From University Project to First 100 Customers: How Compound Footwear Bootstrapped Into Motorsport

Bottom Line Up Front: Alex Witty turned race tire waste into a footwear brand by bootstrapping with £500, storing 500 tires in a barn, and leveraging guerrilla marketing at F1 events. His first 100 customers came from clothing pre-sales, a failed Kickstarter that actually saved the business, and a pop-up event that capitalised on F1-75's location without paying for official association.

Most motorsport startups begin with a pitch deck and investor meetings.

Alex Witty began with 500 Pirelli tires in a falling-down horse barn.

The 23-year-old founder of Compound Footwear has spent the past two years turning GT race tires into sneakers, navigating manufacturing disasters in Portugal, and somehow convincing Pierre Gasly and Naomi Schiff to wear his products without paying them a penny.

His journey from university project to first 100 paying customers reveals what actually works when you have no money, no connections, and an idea that sounds slightly insane.

The £500 That Changed Everything

Witty didn't start with venture capital.

He started with a £500 grant from Santander through his university.

"At the time it was amazing," Alex explained. "It allowed me to fix my camera and my Mac and go to Berlin to visit a 3D printing shoe company."

But the money wasn't the real value.

"Maybe the more important thing I got was that endorsement from a big player like Santander to be like, okay, this looks cool. We'll put a bit of money towards it."

That validation matters when you're battling imposter syndrome as a 21-year-old trying to break into an industry known for eating small players alive.

"As any founder that is bootstrapping, you might get smacked down 30 times, but if you can shrug that off and really cherish that one win and use that as your fuel. That's what's kept me going."

The Tire Problem Nobody Asked For

1.5 billion road tires go to waste every year.

22 billion shoes go to landfill annually.

Over 600,000 race tires get used in motorsport.

Alex saw these numbers during his final university project and thought he could solve multiple problems simultaneously. The concept earned him his best academic grade ever and interest from the university to push it further.

But having an idea and having a product are entirely different challenges.

Sourcing Rubber Without Breaking Into Pirelli's Depot

Getting race tires required approaching multiple tire manufacturers with a proposition that probably sounded absurd.

"We approached many, many different tire companies, some UK based, some Italian, some American, some French, and just proposed what we were doing."

Four out of five responded positively, though skeptically.

The challenge was F1 tires specifically. Pirelli's compounds are locked down—their "secret sauce" that keeps them competitive. Even surplus tires that never raced get destroyed to protect the formula.

The solution came through Pirelli's GT program.

"What we were given were McLaren and also Ferrari Pirelli GT tires. They said if you can do this, if you can make it work with this, the compounds are somewhat similar in the process."

GT tires could be bought off the shelf, eliminating any risk of compound leaks. Alex received roughly 500 expired McLaren and Ferrari GT tires to work with.

Each tire yields approximately 20 pairs of shoes.

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The Barn Storage Solution

When 500 race tires need a home and you don't have a warehouse, you get creative.

"We found a barn in like an hour and a half drive that a friend of ours was sort of operating. And we stored 500 lovely Pirelli brand new shiny tires in a sort of falling down old horse barn."

The delivery day became its own adventure.

"I remember the big delivery truck coming down this country road, it was a misty, awful day, sort of 6.30 in the morning, awful weather, all these horses like neighing and sort of sneezing around us, it's cold, kind of wet, this massive truck comes down and we spent about two and a half hours unloading by hand."

The tires stayed in that barn for about a year while Alex slowly sent them to a UK facility that breaks rubber down into powder, separating out the metal and canvas.

"That was a bit of an expensive process, so we could only do so many tires at a time."

The Portuguese Manufacturing Disaster

Alex raised approximately £35,000 through various small grants to fund initial manufacturing.

Everyone told him to go to China.

"The irony of having a really sustainable recycled product and then making it maybe as far away as you possibly could could be a problem."

