pictured the Koio Verse Brown
Source: Koio’s Chanel-Quality Kicks At Shoestring Prices Disrupt Sneaker Market
This post will not be a bashing of Koio and it isn’t the brand’s fault that the creators chose a path to launch that placed them in a position to grab the connections needed to develop their DTC luxury footwear. Fast Company wrote a detailed post on the company that I recommend you read. The link is in the source and this paragraph is the most important in the article:
Wharton, it turned out, was a great place to start building this network. They managed to bring on alumni Andy Dunn, cofounder of Bonobos, and Neil Blumenthal, cofounder of Warby Parker, as investors and advisers. And these well-connected founders introduced them to people like designer Steven Alan, Trunk Club founder Brian Spaly, and the Winklevoss brothers, who all invested in the company’s $2.3 million seed round. “A lot of people say you shouldn’t go to business school if you want to launch a startup,” Quodts says. “We have the opposite experience. As foreigners, we really needed these connections to get off the ground.”
Over the last month, during the quarantine, I’ve made it a point to shine a light on smaller footwear companies. In doing so I’ve learned a lot about different brands, and there has been a consistent that always brings me back to a discussion on founders and race. I’ve found that of the over 15 brands I’ve discussed, only one of them is founded by an African-American. Actually by an African, Enda.
Brands Find Opportunity in the New Digital Environment | Enda: Start Running Faster
I haven’t set out to look for Black founders. The goal was to shed light on smaller brands and retailers during a difficult time for the sneaker industry. The inevitable shift towards race happens as I read the stories of how brands launch. I won’t pretend that African-American founders haven’t had a chance because that would overlook Q4 and Super Heroic, both companies founded by Black men (Super Heroic even garnered a multimillion dollar investment, but it recently stopped operations prior to the Covid-19 crisis). It’s just that at this moment as I write this post and I continue to learn more about companies like Everlane, who I was going to write a post about, but I found that they laid off 42 people in 2019, the founders come into money with an ease simply not afforded… That is the wrong wording.
The founders of Koio did everything the right way. They attended the MBA at Wharton. The program is one of the most prestigious in the country. They earned their way in and formed the connections needed to create a small business.
But
The money that flows into companies like Koio can’t help but give me some frustration. When I look at my own experience as a shoe company owner and all that I accomplished as a bootstrapped business, it becomes apparent that success isn’t all hard work. Success is opportunity, hard work and connections.
This post was going to be me writing about a smaller sneaker company, but the more I looked into it, the more irritable I became and that’s not fair to Koio. (Which is why you see these shoes and videos inserted throughout this post.)
Koio, according to Fast Company, is selling 1000 pair per month. Easy math is 12,000 pair a year at an average of 200 per pair: 2.4 Million a year gross. That sounds like a big deal, but when you factor in costs, salaries and store locations, the company isn’t exactly killing it, which leads me to the uncomfortable discussion aspect. As evidence is mounting that Black founders aren’t getting any funding from the government’s PPP and we know there is a huge issue with SBA funding for Black owned businesses and definitely an issue with startup funding by VC’s for Blacks, it really isn’t right to introduce Koio for the first time on this site with the uncomfortable discussion on Black founders.
However, the goal of this site has always been to catalyze conversation. Koio is another brand that has taken the DTC model and moved forward into opening 4 brick and mortar locations. They jumped in the water to offer the consumer a better option for casual footwear and they did so with a model that decreased the cost for luxury. It’s the same model that many of the smaller brands I’ve discussed have done. My own story hasn’t had the investment that this team earned and writing an introduction post on Koio in this way is kind of f—– up and it’s bothering the hell out of me, but the beautiful thing about this site is that I often overstep, but I do so out of honesty and to give you insight into what runs through my mind.
Besides, I’m going to end this with a pic of the founders smiling and who could feel bad seeing these two guys? Please take a moment to visit the Koio site: https://www.koio.co/
