Kenneth Cole - Interesting Beginnings

Kenneth Cole didn't start off making watches, actually the designer started out making shoes and he had nothing but doors slammed in his face as he struggled to get his ideas off the ground.

No American bank would give him a loan to realize his dream of opening a shoe company and he quickly found out through research there were a good number of factories in Europe that would extend credit to designers and therefore he could get his line of shoes produced.

With his line of 40,000 shoes, he returned to the United States ready to set up shop. Kenneth realized he had two basic choices; he could either get a room a local hotel and compete with roughly 1000 other shoe sellers or he could rent a showroom in Manhattan - which he did not have the funds for. Then he struck on an idea. He called a friend that owned a trucking business and asked if he could park one of his semi-trucks in Midtown Manhattan. The friend said of course he would lend Kenneth the truck but he would need a permit to park a truck and good luck getting it.

Undaunted Kenneth went to the Mayor of New York, Ed Koch, and asked how one gets a permit to park a 40 foot trailer truck in Midtown Manhattan. The Mayor told Kenneth it wasn't permissible. The Mayor elaborated that only two groups get permission: production companies shooting full length motion pictures and utility companies. Kenneth went to the stationery store and changed the company letterhead from Kenneth Cole, Inc. to Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. and the next day he applied for a permit to shoot a full length film entitled "The Birth of a Shoe Company."

Kenneth sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in two days with a director (Sometimes there was film in the camera, sometimes there wasn't), models as actresses, and two of New York's finest, compliments of Mayor Koch, working as security for the "production". To this day the company is still named Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. and serves as a reminder to the importance of resourcefulness and innovative problem solving.
 posted by Watches Giant