Mini Case 02 Katryn Kerrigan – Filling a Gap in the $24 Billion Women’s Shoe Industry
Answers: 1. Kathryn Kerrigan. 2. She has always had trouble finding shoes. 3. She began wearing boys athletic shoes after a growth spurt in elementary school. 4. Her eureka moment happened while she was working on a business plan idea for an assignment in university. She discovered the big gap in the marketplace for providing shoes for tall women and the increasing number of tall women due to sports. As she talked to 200 women, 174 of them had the same complaint. 5. Kerrigan waited till she finished her MBA. Then, she took her business plan to a bank to get a loan. With the load she got, she travelled to trade shows and started her business with her own name, Katryn Kerrigan to build a personal brand. 6. She did a market research on her business plan. She talked to 200 tall women and asked whether they had troubles finding fashionable shoes of their sizes. She also tried to find data from the Shoe Retailers Association. 7. She found out that 175 women out of 200 women she interviewed had the same complaint as her and there are no hard data available from teh Shoe Retailers Association. 8. Yes, she tried to find hard data, from the Shoe Retailers Association and elsewhere, that explained why fashionable shoes weren’t available in large size. 9. She found that women’s shoe sizes are increasing and there is a huge gap for large fashionable shoes for tall women. 10. Women’s feet size are increasing. Women who play sports from the time they are young will invariably have larger feet and require bigger shoes when they become adults. 11. She took her business plan to a bank to see if she could get a loan and actually start a business. Yes. She got a $ 35,000 loan. 12. She travelled to trade shows and start the business and she named her business Kathryn Kerrigan to build a personal brand. 13. She didn’t know much about designing and selling shoes. 14. She got good advice from her parents and their extended network, and travelled to trade shows talking to suppliers and industry insiders. 15. Another big obstacle was finding a contract manufacturer to make the shoes she had in mind. The problems exist because she was proposing proposing something new-fashionable new-fashionable women’s shoes in big sizes-manufacturers didn’t want to take a chance on an unproven idea. 16. Yes. She finally found a factory in Alicante, Spain, a Mediterranean region known for highquality shoe making, that was willing to work with her. 17. She spent seven months apprenticing in the factory-learning the shoe business inside out. Back home, she studied import laws, tariffs, and the like, becoming an expert in how to import shoes into the United States. She also designed her initial order of large-sized fashionable fashionable shoes and boots, aided by craftsmen she had met in Northern Italy, to be made by the factory
in Spain. 18. She sold her first shoes in fall 2006. In her first six weeks of operations, her company had $26,950 in sales, depleting most of her stock. Kerrigan’s business has grown steadily, and she’s outgrown the single manufacturing facility in Spain. While producing fashionable women’s shoes in large sizes remain her primary focus, she has expanded her product line. In July 2007, she opened her own flagship store in Libertyville, Illinois, and in August 2007, she added a clothing line for tall women. Her products are now sold online, in catalogs, and through women’s fashion boutique across the United States and in Europe. 19. Katryn Kerrigan and Nate Alder are both young entrepreneurs. Similarly, their business ideas are based on their own personal life experiences. They innovated the conventional products in the industry because they had problems using them. Both managed to create a new business idea which was not tapped into market before.
