Ellen Simes of Springfield creates shoe-selling website

The year-old site features from 3,500 to 4,000 shoes for sale at any given time and garners 800-or-so unique visitors each day.

SPRINGFIELD – If you don’t know Manolo Blahnik from Buster Brown, Ellen F. Simes’ website might not be for you.

Likewise, if you think owning a pair of mules would require a pasture, If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit is not the best fit for you.

But if, like Simes, your soul yearns for soles, her Springfield-based website where footwear fans can buy, sell and swap is the coolest thing since Michael Kors, Blahnik, Salvatore Ferragamo or many other high-end shoe designers whose creations come her way.

The year-old site features from 3,500 to 4,000 shoes for sale at any given time and garners 800-or-so unique visitors each day. Most sellers pay a $1 flat fee for each listing whether the auction the shoes, sell for a flat price or chose to swap those pumps for that must-have pair of ballet flats. Some sellers chose to pay Simes a percentage of the auction price.

Simes’ job, besides owning the site, is to talk it up on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, blog about it and make sure fashion and shoe bloggers are talking it up as well.

“I am a shoe addict,” she admits. “Shoes,” she said, “just make the whole outfit. I could wear what I’m wearing today with a pair of flip-flops and be casual. But with a pair of high-heels I’m dressed up. I would walk differently I would carry myself differently and I would act differently.”

Unfortunately for Simes, she wears a 6 1/2 double-wide.

“It can be a challenging size for a woman to fit,” she said.

So she ended up on a years-long quest to find attractive shoes that would fit her.

“Women have shoes that are their two-hour shoes. That’s what they wear out to dinner just to sit there and look fabulous. But, they can’t wear them for very long. Then, women have shoes they might be able to wear for a whole night out. Then, they have shoes that they wear every day.”

All of that searching resulted in Simes amassing a collection of 300 pairs of shoes ranging from Ferragamo high heels with red lacquered soles to a pair of rubber boots with multicolored polka dots.

The collection nearly fills a room in her Forest Park home. Every day, shoes are arrayed on the floor in pairs. She keeps the special shoes in clear plastic food tubs stacked chest high.

She tried selling shoes at flea markets and on eBay. A pair of women’s shoes is sold on eBay every eight seconds.

“But eBay is so complicated. I have an advanced degree, and I couldn’t figure it out,” Simes, a pharmacist, said.

Plus eBay charges sellers not just to post an item, but by the headline and by the photo. The auction site is also filled with more than just shoes

“Because they want you to spend more money, they’ll show you the other stuff, they’ll try to sell you the jeans and the dress that might go with the shoes,” she said. “I’m just focused on the shoes.”

A search of If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit reveals a wide variety, with some shoes going for less than $50 a pair up to the New Declic python pump from Christian Louboutin at $1,095.

Some are new, Simes said. Some shoe or sporting goods stores sell overstocks and close outs on the site. One vendor on the site offers men’s Red Wing hiking boots and work shoes at discount prices.

The site’s target demographic is women age 18 to 45, but, Simes said, the site features men’s shoes as well.

Men, though, are less likely to resell the high-end dress shoes they buy, instead choosing to wear them until they wear out, she noted.

Simes said she has to be on the lookout for fakes. She red flags sellers who list shoes too cheap, usually a dead giveaway of a knockoff. She also checks to make sure the submitted photo was taken with a digital camera , not lifted from a catalog or website.

“I’ll ask sellers for more photos,” she said. “I’ll also get photos of the boxes and the dust bags that shoes come in . If the logos aren’t authentic on those things you can usually tell.”

Simes’ face lit up when she was asked about he oldest pair to be listed on the site. “Oh, I wanted them,” she said. “They were a pair of rhinestone sling-back pumps from the 1960s. They had rhinestones all over the back and along the soles. They were fabulous.”