Former University of Manchester student quit £130k banking job to launch £2m shoe business

A former University of Manchester student described how she quit her full time job to start a £2m shoe business.

Katie Owen quit her £130,000 a year private banking job to launch a wide-fit shoe business, after spotting a gap in the market.

She had no prior knowledge of design or manufacturing however completed an evening course at London College of Fashion in shoe design on top of her degree.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sargasso & Grey Wide Fit Shoes (@sargassoandgrey)

The 48-year-old from Ealing, West London, launched Sargasso & Grey in 2014 after spotting a gap in the market. She had wide feet and struggled to find both comfortable and stylish shoes. After having children, the problem only worsened as her feet became wider. The business is now making more than two million pounds and has been featured on celebrities including Dame Helen Mirren.

While at a networking event for her finance job, Katie met a woman with a shoe business who offered to introduce her to a factory after she explained how she could never find wide fit heels.

At first, the business was just an expensive side hustle. She continued working in finance while slowly trying to build on her shoe business. Katie initially invested £30,000 to spend on specialist wide-fit shoe moulds, stock and website costs.

After the UoM graduate’s second maternity leave, she tried to juggle both her banking job and growing the business but soon realised her clients still expected full-time availability.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sargasso & Grey Wide Fit Shoes (@sargassoandgrey)

“I was being paid for three days a week, but I was really working five,” she says. “My clients didn’t care that I had a shoe business. As far as they were concerned, I was their wealth manager and should be there when they needed me.”

As she struggled to focus on both her career and business, she joined a business accelerator programme run by NatWest. Surrounded by founders and startups working full-time on their ideas, Katie felt inspired to give her business a real go.

Most Read

Revealed: The awful screenshot ‘receipts’ of texts Bec sent about other MAFS brides

Hailey Bieber gave an insight into her s*x life with Justin, and guys I’m actually blushing

Here’s when I’m A Celeb South Africa 2026 was filmed and the reason it’s not live

“I thought, I’m doing both things very averagely,” she says. “I either need to give up the shoe business and focus on growing my career again, or I need to give the business a real go.”

In the summer of 2018, she made the leap to leave her finance job. Yet it took around 18 months after resigning before Katie began paying herself a salary. Even then, the income was nowhere near what she had been earning in banking.

For six years, she had to stop paying into her pension entirely and today she says she earns about half her previous salary.

“Since I left university and worked in banking, I’d always been very financially independent. So suddenly not to have that was difficult.”

Just as the business became modestly profitable, Covid hit and there was no longer a demand for occasion shoes. Later, Brexit created further compilations for business imports and US tariffs brought along even more challenges.

Still, she says she never truly regretted leaving banking behind.

“I love what I do,” she says. “And when customers say, ‘Your shoes have changed my life’, that gives me a real buzz.”

Her business is now profitable and on track for turnover of more than £2million this year, with growth running at around thirty per cent annually.

She advised those thinking of leaving a secure job to start a business to ensure they research thoroughly, set realistic expectations and plan how they will financially support themselves.

“You’re probably going to have a good few years where you’re not earning much at all, because everything is going back into the business,” she says. “That’s not a reason not to do it. But people need to go into it with their eyes open.”

Featured image via Instagram @sargassoandgrey