The Ledger
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Cole: Businesses must fill the social gaps left by modern governments
“A government today is, is neither willing or able to service so many of the social needs that it used to in the past, and I do believe it's incumbent upon us to do a lot of that.”
Public markets are completely undesirable unless necessary for business financing
“So being public is not, you know, a desirable place to be unless you need public markets to finance and or run your business.”
Cole: Companies cannot easily shrink and restructure while public
“We needed to get smaller to get bigger. We needed to shrink the business step back. And we couldn't do that as a public company, partially because of my personal visibility, but as a private company, you can do those things.”
Cole: Brands must deliver what customers want in unexpected ways
“And I also learned early on in my career that my goal is not to tell them what they should wear. It's to understand what they want and give it to them, but not how they expect it.”
Cole: Shoes uniquely and disproportionately affect how wearers feel
“I often say in the shoe business, everything you wear affects how you look, but shoes uniquely also affect disproportionately how you feel.”
Cole: The wholesale retail sector is shrinking rapidly with few growth avenues
“And the wholesale world is getting smaller right now. We're seeing a lot of, you saw what happened with Saks and Hudson Bay to your point. And I don't know if you're going to find a lot of growth opportunities in the short term”
Cole: Nordstrom actively blocks wholesale vendors from poaching its direct customers
“Nordstrom's, by the way, is very sophisticated in that regard. They're very careful. They're not going to build a following and then just hand it off to the vendor. If they can avoid it, they will.”
Cole: Founders must view physical retail stores purely as marketing investments
“You almost have to be prepared to write it off to look at it as a marketing and branding and initiative.”
Cole: Importing shoes avoids domestic factory overhead and downside risk
“And then it became very clear that in that sort of a business model, if you do a lot of business, you make a ton of money. If you do a little bit, you make less, but you don't have all the overhead that we had in a domestic shoe factory.”
Securing credit from Italian shoe factories is easier than from American banks
“It's much easier to get credit from a factory that needs business in Italy than from an American bank that doesn't.”
Naming a company after yourself bypasses lengthy trademark clearance risks
“I couldn't take the chance of a made-up name, and finding out many, many months or years later whether it was acceptable or not through the trademark process, because we didn't have Google in those days. But I also knew you can usually get away with your own n…”
Cole: Startups fail because founders underestimate time to ROI
“And at the time I think 60 plus percent of businesses, probably even more today, Startup businesses fail in the first year, because people underestimate the amount of time it takes before there's a return on that investment.”
Kenneth Cole faked a movie production to secure a NYC trailer permit
“That afternoon, we went to a stationery store, changed the companies, the letterhead, mechanical ink, the chemical productions ink, and then we filed for a permit, sent the letter to the mayor that afternoon, asking for permission to shoot a full-length motion…”
Cole: Economic downturns create the greatest opportunities to reinvent
“So, and then in tough times, I've always said are the greatest opportunities because people, you know, when things are good, people want to just do what they're doing and do more of it. And it's only when things are difficult that they looking to kind of re re…”
Americans wouldn't go barefoot for 15 years if all shoe stores closed
“If every shoe store in America closed its doors tomorrow at 12 o'clock, hardly an American would go barefoot for 15 years.”
Cole: Product design alone is worthless without direct consumer visibility
“But there were other designs, and if you don't see my designs, like a tree in the forest, I'm only as good as you know me to be. And if I'm not out there, then I don't exist.”
Kenneth Cole stores boosted wholesale shoe sales at co-located Nordstrom locations
“I remember having a conversation with Nordstrom at the time, and they were a big customer, and they were challenging the fact that we had all these stores, and I would show them quantifiably how every mall that we had a store, where they had a store, they did …”
A class-action lawsuit was filed one hour after Kenneth Cole announced privatization
“When we announced that we were going to do this, we announced it at nine o'clock when the New York Stock Exchange opened, we put out an announcement. We had a class action suit filed and on our desk By 10 o'clock, an hour later.”
