Daphne Neubike
Staff Writer
On Monday, September 9, the Babson Global Commerce Center hosted Humphreys Entrepreneur-in-Residence Stuart Weitzman to share more about his career as a renowned shoe designer who has worked with clients ranging from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé. Weitzman spoke with The Purple, sharing details about his experience as an entrepreneur, the ups and downs he’s experienced on his path to success, and everything in between.
Hello Stuart, how are you?
Stuart: I’m happy to be here. I’ve been to Tennessee before, but not for this reason. I’m going to speak at Vanderbilt University, and I asked if there were any other universities in Tennessee I should visit. They told me, if I want to see beautiful things, I should go to Sewanee. So someone brought me to you.
That’s amazing. You obviously love pretty things, what inspired you to start making pretty shoes?
Stuart: So, I was going to Wharton. It’s a business school in Philadelphia. Someone saw me doing set design for a theater company. Someone I knew said, “Hey, why don’t you try to draw a shoe for your father?” I said, “Why would you want to do that?” He said, “Well, he owns a shoe factory, and he’s a great shoemaker, and he buys designs from freelancers.” So I did some sketches, and they invited me to lunch to show his father what I’d done. I spread the designs out like playing cards on the table. Meanwhile, I was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, and I’d already committed to a job at a bank called Goldman Sachs. That bank was a big deal then, and it is now. It was a pretty good deal. Anyway, he picked out a pair and said, “Did you draw this?” He was skeptical, and he held up the design to the chandelier that was hanging over our dining room table, and he said, “I can see the traces.” Then he ripped up my sketch, picked up another sketch, turned it over, and asked me to draw it again. I did so and he offered me $20 per sketch. I didn’t think I could make that much money in such a short time, so I called Goldman Sachs and asked to take a year off. I sold over $2,800 in sketches, more than paying for my tuition.
What an amazing turn of events! What happened after that?
Stuart: That summer, in the best shoe store in New York (now a Bvlgari jewelry store), I found a pair of high-heeled pumps in four colors with alternating fluffy snakeskin and leather petals. It was one of my sketches! I heard they were reordering them in stores, and since I left Goldman Sachs, shoemaking has become my hobby.
Has that hobby become a passion?
Stuart: It became a passion because I decided to do it. I was doing a hobby, but when you do it, it’s not the same. It’s been really great. I can’t wait to get to work because that’s what I want to do. I hope some of the students I meet here find that passion.
When you decided to go down this path, did you feel any fear or anxiety?
Stuart: No, it took me about 6-7 years of working elsewhere to learn enough to start a small company, find some trustworthy people, and love what we do.
What have you done to find people who share the same passion for what you want to do?
Stuart: I didn’t want to hire someone from another company who was already doing the work I needed to do. They would have their habits and their way of doing things, and that’s not how I do things. I didn’t hire any professional employees until Susan came along because I wanted them to grow with us and learn how we do things. Susan is the only manager over 70 years old. I made the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” my mantra. This poem made me realize that it’s okay for everyone to know different ways of doing things, and to find multiple routes to reach the same goal. And we did. In leading people, I realized that I don’t have to carry the trophy. It’s them who make it happen. So when we won the Clio Awards, which are like the Oscars of marketing and advertising, Susan stood up to accept the trophy and gave a speech. I told her, “You’re the one who promoted this company so well.”
That’s really impressive, so I’m curious what your creative process is like.
Stuart: It really takes effort. You have to know what to look for, where to go for inspiration, and who will be your muse. Don’t listen to salespeople; they always talk about today’s shoes because they look at the shoes when they sell to other stores. Only designers can talk about tomorrow’s shoes. So I paid attention to that, as well as clothes, art, architecture, and other things that influence the way our eyes see things. And we will have a theme. A movie might be the beginning of a theme. For example, I did Cinderella’s shoes. You need to know who your customer is. That’s the key. What is your market? When I started, my market was career women, housewives, suburban women, professional women, not fashionistas.
Finally, what does success mean to you now that you’ve come this far compared to when you first started the company?
Stuart: That’s a complicated question. I would say what success is in life is simply: if the people who should love you love you back, and they do, then that’s success. That leads to everything else.
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