MISFIT
A piece of cake
every little detail, but I think she was offering a range of fashion shoes for vegan ladies. It was certainly a very extensive range; the one female Dragon, Deborah Needham, lost no time in trying on some of the styles, but in the end no-one was prepared to invest. One Dragon remarked that she had chosen one of the most difficult commodities to offer the public. Which hit the nail bang on the head. If you really think grey hairs would
I
enhance your personal appearance, then go into the shoe business. There are very few other human enterprises that present so many possible stumbling blocks and pitfalls for the unwary. And I have met so many such unwary souls in my time.
They occasionally get in touch with us directly thanks to a mutual acquaintance but most of them appear on the stand at Fairs. The first one I met was a charming lady who had naïve little me fooled completely. She told me she was about to open a shop in a prosperous town in the South of England and wanted to buy some shoes for it. We spent a happy hour together, she selecting designs and me advising on colourways and noting the result of our deliberations on the order form. It was only when the time for jotting down the size roll arrived that the truth emerged. She asked for one pair of this, two pairs of that. For a moment I suspected she was a spy from a competitor, but decided even the dumbest competitor wouldn’t dream we would fall for that tactic. I explained that our minimum pairage was a dozen per style/colour (a rule very occasionally broken for special circumstances, of which more anon). Trying to salvage something from the ruin of my hopes, I suggested I call at her shop to see if we could work something out. It then transpired that she had no shop, as such. She had the money, or rather, Daddy had promised to put the money up, and was talking to an estate agent. I gently told her to get back to me when she had premises, which was the last I heard of her. I have since come across numerous hopefuls who think running a shoe shop is a piece of cake. When I ask them why they want to do something so foolish the answer is always along the lines of “I adore shoes”. Now I adore food but it has never crossed my mind, however short of things to occupy my time I may have been, to open a restaurant. A lot of people do exactly that every year and lose their shirts doing so.
was eating my dinner last night while watching Dragons’ Den when a lady appeared on the programme asking the Dragons to invest in her shoe business. Owing to my preoccupation with my shepherd’s pie I did not catch
They don’t even ask themselves why anyone would want to eat in their restaurant. What does exercise their minds is the décor and the menu. Considerations of profit and loss never enter their heads. Anyone in that trade will tell that that a love of food is the last thing they need. Fortunately not many hopefuls decide to turn their love of shoes into a
business, but enough do to make life interesting. As far as the lady who wanted to sell vegan shoes was concerned a
Dragon asked her if there were enough stylish female vegans to make her business pay. As I said, my dinner got in the way of my giving the matter my full attention, but I don’t think she had. What they implied, but did not say, was that for every pair she sold she would have to stock at last six; that she would be at the mercy of the weather and have to accept a high rate of returns if she sold by mail or internet purely on account of the shoes not fitting.
I have since come across numerous hopefuls who think running a shoe shop is a piece of cake. When I ask them why they want to do something so foolish the answer is always along the lines of “I adore shoes”. Now I adore food but it has never crossed my mind, however short of things to occupy my time I may have been, to open a restaurant.
They also did not mention the existence of many vegan shoes on the
market already, in the shape of those made of synthetic materials which leads me to another point. When considerations of ethics come into commerce you can be on very dangerous ground. This morning while I was still pondering the programme and its implications my eyes lit on my son’s ‘new’ sandals. My first thought was how clever the manufacturer were to make them out of synthetic fabrics which were much more rugged than leather, but then my brain kicked in. Synthetic fabric, made of what? Oil! Surely the sort of principled person who objects to wearing things made
out of dead animals might equally be leery of wearing anything made of that polluting stuff. The lady will most likely make a fortune from her vegan shoes and leave me and the Dragons with egg on our faces, but I’m keeping my cheque book buttoned up. I now turn, as promised, to the special circumstances when single pairs
They get hold of some money somehow and picture themselves as patron of a Michelin starred establishment, or at least earning a decent living without poisoning too many people. They have no idea of the regulations governing hygiene, hiring of staff,
safety of premises, where to buy the food etc, costs of rent, rates, insurance, lighting and heating and all those trivia.
12 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • SEPTEMBER 2010
can be made. The occasion was my wedding, the anniversary of which is coming up. A prominent shoemaker, with royal connections, kindly offered to make the bride’s shoes. Much impressed, she went to factory, chose a style, was measured, and in due course the shoes arrived, were tried on and admired by all. On the day though, they turned out to be just that bit too tight, and my wife suffered such agonies wearing them that I counted myself lucky to still have had her with me for our honeymoon. Who’d be in the shoe trade?
www.footweartoday.co.uk
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