Mary Smith Store

Aim

To open a store where women can experience my brand - an opportunity to try and buy comfortable, classic, yet stylish heeled & flat shoes .

A little background - 'pain meets passion + purpose

My name is Mary and my career is in employee engagement - which is essentially teaching companies how to look after their employees, making the workplace a greta place to be. Despite loving making places great work places, I still had/have a passion. 

After years of moaning about how my beautiful shoes were 'destroying my feet', I decided enough was enough and I would do something about it. I didn't feel the popular store who sold comfortable shoes, fully embodied my style at all. 

So using a combination of experience and passion (retail, marketing, project management) I did my homework on the most appropriate factory who got the vision. The research into feet and pressure points and materials also started and eventually the I found the right factory who were able to produce my initial 7 designs. 

Accidentally on purpose I showed a few friends who worked within buying and they bought 6 between them. With excitement I took the steps to build a following on social media to get my brand out into the public domain.

The story so far - 'feel it in the sole'

'Feel it in the sole' is my streamline. So I design shoes that are really comfortable, stylish and beautiful.  I was fortunate to get some recognition from 'Estelle' UK RnB Singer; who retweeted and boosted my Instagram following. That helped however I still received feedback to create a space where customers can try on the shoes.

The challenge has been self funding (to a degree) as it's quite a challenge to keep up with the seasons. This means I'm generally a season behind.

The invitation -'a step in the right direction'

Funding this dream of opening a store also fulfils a need- which is to provide comfortable heeled shoes for women like myself. To be able to have the resources to produce all my designs and be able to have them ready at the right time and season is perfect. c.£14k

As a start-up maximum exposure and opportunity is essential and this crowd fund will provide for that. At least for 1 year I will have the opportunity to showcase the summer and winter collection. Also featuring my favourite add-ons such as the new logo t-shirt, stylish pullovers and natural soaps and creams collection. c.£3k

I have seen some spaces in Camden London and also in Birmingham - either will do  (even though I'm open to many more options), which I feel best suits the brand.- c.£50k PAX

Thes rest of the funding will be spent on staff (myself and my sister), insurance, marketing, opening launch, decor and packaging.c.£32k.

I've funded everything from building the website, the samples and everything you will see online an though my social media channels. I'll continue to do it all till we make some money and be able to hire people who know more than I do so I can focus on building the brand and designing more shoes.

Please check out my work so far...

My website: www.marysmithshoes.com 

This project closed unsuccessfully on 7th February 2018