Tamara Mellon

Founder

Tamara Mellon Brand Inc.

THE LATEST: Mellon's namesake shoe company has ventured into other product offerings, including handbags and CBD-laced foot cream. She raised $50 million last summer, bringing total investment in the company to $87 million. The Series C funding round was led by London-based Centricus with participation from previous investors. The funding helped expand Mellon's brick-and-mortar footprint from a store in Pacific Palisades to locations in San Francisco and New York's Soho.

BACKGROUND: London native Mellon co-founded luxe shoe brand Jimmy Choo in 1996 and helped grow the company until 2011, when she left over a salary dispute. Mellon started a company under her name in 2013, a wholesale-focused effort that went bankrupt in 2015. Mellon repositioned the brand a year later as a direct-to-consumer footwear business. Her team includes ecommerce veteran Jill Layfield, the former chief executive of Backcountry.com. Early in her career Mellon worked as an accessories editor at British Vogue, where she met Jimmy Choo.

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