Ten thousand pairs of defective shoes nearly doomed Dune London

Shoes are in Rubin’s blood. His grandfather arrived from Lithuania and built a manufacturing business in London’s East End, which his father later took over. Despite failing his maths GCSE, Rubin followed his father’s advice and became an accountant. However, when his father fell ill in the 1970s, he joined the family firm to help. His father died soon after, leaving him with a choice: stay in manufacturing or return to accountancy. His uncle, a struggling manufacturer, was facing difficulties so Rubin took the decision — “whether it was a good decision or not, I don’t know” — to join him, helping out with the finances and the sales.

As manufacturing slowly moved from London to the Far East, Rubin took a trip to Taiwan and saw local suppliers making shoes. “They were about half the price and looked much nicer,” he said. By 1986, he had become an importer, supplying footwear to major British retailers such as Next and Marks & Spencer. “I was designing the shoes, getting them made, delivering them, all with their name on the label. So I thought, ‘Let’s start my own brand’.”

Rubin launched Dune in 1992 with leftover capital from his importing business, choosing the name because a sand dune constantly shifts with the wind and changes shape, a fitting metaphor for fashion. Early funding also came from a £20,000 investment from a friend of a friend, who cashed out three years later with £300,000. Rubin has mostly preferred to reinvest in the business than take out money.

But his first order proved to be a “disaster” that almost ended the company before it began. He had mortgaged his home to secure a letter of credit for a 10,000-pair shipment of espadrilles from a small factory in Spain. When the shipment arrived, every pair turned out to be defective, tearing down the middle. Fortunately for Rubin, he could return them all without paying because the bank found discrepancies in the letter of credit. “That’s one of the problems with footwear, they’re subject to a lot of wear and they can fail. The lesson for me was that this is high risk,” he said. After that near-catastrophe, he began flying to the Far East up to eight times a year to personally test every order.

• ‘It’s about more than just shoes, it’s about self-respect and confidence’

Dune grew steadily through the 1990s and 2000s, becoming a footwear favourite among celebrities and fashion aficionados. In 2009 Rubin bought the Shoe Studio brand out of administration, granting Dune instant access to Selfridges and other major department stores, “putting us on the map as a serious player”, he said. The company went from £150 million to £200 million in turnover and had a run of profitability but the expansion came at a cost. “In 2011-12, it got a lot more difficult because we just didn’t have the team to manage that size of business,” Rubin explained.

Today, Rubin’s family hold 84 per cent of the business, with the remainder owned by management — a rarity compared with many competitors owned by private equity or the public markets.

Conditions are still choppy. Dune reported sales of nearly £95 million for the year ending January 2024, with a pre-tax loss of £7.7 million. It had posted profit before tax of about £1 million in the previous two years, after heavy pre-tax losses during the Covid-19 pandemic years. Rubin argues that the UK business rates system is “terribly skewed against retailers”, adding that typically, Dune pays upwards of £100,000 in rent for one store and about half of the rent price in rates. “It’s deterring a lot of independent retailers and making life really difficult,” he said.

According to the British Retail Consortium, retailers shoulder 20 per cent of all business rates, despite only accounting for about 5 per cent of the UK economy. The government plans to lower business rates for smaller retail properties starting in April 2026, while introducing a higher rate for large properties to fund this change.

Dune, which employs about 1,200 people, is now focusing its future growth on expansion and product diversification. International markets account for about 35 per cent of sales, but Rubin sees the opportunity to push this above 50 per cent by betting heavily on the United States, a market “ten times the size of the UK”, through partnerships with retailers like Nordstrom and Dillard’s.

While outlet stores and larger, full-priced stores in prime locations remain successful for Dune, smaller stores struggle with low footfall. Given that high rents and rates make standalone stores difficult, Dune is now focusing on striking more wholesale partnerships. Its shoes are already bestsellers in Next and are also stocked in Marks & Spencer.

Although shoes are still Dune’s bread and butter, the company is also following a trend led by a rival, Kurt Geiger, by increasing its handbag offering. “They’re easier to manage,” Rubin said. “No sizes, easier to photograph, and more of an emotional buy.” Handbags make up a quarter of Dune’s sales but the company wants to grow this to 50 per cent over the coming years.

Rubin officially stepped back as chief executive at the end of 2021, becoming chairman, though he still visits Dune’s White City office once or twice a week to focus on product and brand. He has discovered a new passion. “I finally had a bit of spare time, so I stepped back. Then I started researching my grandfather, who arrived at the end of the 19th century. I quite like the process of writing, perhaps I’m a frustrated author.” Having published his memoir, he is now at work on a novel.

His two grown-up children have chosen careers outside the business, which he thinks is “probably for the best”. Would he have wanted them to join the family footwear empire? “My advice would be very strongly not to come into the industry,” he smiled.

Daniel Rubin’s memoir Sole Survivor: How I Built a Global Shoe Brand, published by Canbury Press, is out on November 6.