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The Kinky Boot Factory
By Ann Williams | May 5, 2008
A while back I watched a late movie about, well, a shoe factory that decides to diversify its range to keep going… by making high-heel boots and shoes - for men.
The film, called Kinky Boots, was made in 2005 after the real company, W.J. Brooks, was the subject of one of the episodes of BBC ’s managerial reality programme Trouble at the Top where the producers dubbed them “The Kinky Boot Factory”.
While the film differed on a number of points, where it stayed true to form was that the company was a long-established firm being managed by its fourth generation of the founding family.
In the movie, Price and Sons (the film name of the company) lost money due to a large order being made and no-one to buy it. In reality W.J. Brooks began to suffer a downturn in trade when the increased value of the pound meant they lost their export trade, especially in Germany. And cheap imports meant the loss of domestic orders.
This is not an unusual situation in South Africa, as can be seen by shut-down of many factories in the garment, fabric, leather and shoe-manufacturing industries. I speak from first-hand experience here as I was a QA manager at a leather tannery that faced a 400% increase in raw materials in the space of a few months. It was shut down by the group head office without even a consideration of possible alternatives that had been suggested to them - with the loss of about 500 jobs.
In the film, factory owner, Charlie Price, started to make women’s boots for men because of a chance encounter with a drag queen called Lola and a dressing down from a disgruntled employee as he was laying off staff.
Back in reality, Steve Pateman started to make fetish footwear because Laces in Folkestone, a fetish shop, found his details through the Footwear Federation. Laces had many problems with their previous supplier and Steve thought he could help. After speaking to several other shops he thought there was something his factory could do.
The result was a range of erotic boots and shoes for men and women called Divine. The main featue point was heavy duty stilletos that could be worn by people who were not ‘petite’ without them snapping off!
Divine is now being sold extensively through erotic websites - which I’m not putting any links to! (Or you can order them straight from the supplier).
Which just goes to show, that with a touch of differentiation even small family businesses which have been doing the same thing for decades can thrive by looking at new markets.
© Ann Williams
Topics: Business practice, David & Goliath, Mini Case Studies, Strategy |
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