Hi friends!
As usual, I’m a busy girl. August 2022 is no exception. This month I’ve been spending a great deal of my personal time working on the footwear ladies with lipedema and lymphedema desperately want: Revolutionary Wide Calf Boots, and an attractive, multi-occasion loafer that features an amazingly comfortable and stable sole and footbed, is adaptable, covers our swelling, and did I say, is attractive?
The YouTube version of this post is here too, but I wanted to write it as well.
So I’ve learned SO much this summer about what it takes to make footwear. I’ve been a certified Project Management Professional for fourteen years now, and a certified Product Manager for ten, and I have more than 20 years of experience in managing multi million dollar projects for the government, so this project doesn’t intimidate me at all. And it’s even more enjoyable when I’m able to leverage the experience of two amazing ladies who’ve been in the footwear industry for a combined more than 40 years.
Over the summer, I’ve joined footwear groups, listened to podcasts, read, researched, you name it, and I’ve met with Susannah Davda from The Shoe Consultant over the summer as we worked on all kinds of goodies needed to get going: customer analysis, focus groups, range plans, product design, competitor analysis, pricing and volume projections, etc. It’s been amazing, and now it’s all coming together.
I’ve been so fortunate to have been able to share my extensive briefing package with a large handful of experienced designers, and selected a lady named Jess who has a resume ten miles long of all the brands she’s designed for. Her passion for disrupting the fashion industry with our project attracted me immediately. We met this week after she’s had a chance to work on the project to look at her research and her work with our orthopedic technician. She’s found amazing materials, adaptive styles ideas, and most importantly, she sees the MAJOR gap in the footwear industry that we will close by addressing the needs of ladies built like us.
Jointly, we’ve agreed that the calf boot should be the first in our collection, because there is NOTHING on the market for women with calves over 24 inches (in case your’re interested here’s what Amazon offers for “Extra Wide Calf Boots” today). We’ve gone to our shoe focus groups again to get 30 measurements to be sure our unique needs are met, and they’re helping so much (THANK YOU!!!). And for the next couple of weeks, Jess is off to the races, doodling and sketching to design the first of many boots in our collection (I’ll release a new boot each Fall for several years to add to the offerings), and then we’ll get back together to move into prototyping and manufacturing. It. Is. Happening!!!!! Like on a major, professional scale, it’s happening.
One of the other things I’ve learned is that is costs $30,000-$40,000 to get a newly designed piece of footwear out from idea to manufacture. It’s expensive, but I’m not backing down because this is going to benefit so many ladies! This last month, I applied for two grants from the Lipedema Foundation and another foundation supporting female entrepreneurship to aid in helping us get this product. I’ve also applied and been pre-approved for a US Small Business Administration loan that should cover operating capital for the next two collections, if I’m EXTREMELY careful in budgeting. As soon as we have approved technical drawings that are shareable, and maybe a prototype in hand, I’ll be setting up a crowdsourcing campaign as well for those that are able to contribute financially to the project. If you want to help now, feel free to contribute via PayPal (legslikemine@gmail.com) or join my Patreon!
Go ahead and get your calf boot outfits ready, friends. Because in Fall 2023, we will FINALLY, for the first time ever in the history of the world, have BEAUTIFUL boots that fit and adjust.
And with this, the world will begin to move to fit the 11% of women that have lipedema.
That’s it for today! I
