Stand in what you stand for.ISlide, Inc. Company Motto In August 2014, Justin Kittredge, whose email signature
Question:
“Stand in what you stand for.”—ISlide, Inc.
Company Motto In August 2014, Justin Kittredge, whose e‐mail signature read,
“President, CEO, and Janitor—ISlide, Inc.,” reflected on the whirlwind of the past 20 months. Justin started ISlide, a manufacturer/distributor of customized athletic sandals known as “slides,” in January 2013. By the summer of 2013, he had lined up a slide supplier in China who could manufacture the slides with the level of quality he wanted, and he had found a local printer who could customize the slides. In December 2013, he purchased a printer so that he could customize the slides inhouse.
He expected 2014 to be the first profitable year for ISlide, Inc. As he looked toward 2015, Justin wondered how to increase the momentum of his nascent company and create a new brand.
The Founder’s Background Justin Kittredge grew up in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Like many of his peers, he played a number of sports growing up, including basketball, baseball, tennis, and soccer. Justin was always tall for his age; by high school with a height of 6’4”, he was towering over most of his classmates. Justin attended Barnstable High School for his freshman and sophomore years and then transferred to Northfield Mount Herman School (NMH). According to the NMH website,
“NMH is considered the best combination of academics and basketball in the United States.”2 In 2013, NMH won the national championship and in 2012, they were the New England (NEPSAC AAA) champions. Further, in 2013–
2014, NMH had more than two dozen former graduates playing basketball at Division 1 schools.
When asked why he transferred to NMH, Justin noted, “Northfield Mount Herman was a better match for me from an academic and athletic standpoint. It had a strong academic profile and one of the top rated basketball programs. I wanted to play basketball at a Division 1 college or university and NMH helped me realize that dream.”
After graduating from NMH in 1996, where he was voted MVP of the prep school’s very successful basketball team in his junior year, Justin attended James Madison University. At James Madison, he played on the JV basketball team, where he was captain during his senior year. In college, Justin majored in hotel and hospitality management and spent his summers doing landscaping. He realized in his senior year of college that he needed to get a “real” job and decided that he wanted to do something related to basketball. Justin recalled, “I applied for a position at Reebok. The interviewer told me there seemed to be no reason to hire me but he invited me to participate in a Reebok League basketball game. The next day, I played my heart out and he offered me an internship.”
After the summer internship, Justin received a job offer in the fall and took it. He then spent four years in various sales and marketing positions at Reebok International, one of the largest athletic shoe companies in the world. Justin focused on sales and marketing at Reebok, and following his big corporate experience at Reebok, he decided to move to a small local footwear company, Atsco Footwear Company, where he spent approximately two years as a sales manager and product manager. In 2006, Reebok offered him a position that would give him a big step up in terms of responsibilities and would give him a way to focus on his passion of basketball. So he returned to Reebok to serve as Director of Product Development for Performance Basketball Shoes. In that role, he managed the overall process of design, development, and marketing of high‐end basketball shoes, primarily worn by pros and other basketball aficionado athletes. In that role, Justin worked closely with footwear designers at Reebok, supervised the field testing of proposed shoes, travelled to China to meet with the managers in the factories that produced the shoes, and interacted with NBA basketball players. In fact, he was often responsible for developing custom shoes for specific players. According to Keith Regan, a journalist who wrote an article about Justin and ISlide for the Boston Business Journal, “As jobs go, the one Justin Kittredge held at Reebok wasn’t so bad. The former college athlete plied his trade in the sports world, always scored tickets to the biggest games, and spent time interacting with celebrities from the sports and entertainment worlds.”3 When asked by a reporter for Nice Kicks4 what his favorite project at Reebok was, Justin replied:
Number one was probably EuroCamp. To spend a week in Italy with NBA GMs, presidents, and players in a laid back atmosphere is something I could definitely do 365 days a year. Aside from that, I think the process of sitting down with professional athletes and talking about what the inspiration could be from their shoe to seeing it come to fruition over the course of 18 months when it actually hits retail with marketing behind it. Just to see a guy like John Wall tweet about it and talk about it on his own and to see how proud he was to have his own shoe—to have a team make that dream a reality for him. Not even just John, even guys like Jason Terry or Jameer Nelson who still have things that are very close to them. To add those elements to the shoe and see how proud they were to wear the shoe was great. That took so much hard work from the design and development team, the marketing team, and even the team overseas in China.
