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Heart and Sole
Designer Kenneth Cole makes his social beliefs part of his company's mission and tells Wharton students that the best idea is "almost always the most creative one."
Designer Kenneth Cole loves to tell the story about how he first drummed up attention for his then-fledgling shoe company. To him, it epitomizes the creativity born of necessity that's the essence of entrepreneurship.
Cole recounted the story as part of a co-presentation by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and the Musser-Shoemaker Leadership Lecture Series, in December. He visited the school as part of the promotional tour for his new book, Footnotes, a history of his company.
The year was 1982, and Cole had left his father's shoe company to start one of his own called Kenneth Cole, Inc. He'd designed a line of shoes and hired an Italian factory to make them. He was eager to show off his wares at the industry's main trade show at a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan.
He hit upon the idea of borrowing a friend's tractor-trailer, parking it in front of the Hilton and peddling shoes from there. Trouble was, that required a permit, and he didn't have one.
“I called the mayor's office and said, ‘How does someone get permission to park a 40-foot trailer on the street in New York?'”
“And they said, ‘The answer, son, is that they don't. This
is New York. There are only two exceptions — if you're a utility company
doing service or a production company shooting a full-length motion picture.'”
The next day, Cole changed the name of his company to Kenneth Cole
Productions, Inc. and filed for a permit to shoot a movie called, “The Birth of a Shoe
Company.”
“With the mayor's blessing, I opened for business on December 2, 1982. I had two New York policemen as my doormen, compliments of the city. I sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in less than three days. I tell that story often because we need to remind ourselves that in business and in life, the best solution isn't necessarily the most expensive one, but it's almost always the most creative one.”
Cole's creativity has paid off. In 2002, his company, which now sells clothing, accessories and fragrances in addition to shoes, reported a profit of $26.1 million, on sales of $404 million, compared with a profit of $16.6 million on sales of $365.8 million a year earlier. Its stock returned more than 130 percent over the five years that ended Jan. 2.
Despite having a name in the fashion world that's nearly as well known as Ralph Lauren's or Calvin Klein's, Cole has mostly avoided the limelight. Sure, he married a child of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and has golfed with former president, Bill Clinton. But unlike Klein and Lauren, he hasn't turned himself into a celebrity or his face into an icon for his brand. Instead, his ads feature his stands on social issues — AIDS, homelessness, gun control, abortion. Name a public controversy, and Cole likely weighed in on it, often with humor and puns.
- On guns, his ads proclaimed: “Regardless of the right to bear arms, we condemn the right to bare feet.”
- On abortion: “Women have the right to be pregnant, but not barefoot.”
- On homelessness, as part of a campaign to encourage customers to donate shoes they no longer wore: “Have a heart, give a sole.”
But this fall, with the publication of Footnotes, the man behind the ads is finally stepping out in appearances such as his speech at Wharton and a separate meeting that preceded it with a small group of students interested in entrepreneurship.
His message: His beliefs have been good for business. They've garnered lots of attention for his company. And they've been good for him, helping him find value in what he admits can be a frivolous trade.
“Nobody needs what I sell,” he said. “There is probably not a person in this country who needs another pair of black shoes. Nobody needs more ties, more white shirts. My job is to get people to feel good about buying them and to feel good about them afterwards. But at the end of the day, there are things that are more important.”
Cole's ads are a way of reminding his customers — and himself — that he knows that. He insists that the ads are neither cynical — that is, designed to make customers feel good about themselves and righteous for buying his products — nor political. “To the degree that you interpret what I'm doing as political, it potentially loses its validity. It's a corporate message, a community message and a human message,” not a political one, though the distinction may seem fuzzy.
Cole grew up in the shoe business. His father owned a Brooklyn-based company called El Greco that became known for producing the Candies line of women's shoes. Cole attended Emory University in Atlanta intent on becoming a lawyer. But before enrolling in law school, he took a summer off to help his dad, who'd lost one of his top assistants. He was hooked.
He had a yen to run his own business, to be an entrepreneur, so he broke off on his own. His now famous ads didn't begin until three years later. In running them, Cole helped to pioneer what's come to be known as cause-related marketing. In his first ad, he highlighted the AIDS epidemic.
“You couldn't talk about AIDS then. The president of the United States,
Ronald Reagan, didn't mention the word AIDS
until 1987. I wanted to talk about the stigma,
about not being able to talk about it.”
His ad featured a number of well-known fashion
models and little kids; everyone was barefoot.
The slogan
was, “For the future of our children.”
With the next ad, also about AIDS, he took a more in-your-face approach. On a full page of The New York Times, he showed a picture of a condom in its packet. Beneath it was the slogan, “Shoes aren't the only thing we encourage you to wear,” and under that, “Support the American Foundation for AIDS Research.”
While his ads were
grabbing attention, Cole began to transform
his shoe company, first
adding accessories,
then clothing.
He jokes that
a workplace
phenomenon — casual
Fridays — helped with the transition.
“Until then, every guy in America had the same wardrobe. Suits were gray,
sometimes navy. Shirts were white, sometimes blue. Shoes were a pair of black
and a pair of brown. On weekends, we all wore torn jeans, t-shirts and sneakers.
“And we were going along happily until someone decided, ‘Guys, we're going to change all of this.' Essentially, what they said was, ‘Nothing you own works.' Guys were traumatized. But you trust a brand to the degree it has served you in the past. So I set out on this mission to help guys. And I knew one day it would be a steppingstone to women's wear.”
So it was. As with men, the key to his new women's line was easing the process of dressing fashionably. “For women, there were countless things — shoes, handbags, skirts, blouses — and everything had to match. We figured out a way to simplify the entire equation with one word: It's called black.”
The look of Cole's
clothing has been called “Prada
for the people” by
New York magazine. He takes the high-fashion,
urban style of European designers and
makes it accessible and affordable for
Americans.
The key to the company's evolution, he said, has been trying to create
an equation of price, value and style and tweaking it frequently. “There
are no hard and fast rules. That's part of being a successful entrepreneur,
I think — the ability to not be married to a specific path.”
In 1994, Cole took his company public,
partly to raise money to fund the countrywide
expansion
of
his chain
of stores.
Despite his company's growth, Cole still spends plenty of time pondering the importance of fashion in a world battered by calamity and woe. And not surprisingly, he has concluded that it does have qualities that redeem it, even if it pales in importance next to the subjects of his ads.
“It's an extraordinary opportunity we each have to define ourselves. Most of our encounters during the day, maybe 90 percent of them, are superficial, frivolous. You don't get to know anything about the person except for how they look.
“Sometimes, I meet people and they say, ‘I'm sorry, Kenneth. I don't wear your shoes. Shoes aren't my thing.' And that's OK. It's just a lost opportunity to define yourself. You can choose to be conscious of the process if you want, to be conscious of how you're perceived by people. I'm flattered when people allow me to be part of that individual expression."
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