Entrepreneur
Monika interviewed on alixrose.com
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Alix Rose, a Seattle based fashion blogger. Here are some excerpts from her post, Monika Desai, CEO of Sole Envie - on how her company will change the way women shop for shoes. Visit alixrose.com for the full interview.
From the post:
I love the idea of being able to customize a pair of shoes. I know your passion for it comes from a personal place, but what exactly motivated you to make it into a career move?
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I think that started when I was a kid and was living in Europe. Whenever my dad came back from business trips to the States he would bring back boxes of my favorite candy, which I would promptly turn around and sell to my American school classmates at a 100% mark-up instead of eating them myself! I kept the idea of starting my own business in the back of my mind and then a few years ago when I was having a pair of custom shoes made for my wedding I got the idea for Sole Envie. I really enjoyed the experience of designing my own shoe - choosing my style and materials and seeing my design come to life. The light went on that this would be a great idea for a business. I did some research and discovered that no other companies were offering custom shoes and for good reason - it’s not the easiest business to get off the ground. I didn’t come from a footwear background so I took some shoemaking classes, started networking, connected with some key people in the space and got to work. 9 months later I had developed my first collection, put on a fashion show and was invited to speak at a mass customization conference at MIT. Since then I’ve been working on setting up the manufacturing side of Sole Envie.
You expressed in wanting your online shoe factory to be more than just a shoe store but a community. Why and how would you go about doing that?
Shopping for women is a very social experience. We want customers to not only be able to design their own shoes, but have a place to share them with their friends and other fashion enthusiasts. Who doesn’t love creating something new and getting compliments from their friends? At Sole Envie customers will be able to rate and comment on each other’s shoe designs, participate in shoe design contests, and have a say on new product offerings. We’re also making it easy for them to share and monetize their designs on other social networks such as Facebook and StyleHive. We think we’ll be able to build a loyal following and strong brand by engaging and listening to our community.
Is there anything you would like to say to people who are looking into starting their own company, any words of advice?
Disclosure: I don’t always follow my own advice, but here are a few tips that I try to put into practice:
1) Passion. You need to have a vision and keep your eye on the big picture. At the end of the day this is what’s going to keep you going when things get tough.
2) Trust your instincts. Believe in yourself and treat mistakes as learning experiences. I struggle with this one everyday. I want everything to be perfect from the beginning and that sometimes causes me to end up with analysis paralysis.
3) Be flexible. Be open to making changes to your vision. Most likely your business will end up being a lot different than what you initially envisioned and that’s o.k. You need to be able to roll with it.
4) Seek advice. Get a mentor who knows your industry and is willing to invest time with you and guide you. This will go a long way and could open a lot of doors for you.
5) Don’t operate in a tunnel. Talk to as many people in the industry and across various disciplines as you can even if they just don’t get it (and trust me you will come across a lot of people like that and it’ll irk you to no end). It’s painful but you need to learn to listen to stuff you don’t want to hear. Let people poke holes. If nothing else it’ll make your future pitches that much stronger because chances are if one person is questioning you about something, others will too. As an entrepreneur you should expect to spend a lot of time “selling” your business whether it’s to manufacturers, suppliers, investors or customers.
6) Get structured. Formalize your company as soon as possible. Choose a business entity, form a board, spell out ownership and job responsibilities. This will help establish in your mind as well as others that you are a “real” company. There are also potential tax benefits to forming an entity as soon as possible.
7) Network, network, network and make sure you follow up with everyone you network with. You can’t do too much of this. I couldn’t have gotten this far without help from all the people I’ve met along the way. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to go out of their way to help you.
Be resourceful. If you are self-funded and looking for capital (like Sole Envie is right now) you may not have the money to pay for legal fees, employees, marketers, etc. That shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your goals. See if your lawyer is willing to defer fees till you get funding or revenue, hire an intern, trade services, or look for people willing to work for sweat equity. It takes effort to find people, but it can be done.
To read the rest of the interview, visit alixrose.com.