He chose Portugal instead, working with manufacturers who had never dealt with tire rubber in shoe soles before.

Two years of R&D followed, trying to figure out how to integrate the rubber properly.

When they finally produced samples, something felt wrong.

"We eventually figured it out. Then we felt that our shoe manufacturer at the time was maybe lying to us because we couldn't see any black, any speckles, any nothing in the soles. They were just beautifully white."

The money was already paid. The manufacturers guaranteed the rubber was there.

Alex pressed forward to a Kickstarter campaign.

The Failed Kickstarter That Saved The Business

October 2023 was supposed to be the launch month.

Alex was ill, on painkillers, doing every radio show and TV appearance he could secure. Zach Lower shot content at Silverstone for the campaign.

Then Alex made a critical error in his delirious state.

"It came to putting in the amount of money we needed for the Kickstarter. And I got greedy. And I put $50,000 instead of $10,000, which would have been enough to take us through in complete manufacturing."

They raised about $15,000.

Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. Missing the target meant getting zero.

"If I stuck to plan A and put $10k, we would have got the $15k."

Looking back, Alex considers it a blessing.

"I'm happy that it went bad for Kickstarter, because the shoe, the quality of the shoe then, compared to what it is now, is so drastically different. I'm happy that the core customers we had have received these top quality ones instead of my first attempt."

The Portuguese manufacturers weren't the right fit. A meeting over lunch made that clear.

"I had all these drawings and all the tech packs and saying, this is the shoe. We want it to look like this. Why does it look like this? And they said, Alex, if you do that, you'll end up making a sneaker."

Alex nearly spat out his food.

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do. We've been working with each other for a year. How do you not know this?"

He found new manufacturing partners. The current shoes are significantly better quality.

Building Audience Through Clothing

Shoes take time. Manufacturing is complex. R&D is expensive.

Alex needed revenue and audience-building while solving the shoe problem.

The solution was clothing—hoodies, t-shirts, printed to order through a Bristol facility.

"We spent sort of a year marketing a lot of clothing. It helped with some of our brand trips. And we would just try and build a bit of brand reputation through our designs and doing things slightly differently."

This strategy built a following before the main product existed.

It also created the foundation for pre-orders when shoes finally arrived.

The Pierre Gasly and Naomi Schiff Connection

Alex's partnership strategy involved spending £200 on products and nice packaging, going to a Silverstone event, and hoping Pierre Gasly and Naomi Schiff would be there.

They were.

"It was lucky, but you have to be ready to capitalize on your luck, and that's what that small bit of money was helpful for."

The relationship is entirely in-kind—no money changes hands.

"It felt very personal, very separated from any sort of brand deals. I think we were fortunate that those two in question, both Naomi and Pierre, it seems like they liked what Compound was doing."

Pierre wears the products frequently. So does Naomi and her husband Alexandre Dedieu.

"I think it was a tier above the fridge drawing thing. I think they did actually like it because Pierre does seem to wear it quite a lot."

The irony isn't lost on Alex.

"These brands that are coming in to sponsor these drivers, you're getting it almost from a very just, I love the product. I'm just going to wear it naturally, which is sometimes even above just a regular partnership."

He's getting ambassador-level promotion without paying ambassador rates.

The Creative Network Advantage

Brighton University gave Alex access to talented creatives who believed in the project enough to work for access and product.

Zach Lower came to Silverstone at his own expense for the Kickstarter shoot.

Fergus Hughes, a videographer from uni, let Alex crash on his floor in King's Cross while they filmed and edited.

"I would want to go to London, crash at his place, and then edit. We would film, I would sleep on his floor, we would edit, the next day go out, book a studio for like 30 quid for like an hour and just do everything and then edit again."

Alex's pitch to creatives was consistent: minimal payment but access to F1 cars, Pirelli tires, and product.

"I can't offer much. I certainly can't pay you. But we've got access to an F1 car or we've got access to all these Pirelli tires. You're an F1 fan. Do you want to do something?"

