Ten linen suits for a January wedding
A groom from Cannon Hill wanted a grey wool look. We talked him into an open weave linen blend instead, cut ten suits for the party and finished them two weeks before the date. Nobody sweated through the photos.
About us
Freemindadventures: the people behind the fitting bench
Freemindadventures started in a tiny South Brisbane shopfront in 2013 with one tape measure, a sewing machine and a stubborn belief that shoes should fit feet.
Twelve years later the tape measure is still there, the shop is bigger, and the rule has not changed. If it does not fit you properly, we either fix it or we tell you not to buy it. That is the whole business in one sentence, and everything below is just detail on how we try to keep that promise.
How it started
One bench, one machine, and a lot of returned shoes
Marcus spent eight years managing a running store before he opened his own place, and he watched the same scene play out every week. Someone would buy a shoe because the colour was right or because a review site liked it, wear it for a fortnight, then come back with blisters and a face that said they knew better.
He was also sick of watching people buy jackets that pulled across the back or trousers hemmed with a stapler by a chain store. So the first version of Freemindadventures was two things sharing one room: a shoe bench near the window and a cutting table along the back wall. Running gear one side, alterations the other, and a coffee machine that never worked properly.
The first year we fitted 260 people. Most of them were runners training for the Brisbane Marathon, plus a handful of blokes who needed a jacket for a wedding and had been told by three other shops that their shoulders were a problem. They are not a problem. They just need a pattern that starts from the right measurements.
Opened 2013
The short version
Twelve years, told in six lines
No grand turning points. Mostly small decisions that turned out to matter, made by people who kept showing up.
2013
Doors open on Grey Street with a shoe bench, a cutting table and a lease Marcus signed on a Tuesday he still describes as the most nervous day of his life.
2015
We buy the treadmill after one too many arguments about whether a customer overpronated. Turns out most of them did not, and a camera settled the question in four minutes.
2017
Anika joins from a physio practice and starts building the volume and width library that now runs to nine hundred foot records on paper.
2019
The wall comes down between the two halves of the shop. Runners and tailoring customers start talking to each other, which sounds odd until you notice they are all asking the same questions about fit.
2022
Our summer cloth range gets rebuilt from scratch after two wedding seasons of listening to grooms complain about heavy wool in February heat.
2025
Eleven people on staff, six trail shoe brands on the shelf, and a wait list for fittings in the two weeks before the marathon and the start of wedding season.
What we believe
Four habits we refuse to drop
These are not slogans on the wall. They are the things that decide how we spend a working day.
Measure first
Nobody gets sold a size
Sizes on labels are a rough guide drawn from averages. Your feet and shoulders are not averages, so we start with a tape and a camera before we mention a product.
Say no
We turn down work
If a cheaper shoe will do the job, we say so and sell you the cheaper shoe. Same with alterations. A garment that is not worth repairing gets told to you straight.
Fix, don't replace
Repairs come before sales
Resoling, patching and rehemming keep good things in use longer than they would last otherwise. It earns us less per customer and it is the right way to run a shop.
Admit mistakes
A wrong fit is our problem
If something we sold rubs, pinches or hangs wrong, bring it back. We refit it, adjust it or swap it. Making you live with a bad call is not a business model.
By the numbers
What twelve years of fitting actually adds up to
260
Fittings in our first year
9,400
Pairs of shoes fitted since 2013
1,180
Suits cut from scratch
900
Foot records on the shelf
11
People on the team
62%
Customers who come back within a year
The team
Who you will actually deal with
Small crew, no head office, no call centre. The person measuring your feet is the person who owns the shop.
Marcus Delroy Whitfield
Founder and head cutter
Opened the shop in 2013 and still cuts every suit pattern himself. Learned tailoring from his uncle in Toowoomba, then spent eight years running a shoe store before deciding to do both under one roof.
Anika Petrova
Head of footwear fitting
Came to us from a physio clinic in 2017 and built the volume and width library we still use every day. Runs the gait reviews and will happily tell you the shoe you walked in wanting is not right for you.
Greta Lindqvist
Studio manager
Keeps the booking diary, the cloth orders and the fitting bench running in the same direction. If you have ever called the studio and had someone track down a discontinued colour for you, that was Greta.
Sione Faletau
Alterations lead
Sixteen years on a sewing machine and a habit of finding the fault nobody else spotted. Handles everything from jacket shoulders to resoling trail shoes that have done one season too many on the Gap Creek trails.
Work we are proud of
Recent jobs, told without the sales pitch
Fitting a whole trail club in one weekend
A Brisbane trail group asked us to fit thirty two runners over a Saturday and Sunday. We ran six stations, videoed every stride and came back a month later to hear which pairs survived a wet winter. Nineteen of them.
A repair list for a local cafe crew
The staff at a West End cafe brought in four pairs of work trousers and six pairs of tired boots between them. We rehemmed, patched and resoled the lot for less than two new uniforms would have cost.
Philosophy
Fit is a skill, not a size chart
Sound strange in a shop where half the stock comes off a rack, but fit is the only part of this job we get judged on. Colour and brand are your call. Whether the thing works on your body is ours.
So we teach it. Every new staff member spends their first two months on the bench before they are allowed to advise anyone, learning to read a heel lock, spot a high instep and hear the small sigh someone makes when a jacket finally sits right across the shoulders. That sigh is the signal we train for.
- Two months of bench training before anyone advises you
- Written fit notes kept for every regular customer
- Refresher training twice a year, run in house
- No commission on sales, so nobody is pushed at nothing
The studio
Come and see where it happens
Old building, worn floorboards, and a bench that has been rebuilt three times because we keep moving it.
In their words
People who have been coming back for years
I have been fitted here four times over six years and never once been sold something I did not need. The last visit they told me my old trail shoes had another season in them and sent me home without a sale. That is why I keep coming back.
Three suits, all still in rotation years after the first one. Marcus remembered my shoulder situation from a fitting in 2019 without checking a file. My old tailor would never have pulled that off.
I brought my mother's 1970s coat in expecting a no. They patched the lining, fixed a seam and told me what to watch for over the next few years. It is back in the wardrobe doing its job.
Reading
Two guides that explain how we think
Both written by the people who do the fitting, for anyone weighing up a purchase anywhere.
Footwear
Choosing Trail Shoes That Actually Fit Your Feet
Volume, heel lock and toe room on a long descent, plus why the size printed on the box is the least useful number in the shop.
Tailoring
Picking Suit Fabric for Brisbane Heat
Our reasoning on summer cloth, half linings and the weight range we keep on the shelf for February weddings and court dates.
Come in, or write to us first
Booking a slot gets you the full attention of whoever fits you. Walk ins are welcome any day we are open, though Saturdays before a race weekend get busy and you may wait a while. If you would rather ask a question before you commit to anything, the contact form goes straight to the studio inbox and someone answers it the same day during opening hours.
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