Posted by Monika on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | Entrepreneur, Fashion & Style, Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Crowdsourcing + RYZ = Great Sneakers
Crowdsourcing has been on my mind a lot lately so when Rob Langstaff of RYZwear.com mentioned he was going to be in Boston this week, I was excited to meet up with him for a drink at the Onyx in Boston’s North End. Rob, the former president of Adidas America and Adidas Japan, recently took the plunge to found RYZ, a Portland based start-up that produces community-designed shoes. For those familiar with Threadless, the “demi-gods” of t-shirt crowdsourcing, RYZ is the “Threadless” of sneakers. RYZ runs regular contests where they invite their online community to contribute designs. Aspiring designers download a template, add their designs and upload them to the site where RYZ then turns them into 3D models. People vote on their favorites and the winning design gets produced and sold.
"Cables" by Peter Van Dam (AKA "Flew the Coop") has a clean feel and is a very wearable design
Rob is a very affable guy and is clearly passionate about what he does - we had A LOT to talk about. We immediately jumped right into a conversation and it was a while before we realized that we hadn’t formally introduced ourselves. First thing we had to set straight was that Eric WASN’T the guy in my “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout shoes” t-shirt (although I think he quickly figured that out when he saw Eric)! Rob gave us an update on his progress and it was really good to see RYZ, an early stage company that is just a few months ahead of us, already having success in this space. While our business models and markets are a little different we’re both web 2.0 footwear companies centered around self-expression and user-centered innovation. The footwear is really just our medium for enabling users to express themselves. Being what would be considered nontraditional companies in the industry, we share a lot of the same strategies and manufacturing challenges. Having already launched, Rob was able to validate a few of our forecasting assumptions and give us some good advice.
Jason Ehlers (AKA Caveman) designed "The Creep" while serving time for graffiti charges.
Rob had a duffel bag full of sneakers and we got to see some of them up close. Looking at the shoes, it’s clear that they’ve put a lot of time and thought into the design at RYZ. The silhouettes are your classic canvas high-tops but they have some really nice elements that set them apart. Some distinguishing features are the crystal outsoles that allow for printing a graphic on the bottom of the shoe (a really cool detail), the clear plastic guards on the toes that protect the designs from rubbing off, the comfortable pigskin and antimicrobial linings and the elastic connector between the tongue and the body that allows for a nice fit. But of course this thoughtfully designed white high-top is just the stage for the main feature - the art.
Since launching in June, RYZ has had 7 contests and produced 9 winnings designs, attracting artists and participants from all over the world (half of Ryz’s orders come from overseas) and all walks of life. The artwork is just as diverse too. Rob showed us some of the winners. One of my favorites was designed by prolific graffiti artist Jason Ehlers who goes by the name Caveman. I loved hearing the story about how Caveman created his winning design “The Creep” while serving time in prison after being busted for graffiti charges. ”The Creep” is an incredibly detailed design described as a “metaphorical illustration of the existence of a greater all-seeing eye. ”
"Warhawk" - inspired by pinup girls and warplanes was designed by Australian designer, Leon Ryan
Rob talked excitedly about how Caveman was able to redirect his passion for graffiti towards shoes (instead of buildings and bridges) and how RYZ has been able to be a part of that. Warhawk, another favorite, was inspired by pinup girls and war planes from the 1940s (Eric thought the bomb on the sole was cool). The designer, Leon Ryan is a self described “aficionado, jet pilot, illustrator, designer, firefighter and toreador” graphic artist from Australia. “Cables” designed by fashion designer, Peter Van Dam, is a more subdued but still excellent design that features telephone power lines against a white background. The black and white palette makes the shoe very versatile and wearable and the birds on the sole are a nice accent.
To me these shoes are works of art - so nice that I’d be afraid to wear them in fear of making them dirty. It’s almost like they belong on a mantelpiece. At $99 though, you’re truly getting a bargain on wearable art and I’d be tempted to buy 2 pairs - one for wearing and one for displaying!
RYZ design template
While the RYZ design contests are open to anyone, the bar to entry is high from the standpoint that designs must be submitted using Illustrator or Photoshop. Typically if you’re proficient with these tools you’ve got some artistic talent. This inadvertently serves as a filter to keep the quality of artwork high. With crowdsourcing you always run the risk that noone is going to submit anything good so by raising the bar to entry you’re increasing the odds that you’re going to get a lot of high quality designs. And the shoes we saw reflected that.
