me wonder:
If half a size is enough for me to notice, what happens to someone whose feet differ by a full size — or even more?
So I started searching.
How do people with different-sized feet buy shoes?
What I found surprised me.
For people who genuinely need different shoe sizes for their left and right feet, the solutions can be surprisingly inconvenient.
Some buy two complete pairs in different sizes.
Some search for retailers that offer split sizing.
Some contact stores individually and ask whether they can accommodate two sizes.
Some use insoles or simply compromise on fit.
Some even look for a "sole mate" — another person with the opposite size combination — so they can buy two pairs and exchange the shoes they don't need.
All because they want something that sounds incredibly simple:
One pair of shoes. Two different sizes.
That's when I started looking at DILIKS differently.
Maybe we don't need to manufacture another shoe
My original idea was to create another footwear brand.
Design shoes.
Find factories.
Produce inventory.
Then find people who wanted to buy them.
But by this point, I already had access to something useful: an existing footwear supply chain.
There are already thousands of shoes being produced.
Maybe we didn't need to manufacture another one.
Maybe we could provide the service between existing footwear and the people the standard same-size-pair model doesn't work well for.
That became the new question behind DILIKS:
Could we use the footwear supply chain we already have access to and help people whose two feet need different sizes?
That's what we're now trying to build.
You choose the shoes. Tell us about your feet. We handle the matching.
For eligible DILIKS styles, you choose the shoe you want and tell us about each foot.
We ask for information such as your usual shoe size and the length of each foot.
Then our work begins.
We review the sizing information, source the appropriate sizes, measure and check the shoes when necessary, match the left and right shoes, inspect the final pair, and prepare it for shipment.
The customer receives what they wanted in the first place:
One pair of shoes, matched for two different feet.
No need to buy two full pairs.
No need to figure out what to do with the two shoes you don't need.
No need to find someone with the opposite feet.
You tell us about your feet. We handle the matching.
That's the service we're building.
So, we're starting again
DILIKS has already had more than one beginning.
The first beginning was about wanting to create my own brand.
This one is different.
This time, we're starting with a problem.
We're not trying to convince everyone that they need another shoe brand.
We're trying to make buying shoes easier for people who already know exactly what their problem is:
their two feet don't need the same size.
We're still early.
We're testing the service, selecting styles, developing our sizing process, working on how customers should measure their feet, and figuring out how to make ordering a split-size pair feel as straightforward as ordering a regular pair.
Some things will change.
We'll probably get some things wrong.
And when we do, we'll improve them.
That's why this journal exists.
We'll use Building DILIKS to document the process — what we're building, what we're learning, what changes, and hopefully, what gets better.
DILIKS started as an attempt to build another footwear brand.
After more than one restart, perhaps we've finally found something more useful to build:
a better way to buy shoes when your feet aren't the same size.
Building DILIKS — Entry #01
August 2026