Allbirds may be the next big thing in anonymous luxury
Source: The World’s Most Comfortable Shoes Are Made of Super-Soft Wool
I guess the quick question is why aren’t the shoes in the picture and the link above featuring ARCH Footwear if ARCH is ready for investment? Maybe your question isn’t about ARCH at all since Allbirds is being given a link and information in this post. Whatever your question is, my question is even greater after reading this post on Time.com.
In 2014, after 4 years of running ARCH out of my pocket taking on the losses and learning a ton about the retail market and shoe industry, I decided to run a Kickstarter. Interestingly enough my timing couldn’t have been worse as a better presented Kickstarter by another shoe company completely overshadowed my campaign.
Here is that campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3over7/the-wool-runners-no-socks-no-smell?ref=nav_search
My campaign, I ran at the same time, is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/archfootwear/the-arch-lightweight-running-shoe-project/description
How does Allbirds and the above Kickstarter connect? Allbirds is Three over Seven. They obviously crushed it on the Kickstarter platform. They were able to relay that success into a first round funding of 2.7 million by Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Now mind you their only proof of concept is the Kickstarter. The company did not enter the retail sales area to prove that they could actually sell the product beyond Kickstarter. They are a direct to consumer model and they don’t share any information about sales so I don’t know what or how they garnered such a large funding round.
What I do know is that I’ve been in the shoe business for over 10 years. ARCH has been running strong with proof of sales at 1.5 million since 2011. What I know is I thought that my slow sales in my brand would hinder my decision to reach out to a venture capitalist or consider approaching an investor. It’s obvious that I was completely wrong.
This is not a diss to Allbirds… if you’d like to know my honest opinion about what will happen with Allbirds, you can ask. What I’m officially saying is that I am open to talking with investors because as it stands I may be the only new footwear startup that runs with one person making all the decisions and funding the venture to actually have sales that don’t rely on Kickstarter or hype. I know the sneaker world and it’s officially time to get started on a plan to move ARCH into the next phase.
Contact me investors, I’m an open book
Chris B (cburns at arch-usa.com) replace at with @