Rob talked about how he wants to de-emphasize RYZ as a label and showcase the contributing designers instead (which is how Sole Envie is positioning itself as well). I really like what he wrote on his Welcome to RYZ company blog post. “At RYZ we’ve set out to create a “people’s brand - a community of designers, sneakerheads and anyone that cares enough about art, fashion or sneakers to speak up. Together we’ll create sneakers that are designed and chosen, not by some big, faceless corporation, but by you. Think of RYZ as a stage for designers to showcase their creativity and a forum for people to define what great sneaker design means. In other words, we just make comfortable sneakers – the rest is up to you.” I think RYZ does a great job of living up to this. The winning designers not only receive $1000 in cash but they also share the revenue by receiving $1 in royalty for every pair that gets sold. Perhaps even more rewarding than the cash is the recognition and exposure they receive for their work. Besides being featured on the RYZ site, their story also get showcased on the hang tags accompanying the sneakers which are a great touch.
This kind of web enabled collaboration is still a new phenomenon and companies have been using it in different ways. Startups such as RYZ have based their entire business models around harnessing the crowd to design and drive what gets produced whereas other companies look at crowdsourcing as just another way to harvest new ideas or innovations, hear customer feedback, or build brand loyalty and identification through contests and promotions. The Netflix Prize contest that will award 1 million dollars to anyone who can come up with a way to improve the accuracy of their movie recommendation engine, Cinematch, by 10% is a good example of the latter.
Crowdsourcing is still in the early adopter stage and it remains to be seen whether it can be a sustainable business model for products more complex than t-shirts. With Rob Langstaff at its helm, I think RYZ has a good shot of capturing the market and I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about them in the future.
Posted by Monika on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | Entrepreneur, Mass Customization, crowdsourcing | 1 Comment
Levi’s made MOM JEANS
Frank Piller, who I consider the Guru of Mass Customization gave a great talk that included some insight into why the Levi’s Original Spin (fka Personal Pair) program failed (something that people never fail to remind me about when I tell them about Sole Envie).
If you remember in the late 90’s you could actually get a pair of Levi’s jeans customized to your fit. For women this was a dream come true. With women and their wide 
range of hips, thighs, waists and everything else that you have to stuff into a pair of jeans it’s almost impossible to find something off the rack. Levi’s had what should have been a perfect approach: measure the body in the store and make the jeans to a perfect fit. But it failed? Why? Not because they didn’t have customers.
- Levi’s never moved this beyond the pilot phase. They never considered the Original Spin program to be a main line of business and never invested the infrastructure and training to help it grow beyond a PR gimmick.
- In a cost cutting effort, Levi’s, perhaps a bit short-sighted, closed the US factory that was making the custom jeans.
- Levi’s didn’t provide an enriching experience for their customers. You didn’t feel special while getting your jeans fitted and they never followed up with customers for repeat orders. Read more about Frank’s thoughts on Levi’s Original Spin.
Another good point Frank made about mass customization programs within larger corporations (like the Levi’s one!) is that support for the MC program needs to come from the top.
Without the support of top managment, it is unlikely that you will get the resources or focus that you need to be successful. A good mass customization program is going to require its own set of processes and ways of doing things.
Luckily Sole Envie will suffer no such problems. As CEO, I hereby declare we’re all about customization! One challenge down, 99 to go!
Note: I did a bit of in-depth research on the Levis Original Spin program and I think I found out the REAL reason that they failed. They were making !!MOM JEANS!!.
Posted by Monika on Monday, November 17th, 2008 | Entrepreneur, Mass Customization | No Comments
MIT Smart Customization Seminar Recap
Last week 60 executives, academics and entrepreneurs gathered for the 2 day MIT Smart Customization Seminar held at the Faculty Club at the Sloan School. Many thanks to the seminar chairs Frank Piller and William Mitchell for putting together this excellent gathering.
Monika Desai at the SMART Customization Seminar
The seminar pulled together a diverse group ranging from well known researchers and scholars such as Joseph Pine (and here) and William Mitchell to executives from a wide range of industries. Nike, M&Ms, Adidas, Avery, Keds, Zazzle and Spreadshirt were just a few of the participants. The focus was on sharing success stories, challenges, trends and research regarding implementing mass customization strategies and technologies in both the business to consumer and business to business sectors.
