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just make the freaking shoes! sell! what are you waiting for!?!? You have passion for a completely new product in a very profitable niche. Start producing and w

just make the freaking shoes! sell! what are you waiting for!?!? You have passion for a completely new product in a very profitable niche. Start producing and when you have customers that can't get enough Nike will be knocking down your door. Tell them to shove it.

felipemnoa 15y ago
Same thing I was thinking. There would be no google if the founders had just given up when first trying to sell their search engine and were unsuccessful.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  You guys are wearing some seriously focused blinders here. Writing software (like a search engine) doesn't require millions of dollars worth of machine tooling just to get started. Manufacturing running shoes does. The vast majority of businesses are nothing like modern software (which has virtually no startup costs beyond your own time).
  - felipemnoa 15y ago
    Google, Facebook, Amazon, Groupon, and countless others have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.
  - draggnar 15y ago
    Patagonia started with Yvon Chouinard building mountain climbing equipment in cooperation with a machinist and basically out of a shed. There are hardcore runners who would pay top dollar for this cutting edge technology. These early adopters are the INVESTORS in this product, in this brand.
    - teamonkey 15y ago
      > Patagonia started with Yvon Chouinard building mountain climbing equipment in cooperation with a machinist and basically out of a shed. ...in the '70s. Clothing manufacturing economics are not the same now as they were then.
      - draggnar 15y ago
        but the passion for starting a new business by identifying hardcore users that will invest in you by way of being an early adopter has not changed.
        teamonkey 15y ago
        OK, yes, I buy that argument.
ballard 15y ago
So it's great to see people marching to their own drum and not "selling out," but ultimately one has to inevitably "shlep" (per P.G.'s article) and get some food on the table. Being hostile ("tell[ing] them to shove it") or unreasonable ("sky high" demand) is counter-productive toward maintaining a relationship with someone you'd want to do business. And as a result, this guy failed for a long time at recognizing his own limitations and lost several major deals as a result. Also, any lawyer worth salt would mention he put himself at extreme liability giving known dangerous prototype shoes to others. Better hope they either signed a liability waiver, have good health-care and are cool. If there's any hope of commercialization, this article is great advertising. I hope a smaller brand picks this up and wisely suggests a more careful and progressive tone for everyone involved.
ivoflipse 15y ago
Unless you have a (Chinese) factory with EVA molds and some women who stitch the shoe together in your garage, I don't see anyone 'just doing it'. Even if you start producing your own shoes in China, wait until the first two containers come back with your initial 1000 pair of shoes all having some error that renders them useless. Sure, you can get quality assurances in place, but you can't go and sell running shoes for twice the price of Nike or Adidas. It takes some amount of scale to simply make this happen. So he's waiting for an investor to cover the large sums of money required to get a shoe to the market (let alone market the shoe itself).
- jrockway 15y ago
  you can't go and sell running shoes for twice the price of Nike or Adidas There are plenty of $160 running shoes out there not made by Nike or Adidas. It's also not unfeasible to make the shoes in the US. It's cheaper to make a billion shoes in China, but it probably costs about the same to make a few thousand.
  - Natsu 15y ago
    I don't know about running shoes, but Tim & Mary just sent me another pair of ~$500 order made custom leather shoes last week. They have a waiting list about a year long and make everything by hand. Sure, they're not running shoes and they're not selling things in volume (they probably only make 50-60 pairs per year), but it's not exactly impossible to sell shoes for those prices.
    - SageRaven 15y ago
      You got a link about these shoes? I've recently begun walking to work (about 2 miles one way), and have been seriously considering plunking down $350 or so for a pair of the American-made leather-soled Wolverine 1000-mile boots. I don't want to turn this into /r/malefashionadvice (which regularly debates good urban walking footwear), but I'm looking for such shoes and welcome a new brand to investigate.
      - 15y ago

felipemnoa 15y ago

Same thing I was thinking. There would be no google if the founders had just given up when first trying to sell their search engine and were unsuccessful.

georgemcbay 15y ago
You guys are wearing some seriously focused blinders here. Writing software (like a search engine) doesn't require millions of dollars worth of machine tooling just to get started. Manufacturing running shoes does. The vast majority of businesses are nothing like modern software (which has virtually no startup costs beyond your own time).
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  Google, Facebook, Amazon, Groupon, and countless others have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.
- draggnar 15y ago
  Patagonia started with Yvon Chouinard building mountain climbing equipment in cooperation with a machinist and basically out of a shed. There are hardcore runners who would pay top dollar for this cutting edge technology. These early adopters are the INVESTORS in this product, in this brand.
  - teamonkey 15y ago
    > Patagonia started with Yvon Chouinard building mountain climbing equipment in cooperation with a machinist and basically out of a shed. ...in the '70s. Clothing manufacturing economics are not the same now as they were then.
    - draggnar 15y ago
      but the passion for starting a new business by identifying hardcore users that will invest in you by way of being an early adopter has not changed.
      - teamonkey 15y ago
        OK, yes, I buy that argument.

ballard 15y ago

So it's great to see people marching to their own drum and not "selling out," but ultimately one has to inevitably "shlep" (per P.G.'s article) and get some food on the table. Being hostile ("tell[ing] them to shove it") or unreasonable ("sky high" demand) is counter-productive toward maintaining a relationship with someone you'd want to do business. And as a result, this guy failed for a long time at recognizing his own limitations and lost several major deals as a result. Also, any lawyer worth salt would mention he put himself at extreme liability giving known dangerous prototype shoes to others. Better hope they either signed a liability waiver, have good health-care and are cool. If there's any hope of commercialization, this article is great advertising. I hope a smaller brand picks this up and wisely suggests a more careful and progressive tone for everyone involved.

ivoflipse 15y ago

Unless you have a (Chinese) factory with EVA molds and some women who stitch the shoe together in your garage, I don't see anyone 'just doing it'. Even if you start producing your own shoes in China, wait until the first two containers come back with your initial 1000 pair of shoes all having some error that renders them useless. Sure, you can get quality assurances in place, but you can't go and sell running shoes for twice the price of Nike or Adidas. It takes some amount of scale to simply make this happen. So he's waiting for an investor to cover the large sums of money required to get a shoe to the market (let alone market the shoe itself).

jrockway 15y ago
you can't go and sell running shoes for twice the price of Nike or Adidas There are plenty of $160 running shoes out there not made by Nike or Adidas. It's also not unfeasible to make the shoes in the US. It's cheaper to make a billion shoes in China, but it probably costs about the same to make a few thousand.
- Natsu 15y ago
  I don't know about running shoes, but Tim & Mary just sent me another pair of ~$500 order made custom leather shoes last week. They have a waiting list about a year long and make everything by hand. Sure, they're not running shoes and they're not selling things in volume (they probably only make 50-60 pairs per year), but it's not exactly impossible to sell shoes for those prices.
  - SageRaven 15y ago
    You got a link about these shoes? I've recently begun walking to work (about 2 miles one way), and have been seriously considering plunking down $350 or so for a pair of the American-made leather-soled Wolverine 1000-mile boots. I don't want to turn this into /r/malefashionadvice (which regularly debates good urban walking footwear), but I'm looking for such shoes and welcome a new brand to investigate.
    - 15y ago