If you have seen the movie Forrest Gump you would remember that “my mama always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes, where they going, where they been.” Founders Johannes Quodt and Chris Wichert of sneaker brand, Koio Collective, want to captivate the essence of luxury quality shoes, but provide them at half the price by going directly to consumers online.

“The goal was not to just fix the price points of luxury sneakers, but to also build a culture around a modern brand that speaks to our generation in a personal way.”

Co-founders Johannes Quodt and Chris Wichert met at international student orientation during their first week at Wharton for their MBA. “We were both the only Germans in the room as well as the two tallest men there.” How could you avoid the other giraffe in the room, right? Both Chris and Johannes came to Wharton with the goal of doing something more entrepreneurial. As big fans of sneakers, they bonded over their culture, height, and passion for shoes. Fun fact: they have lived together forever. As college roommates and as current business partners in New York. Talk about team bonding and work life balance!

The Aha Moment

“There was no aha moment as such. Chris and I ended up becoming roommates at Wharton and spent one of our summers in New York shopping and came upon a pair of Louis Vuitton sneakers in the store that we loved. However, the price tag was $1,000. This sparked a thought that there should be a more sustainable way to spend your money and still get good quality products. By going directly to consumers, we wanted to follow the Warby Parker and Harry’s model.”

Even though neither of them had a background in fashion or footwear (Chris had worked in Investment Banking and Johannes used to be in Consulting), they felt a need to shake up the industry and invite hustlers and go-getters to take a walk with them. “There was a steep learning curve in the first few months as we had no idea how to make a shoe. We met with industry experts from Parsons and FIT for advice and started putting a mood board and brand elements together. From a networking perspective, we were complete outsiders to the fashion world, but we wanted to make this work and had to fight our way in.” After nearly one year in R&D, Koio Collective launched in the Spring of 2015.

“Koio means leather in Italian. This goes back to our roots of manufacturing everything in Italy with the best quality leather.”

When it comes to consumer goods, one of the greatest challenges our Makers tend to have is setting up the supply chain. While there are many companies and services out there to help connect fashion entrepreneurs to factories, these can be costly and inconsistent for reorders and quality control. Our lads over at Koio decided to book a one-way ticket to Italy without any scheduled meetings and hunt down the best factory for leather footwear.

“We found the shoe valley of Italy known as Le Marche region and started asking around for factories. We would ask the bellboy, the taxi driver, the bartender, literally any local we could to connect us to who they knew. After visiting 40 different factories, we finally found the perfect match. Turns out these leather artisans were also producing for fashion houses such as Chanel and were willing to take on a new client.”

The Marketing

“When we launched the brand, we thought that we were going to make the most incredible pair of shoes and people would recognize that immediately and sales would skyrocket. However, we did our first pop-up on Bowery and Bleecker in March 2015, but the outcome was not what we had expected. That’s when we realized that there is so much more in creating a good brand versus a good product. Branding is about emotions, lifestyle, ideas and beliefs that people associate with you. You need to actively work every day to communicate these ideas and values effectively.”

Since launch, Koio has engaged in 15 pop-ups across New York. “You can really tell that there is a different target market in each zip code as some of the pop-ups went really well and others did okay.” As of December 2016, they have opened up their long-term pop-up store on 199 Lafayette street and it has been profitable since day one. This goes back to a major debate in the fashion industry; are retail stores dying? Clearly, the answer is no. Every e-commerce site, be it Bonobos, Warby Parker, Birchbox, Rent the Runway, etc needs a retail showroom or presence to scale, maintain customer relationships and increase customer retention rate online.

The Customer

“Originally we started out producing only men’s shoes but quickly realized that women were also interested in our style. Right now we produce unisex shoes for customers that lead a demanding lifestyle, travel a lot and want to move seamlessly from day to night. With our shoes, you always look good, feel comfortable and can be versatile.” Most of their customers tend to come from a creative background and also include the likes of celebrities such as Adrian Grenier, NBA players, and others. Hence, Koio recently engaged in an in-store collaboration event with JonBoy tattoo artist to provide free tattoos in their Lafayette location.

The Advice

Don’t outsource your pop-ups in the early days. The founders are the best people to speak about the product, get people excited and sell the brand. You can’t copy this level of passion when it is outsourced.
Fundraising 101: Know your big vision of what you want to do, your 5 and 10 year plan as well as how you would best sell the product.
Think of ways to hack the system and look for shortcuts to do things: like finding a manufacturer. If Koio had used an agency they would not have had quality control over their products.
Be authentic. Build a brand around something you can identify with, after all, it is a total extension of the founder's personality.

Koio Collective can be found online as well in-store at Theory and Equinox (Greenwich). Their products are priced between $248 - $368 and can be purchased here. Feel free to also stop by their pop-up store located at 199 Lafayette street in SoHo to say hi to the boys. Let them know that we sent you.

Photo courtesy of Koio Collective.