In Blog 87 I talked about fatherhood again with the birth of Jennifer. In this blog I wanted to talk about the next big brand.

So the competitive landscape was pretty intense in the early 90’s. There seemed to be a “Sale” every Wednesday for some retailers and even naming the event after a flower? Regardless I was searching for a new item or brand that I could grow. I made it a habit of looking at the hot sellers reports for the company.

One style that stuck out was the “Reseda” from Moda Spana. It was a relatively new brand to the market and was made in China. At this time China wasn’t the player it is today surpassing 70% of the footwear supply. I decided to call the company and ended up talking to the President whose name was Rick.

The Call

Rick explained how China was growing into a future powerhouse and the factories there utilized a lot of technology used in Italy, Spain and Brazil. The brand had very stylish items and boasted sizes up to 13 in a lot of the styles. Wide & Narrow widths were also available.

This could be big I thought. Only one style is getting noticed out there but they have a whole line of great items and sizes too. I set up a meeting with Rick the next week.

Rick was a great guy to work with, he listened to what I was trying to do and said they could probably add additional widths and sizes if we could get it going. He showed me how he goes about building the line with 100’s of pictures he’d take from all his travels around the globe. This guy is good. We developed a great friendship and still are close friends to this day.

There were other brands that were on sale every other week so I thought this could be a great opportunity. I decided to bring in a table of items which was about 6-10 different styles in a few colors each.

The brand landed a few weeks later and the Reseda was already one of my top sellers. I bought “All” the styles they had available in just the sizes over 10 to offer a better mix of selection for these hard to find sizes. I would put a size 4 on the table in a left and a size 13 in the right to show the different sizes we carried.

It was becoming a huge success for us…

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” —Mary Lou Cook