He Was Fired One Week After Their Baby Was Born. So He Spent Every Dollar They Had — and Built Something Australia Fell in Love With.
The story behind By Lunas — the boot brand that started with a retrenchment notice, a sleeping newborn, and a husband who refused to give up.
There's a moment most of us never want to face. The phone call that changes everything. The words you never expect to hear — especially not in the week your world has just expanded, your heart has just cracked wide open, and you're still figuring out how to hold a baby without being terrified.
For Marco, the founder of By Lunas Australia, that call came seven days after his daughter was born.
Retrenched. Effective immediately.
He sat in the car outside the hospital and didn't go back in straight away. He just sat there, staring at the dashboard, doing the maths in his head. The mortgage. The nappies. The pram they'd just put on the credit card. His wife, exhausted and glowing all at once, waiting upstairs with their daughter, completely unaware that everything had just changed.
"I didn't tell her that night. I held our girl and just kept thinking — I have to figure this out. I have to build something that lasts."→ Discover the By Lunas Boot Collection
The Decision That Changed Everything
Marco had spent years in the corporate world, managing supply chains for a large retail group. He knew leather. He knew manufacturing. He'd spent time in workshops, understood quality, could tell the difference between a boot built to last and one built to look good for three months before falling apart.
So when the retrenchment payout landed in his account two weeks later, he did something his mother called "absolutely mad" and his wife called "either the bravest or the most terrifying thing I've ever witnessed."
He spent almost all of it on materials, tools, and a one-way flight to a small workshop in regional Victoria where a retired cobbler named Margaret had been making boots the old way for forty years.
"Margaret taught me everything," Marco says. "Proper arch support. How leather should feel after a hundred wears, not just on day one. Why the toe box matters more than people realise. She used to say — a boot that hurts is a boot that fails."
Marco spent three months in that workshop. His wife video-called every evening. His daughter grew from a sleepy newborn into a baby girl who reached for things, who laughed, who grabbed Marco's finger on screen and wouldn't let go.
He came home with twelve pairs of boots, calluses on his hands, and a brand new understanding of what comfortable footwear actually meant.
The Night They Almost Gave Up
The first six months were brutal. Sales were slow. They couldn't afford a proper website. Marco photographed the boots on their kitchen table with his wife's phone propped against a stack of cookbooks.
There was one Tuesday night — their daughter was about four months old, refusing to sleep, the kind of night that stretches on forever — when Marco's wife found him at the kitchen table at 2am, head in his hands, looking at an empty order dashboard.
"She put a coffee next to me and said — 'You didn't build these for them. You built them because they're good. Someone will notice.' The next morning, we had eleven orders. I still don't know what changed overnight. But we never looked back."
Word spread the way good things always do — quietly, then all at once. Women posted photos. They tagged friends. They came back for a second pair, then a third. Not because of an ad. Because the boots were simply, genuinely, extraordinary.
What Makes By Lunas Different
Marco never forgot Margaret's lesson. Every single pair of By Lunas boots is built around three things: genuine materials that age beautifully, proper orthopedic support that actually works, and a wide toe box that gives your feet the room they actually need.
No shortcuts. No trend-chasing. Just boots made the way boots should be made — with the kind of care that only comes from someone who had everything on the line.
"Every pair that goes out," Marco says, "I think about that Tuesday night. I think about what it means to make something you're genuinely proud of. I don't ever want to lose that."
"He didn't set out to build a boot company. He set out to build something for his family. The boots just turned out to be the thing." — Melissa Randall, Australian Living Weekly→ Shop the By Lunas Collection — Up to 80% Off
What Australian Women Are Saying
"I read the story behind these boots and cried a little, honestly. Then I ordered a pair. They arrived and I cried again — because they're the most comfortable boots I've ever worn in my life. Beautiful leather. Perfect fit. I've ordered two more pairs."
"My sister told me about By Lunas after she saw the story online. I was sceptical — I've been burned by 'handcrafted' claims before. But these boots are the real deal. The leather is gorgeous, the arch support is incredible, and I wear them every single day."
"I bought these for a walking holiday and they carried me through 14km days without a single blister. I can't say that about any other boot I've owned. The quality is just on another level. You can feel that someone actually cared when they made them."
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