Over the next few posts, I’ll be recapping some of the highlights. Here goes!
Posted by Monika on Monday, November 17th, 2008 | Entrepreneur, Mass Customization | No Comments
“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout shoes” - A women’s perspective on raising start up capital in a male dominated industry
I attended a networking event the other night called “Networking for Fundraising Success” organized by The Capital Network (TCN) and New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA). The event brought together the area’s top entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel Investors and strategic partners for an evening of networking.
My husband and I try to attend as many of these networking events as possible as it’s a great opportunity to meet potential investors. Since Sole Envie is going to be seeking funding in the near future, we’re trying to build a name for ourselves cause everyone knows that the best way to meet potential investors is through a personal introduction - an investor is going to be much more likely to invest in people they know. These events are also a great way to meet potential strategic partners and a way for us to practice and finesse our elevator pitch.
Click here to buy my "Don't know nothing about shoes!" t-shirt that I designed at Zazzle.com
At these events, they conveniently have venture and angel investors wear a name badge with a green sticker on it (green = $$$$) so you know who to talk to. Entrepreneurs wear yellow stickers. You can always tell an investor by the large group of people standing around them. (I’d really love to know what the combined net worth of everyone in that room is). I have to admit these events are a little hard to navigate if you’re not a particularly pushy person. You can be in the middle of a great conversation with someone (usually an investor) and another entrepreneur will just shamelessly push their way though and interrupt your conversation mid-sentence to introduce themselves. I guess all the good manners that were instilled in me by my parents don’t apply in the fundraising world and I’d better throw them out the window if I want to get anywhere. Cause come on, let’s face it, 2 months from now when I’m in a boardroom presenting my business plan to an investor, they’re not going to remember me for my manners- no matter how winsome they are.
The event also got me thinking about gender bias and what it’s like to be a woman pitching a business model that merges fashion with technology to venture or angel investors who are all typically men. These events tend to be focused around the tech and bio-tech industries of Boston’s 128 corridor which means that I’m usually one of a handful of women in the room, one of few consumer driven companies, and most definitely the only fashion related company. You may ask what is a fashion company doing at a tech oriented event? While Sole Envie is a custom shoe company for women, we’re also an internet based start-up focused around user-generated content (shoes!) that is powered entirely by technology (or at least one day we will be) - much like Amazon or even Cafe Press. In the end, we’re all moving physical goods but without state of the art technology we couldn’t do what we do. Sole Envie’s success is going to be based upon successfully developing a powerful interactive configurator (for designing shoes), a social network (think Facebook like features) and a dynamic online community. This dependence on technology will extend into our back-end supply chain and logistics systems.
At these events there are always one or two men who will invariably throw their hands up and say in a somewhat condescending tone, “I don’t know anything about shoes” as I’m pitching the model - before I even have a chance to describe the concept. It’s like they hear the words “women” and “shoes” and their brain just shuts down. I want to say to them, “oh you don’t wear shoes?” or “does your mom still dress you then?” but I can’t of course and instead I have to find analogies they can relate to such as “It’s like “Dell” for shoes except instead of letting people design their computers, we’re letting them design shoes. Shoes - a 40 BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY!
Why don’t they ask “why custom shoes?” Or ask about our our revenue model, our forecasted sales or even our exit strategy? Why not ask about other parallels in the Mass Customization space that have become successful? Zazzle.com for instance. Zazzle is an online marketplace for customized products such as custom t-shirts, postage and most recently custom Keds, that attracts about 2 million visitors a month. Their estimated revenue is projected to top $80 million this year. I’m sure Ram Shriram (Google’s founding board member and one of Google’s earliest investors) didn’t say to the folks at Zazzle, “I don’t know anything about t-shirts or mugs” when his venture firm Sherpalo Ventures decided to fund them for 16 million dollars in Series A equity funding a few years ago. Forget Mass customization companies…what about other online shoe companies? Zappos for instance. They sell shoes. Last I checked Zappos was on track to top 1 billion in sales revenue this year. Would these men say “I don’t know anything about shoes” if they were to meet Tony Hsieh, the current CEO of Zappos?