The approach worked because it was genuine.

"I knew from day one that I wanted a very professional output with my creative direction. I really wanted to stay away from just posting iPhone videos or throwaway stuff."

The F1-75 Guerrilla Marketing Play

February marked the critical moment for building pre-order volume.

Alex partnered with Esses Magazine for a pop-up event in North Greenwich—80 feet by 50 feet of empty concrete space directly opposite the O2 Arena.

F1-75, the major F1 fan event, would be happening 100 yards away in a different building.

"We had a tip off from a good friend of mine, a good source in the community for the date of when F-175 was going to be. And I trusted them and thought, OK, there's an opportunity here to really maybe get some people."

The venue had no infrastructure—no internet, terrible lighting, no sound system.

They had to build everything from scratch.

The centerpiece was an Ayrton Senna Tolman F1 car out front.

Alex's father worked for Tolman with Senna in the early 80s and knew someone who owned one of the cars.

"I paid for the delivery. I think it was 800 quid to load it into a van or something. But I was like, this is going to be serious."

It pulled people in organically.

"I think people thought it might have been connected in some way. We never said it was because the last thing we want to do is get sued."

The gamble worked.

"We had about high 900s, maybe even kissing a thousand people coming to the event throughout the evening."

They secured 45 shoe pre-orders that day.

The marketing material shot at the event drove additional orders over the following months.

The First 100 Customers

Total pre-orders reached 100 by late August.

The customer acquisition cost was essentially the pop-up event expense plus ongoing content creation and clothing sales that built the audience.

No paid advertising or any influencer fees beyond product gifting. The first customer who ordered in February had to wait six months for delivery.

The 100th customer waited about a week."It's quite unfair, but that is how the pre-orders go."

What This Means Practically

For Brand Sponsors:

Look for founders who demonstrate resourcefulness over resources. Alex secured high-value partnerships with F1 drivers by offering authentic product they actually wanted to wear. Sometimes the best ambassadors are the ones who genuinely connect with your brand story.

Consider supporting emerging brands at the guerrilla marketing stage. Alex's pop-up strategy created massive exposure for minimal investment. Brands entering motorsport could learn from this approach rather than immediately jumping to six-figure team sponsorships.

For Emerging Properties:

Clothing can bootstrap audience and revenue while developing complex products. Alex used print-on-demand apparel to build brand recognition and cash flow during two years of shoe R&D. This created a customer base ready to pre-order when the main product launched.

Location-based guerrilla marketing works when executed properly. Alex's F1-75 strategy created natural traffic without official association fees. The key was proximity to the main event plus a compelling reason to enter (the Senna F1 car).

Creative partnerships can replace budget. Alex built professional content by offering access and product to talented creatives rather than paying day rates. His network from Brighton University became his production team.

For Rights Holders:

Small grants provide disproportionate validation. Santander's £500 mattered more for the endorsement than the money. Rights holders sitting on driver development programs or startup accelerators should consider how small amounts of support create outsized psychological fuel for founders battling imposter syndrome.

The Road Forward

Alex needs volume now. The methodology is simple: sell 200 units, then 400, then scale from there.

He's pursuing angel investment to move operations to London and build a proper team. Current target is approximately £500,000 to establish infrastructure and expand product lines.

A running shoe is in development for track-day applications. Recycled leather jackets made from tire rubber are being explored. Coffee tables made from tire carcasses are already prototyped in his house.

The core business model remains: turn motorsport waste into premium products, build audience through authentic partnerships, and scale systematically as manufacturing capacity allows.

Everything compounds from those first 100 customers who believed a 23-year-old with tires in a barn could actually deliver.

The question isn't whether motorsport needs another shoe brand. It's whether you're willing to do the actual work—storing tires in barns, sleeping on floors, building pop-up events from scratch—when the infrastructure doesn't exist yet.