Kenneth Cole: E-commerce rendered the retail outlet store model obsolete
“I think they do, but also what changed in that period of time is the internet. You know, the outlet stores were a way to bring value to the customer, but the internet does it effortlessly. There's a whole marketplace that aggregates the best existing product w…”
Kenneth Cole: Took company private specifically to close retail stores
“And the reason we went private is to close them.”
Kenneth Cole: Consumers buy value rather than price
“I don't think people buy price. They buy value, and people learned a long time ago, you pay a dollar for something, you never wear it, you pay too much.”
Modern consumers view themselves as brands rather than buying fashion brands
“People don't buy brands today, I don't believe. I think people recognize today that they are their own brands, and every day they wake up and they curate their own brands on their social media. And they don't just curate the content, they also curate the audie…”
Cole originally avoided footwear, viewing women's shoes as unmasculine
“But the last thing on my mind was, the last thing I would have imagined myself doing, and the least masculine thing I could have imagined myself doing was going to the women's shoe business. So it wasn't something I ever contemplated.”
Kenneth Cole sold 40,000 shoe pairs from his faked movie trailer
“I sold maybe 40,000 pair at the show.”
Kenneth Cole achieved positive cash flow by collecting before paying Italian factories
“And I had them flown in from Italy and I would then turn around and ship them before I had to pay for them. And then I got paid before I had to pay the factories. So I had positive cash flow like three months into business.”
Cole: Kenneth Cole generated $5M in its first year in business
“The company, its first year in business did five million dollars.”
Cole expanded product categories to avoid diluting brand equity with lower prices
“Instead I chose to keep the essence of the brand the way it was, and create more products for the same person, and then not that much later, including the male complement to the women's shoes, which is myself.”
Cole: Annie Leibovitz photographed Kenneth Cole's AIDS campaign pro bono
“I asked Annie if she would, on a pro bono basis, because I didn't really have any money, if she would help me do a campaign, do a photograph, and she agreed to do it.”
Cole: Christie Brinkley posed eight months pregnant for AIDS ad
“Christy Brinkley was one of them, and Christy
Did it, by the way, and she was eight and a half months pregnant, and Christy hadn't been seen publicly in, I don't know, five months, but she allowed herself to be photographed for this ad, eight and a half months…”
Kenneth Cole: Brand campaigns are social and human messages, not political
“I tell people that I'm not political. That my messages are not political messages, they're social messages, or maybe human messages, but they're not social, they've been, they're social messages that have been politicized, but I don't talk about politics. And,…”
Cole: US department store chains shrank from 70-80 to 15-20
“When I started my business, there was maybe 70 or 80 department store chains in the United States. All of a sudden, 10 years later, there's maybe 15 or 20.”
Cole: Liz Claiborne deal guaranteed $250M annual sales by year five
“We licensed women's wear to Liz Claiborne, and they agreed to huge Minimum sales levels. Actually, two hundred and fifty million dollars a year, which is crazy high numbers. Guaranteed by the... By the fifth year of our relationship.”
Cole: Liz Claiborne licensing deal diluted brand value and went down-market
“It was a good short-term decision, but I didn't have appropriate foresight. And over time, it did dilute the brand value. So it did take the product down market.”
Kenneth Cole: Owns 100% of Kenneth Cole Productions
“Well, at that time I owned the 80%, now I own the hundred.”
Cole: Licensing model shielded Kenneth Cole from worse COVID-19 fallout
“We're better off than most because a lot of our, the business model is built on, is on, on contractual relationships and licenses. So there's some level of assured income.”
Cole: Built a coalition of 50 major mental health providers
“So, I built a coalition of 50 of the nation's largest mental health service providers, mentalhealth.org, if you want to look at it.”
Cole: Most golf apparel is sold through on-course pro shops
“Most golf apparel, most golf accessories are sold in what they called Greengrass distribution, which is golf shops.”