John and his longtime friend and ex – partner, Peter Fox, go back to biblical times. In those days, such scriptural characters as Methuselah lived to be, quite literally, thousands of years old. John, himself, is thousands of years old and Peter Fox is, in fact, Methuselah. Before they founded Fox & Fluevog, in the ancient biblical age of 1970, they were shepherds. Actually, they worked at Sheppard's, a venerable Vancouver shoe emporium, albeit a tad on the conventional side. As you can imagine, John and Peter felt a wee bit constrained, selling brogues all day to businessmen in suits and servicing only the occasional hipster. When, one day, the miraculous happened, it was followed by the inevitable: an old warehouse full of turn – of – the – century footwear (men's & women's, in mint condition, no less) became available to buy at one ridiculously low price. In a nanosecond, John and Peter were out the door and into their own store, fully stocked with brand new fifty year old shoes that, in 1969, were right in style. Fox & Fluevog immediately became the very coolest place to treat the feet and has remained so ever since. Around 1980, Peter heard the siren song of New York City and moved there to open his own store, specializing in design of Ladies' (particularly wedding) shoes. John took over the business and built it into the multinational mega corporation it is today, along the way forging his undaunted reputation for the world's most distinctive shoes.
