A Short History of Kenneth Cole Shoes
In 1982, Kenneth Cole thought he should open up a shoe company. But, he had very little investment capital and not enough patience to work his way up through the fashion industry. He had heard about a small Italian shoe production facility that had been hit hard by the 80s economy, thus he decided he'd pack his bags and see if he could get them to help with his fledgling ideas. Desperate for a moneymaking client, the company offered Kenneth a line of credit and they immediately got started on making heaps of shoes.
Fast foward to the end of 1982. Kenneth Cole has plenty of shoes to sell, but no place to sell them. The traditional route for selling new designer shoes is to go to the big shoe convention in the Manhattan Hilton Hotel, or open a store somewhere around said Hilton. Since he still didn't have enough money to support either of those traditional methods, he decided on taking a different approach.
He asked a friend if he could borrow his 40 foot trailer so Kenneth could fill it with his shoes and present them on the street around the convention. His friend graciously loaned him the trailer, but gave him warning that he'd need a permit to park the trailer on the downtown streets. Needless to say, Ken applied for the permit. He was told that only utility and movie production companies were allowed the permit. Thus, Kenneth had the brilliant idea of changing the name of his shoe company to Kenneth Cole Productions and then applied for a movie production licence.
On the day of the convention, Kenneth Cole, and his small film crew, began filming his documentary The Birth of a Shoe Company while selling shoes from his trailer. Within the first day, he had sold 40,000 pairs of shoes. From that day on Kenneth Cole has been a very successful shoe designer, and his great shoes are available at Oddball!
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