As a woman, if you even bring up the word “shoes” in front of a man, they just assume the reason you are starting a shoe company is because you’re just obsessed with shoes. Take the one investor, for example, who kept proudly proclaiming to me that he was a “technical geek” and just assumed (without asking me my background) that because I was a woman starting a shoe company I couldn’t possibly be a “technical geek” too. My husband is the co-founder and CTO of Sole Envie. If this guy had been talking to my husband instead of me, would he have immediately assumed that because Eric was starting a woman’s shoe company he wasn’t a “technical geek”? I can assure you that my husband is the biggest “technical geek” I know! I love fashion, but that’s not the reason I started Sole Envie. I started Sole Envie because I wanted to start an internet-based company and I have a fascination for the concept of user-generated content and mass customization. Knowing what I know about the market and my own experiences with custom shoes, shoes just seemed to have a lot of potential. To me, figuring out what it takes to implement mass customization from a user-interface and back-end supply chain/logistical standpoint is as interesting to me as the actual shoes.
And it’s not just the men at these events. It’s friends, family and other women too. I’m sure when people hear what I’m doing they think, “Monika and her little shoe business” or they think of this as a hobby I run out of my basement (ok I admit, I work from my kitchen table - usually in my pajamas). Heck even my mom unconsciously does it. The other day my mom was talking to some relatives who wanted to come to Boston but could only meet during the work day and my mom said “Oh you should call Monika. She doesn’t work.” Of course I know my mom and I know she didn’t mean it that way. What she really meant to say was that I had a flexible schedule, but I can’t help thinking that if it were my brother and he was starting a company revolving around the next big thing in renewable energy, things may have come out a little differently.
It’s not all bad though. In fact I find the whole thing kind of amusing. Most people are very open minded and the ones that aren’t usually come around and get excited about Sole Envie’s potential once I’ve told them a little more. As an entrepreneur, especially in the relatively uncharted area of Mass Customization, you spend 1/4 of your time actually moving your company along and the rest of your time educating and convincing people about your concept. It’s all part of the game and either you learn how to play or you get out! I can’t wait till the day I’m the one wearing the green sticker in the room and I have a group of men crowding around me and I can say to them, “I don’t know anything about football, NEXT!”
Posted by Monika on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 | Entrepreneur, Mass Customization | No Comments
Hello World!
My name is Monika Desai and I’m the founder and CEO of a start-up called Sole Envie, a “soon to be launched” online social shopping community and e-commerce site that provides women with the opportunity to co-design and purchase their own, one of a kind, customized fashion shoes and share their designs with a community of fashion enthusiasts.
When the Sole Envie site officially launches, it will feature a state of the art interactive configurator that will provide customers with the unique shopping experience of building a shoe. By mixing and matching a wide assortment of design elements (leather and fabrics, styles, heels, trims and accessories) customers will be able to design shoes that express their own personal sense of style.
While having the opportunity to create and purchase customized shoes is pretty cool, Sole Envie will be much more than just an e-commerce site or a footwear company. Our goal is to develop a rich and thriving social network and community where shoe lovers can congregate, inspire and express themselves by sharing and rating each others designs, blog about shoes, meet other shoe lovers, crowd source new designs and much more.
While I could go on forever about how Sole Envie willl soon become every woman’s best friend, this blog is not intended to be another advertising vehicle for Sole Envie. Instead, It’s meant to provide you with a behind the scenes look of one entrepreneur’s mission to turn an idea into a reality. Come along for the ride as I share with you the trials and tribulations of starting a company along with the excitement, success and fulfillment that comes wth doing something you love.
Posted by Monika on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | Entrepreneur, Mass Customization | 1 Comment
About Monika Desai
Monika Desai, Co-founder & CEO of Sole Envie, is a seasoned marketer with over 13 years of experience. Monika Desai’s decision to start a customized fashion company was born out of a lifetime of frustration of not being able to find shoes for her size 4 1/2 feet.
Determined to find a pair of shoes for her wedding, she designed and commissioned a pair of custom-made shoes. She fell in love with the experience of choosing the style, color, leather and accessory and seeing her design come to life. A born entrepreneur, she decided to turn the concept into a scalable business so women everywhere could experience the same thrill of designing their own shoes.