Euro Camp in Italy featured the best players from Europe and attracted NBA coaches and general managers. While at the Euro Camp in 2009, Justin met Chris Clunie, a former NCAA basketball player for Davidson College who was working with the National Basketball Association as a coordinator for their International Operations. Clunie had won a Thomas Watson Fellowship upon graduating from Davidson College, a fellowship that allowed him to travel the world and see how basketball impacts international cultures (see Exhibit 3.1). Meeting Chris and learning about his experience with the Watson Fellowship inspired Justin with the goal of using basketball to change the world.
After college, Justin coached AAU5 basketball teams and found that he really liked mentoring and coaching young players. As he typically had one or two kids who needed financial assistance to play on the team, he built funding these players into his team’s financial model. Since he had access to the Reebok facility, he would offer kids on financial aid free basketball clinics, where they attended weekly skill and drills sessions and a week‐long summer basketball camp with legendary coach, Bob Hurley Sr. “I realized that I could change lives by coaching,” noted Justin. He started to envision establishing a nonprofit organization that would enable him to do this. He realized:
I was really influencing their lives, not just helping the kids with basketball. I had high expectations of my kids and they lived up to those expectations. Kids who had been in trouble, stayed out of trouble, they started to do better in school, they started helping others; in essence, I could see they were becoming better people.
After meeting Chris, my wife Lindsey and I formalized the structure of Shooting Touch. We envisioned Shooting Touch as a basketball Peace Corps, of sorts. We formed a board that, in August 2014, included a number of highprofile current and former basketball players, coaches, and franchise owners, including Hall of Famer, Coach Bob Hurley, Sr.; Head Coach of University of Buffalo, Bobby Hurley, Jr.; former NBA player and Franchise Owner, Wayne Embry; Celtics player, Kelley Olynk, and others [see Exhibit 3.2]. Annually, we accept applications from recent college graduates and give them \($25,000\) to go to a third‐world country and use basketball to make a difference.
We had our first Gala in 2010. We raised enough money to send our first grantee, Tome Barros, to Senegal, Brazil, and Cape Verde where he built and refurbished basketball courts and used the game of basketball to teach life skills to over 2,400 youth. In 2011, Leah Westerbrook went to South America and Zimbabwe. By 2012, we changed our approach and decided to commit to one country, Rwanda, for five years. We were able to raise enough to send two grantees to Rwanda, Casey Stockton and Isaura Guzman. Pricilla Dodoo and Kevin Ketti, the 2013 grantees, are on the ground now making a difference building courts and holding camps and clinics for kids in Rwanda.”6
Starting ISlide, Inc.
By the time Justin decided to start ISlide, in 2013, he had 13 years of experience in the footwear industry. Justin described how he decided to start the venture.
In December 2012, Reebok announced that it was slowly moving away from its Basketball Division. At some level, that was not surprising since Adidas, which purchased Reebok in 2005, also had a basketball line.
Over the years, I had toyed with starting my own footwear company, but I had signed a noncompete with Reebok. When I was laid off in 2012, I realized this was my opportunity. I had spent my entire career in footwear;
I understood the product development cycle and had relationships with manufacturers in China. Footwear was a category that I knew, so it made sense to create a company in that space.
I decided that slides would be my first product because athletic sandals were a small category that I felt was poised for growth. Further, my product would be different because it is customizable.
Even with my background, and the relationships that I had with footwear manufacturers in China, it took me six months to get up and running. I had to design the slides, find a supplier that could make them, conduct a field test, and determine the best technology to customize the slides.
Initially, we outsourced the printing on the slides, but earlier this year we acquired a printer so we now customize the slides in house.
The Product
ISlide sells customizable athletic sandals that are known as “slides.” While other companies such as Nike, Reebok, and Under Armour, among others, made and sold slides, in 2014, ISlide, Inc. was the only company that sold customizable athletic sandals (see Exhibit 3.3 for pictures of the ISlide product). As noted in the ISlide catalog, “The outsole (bottom)
of the shoe is sneaker inspired with forefoot and heel, herring bone accents.”8 Such sandals are popular among both amateur and professional athletes. Performance basketball shoes, which in August 2014 cost \($40–$275\) on www.finishline.com, were designed to be worn on indoor basketball court surfaces to give the players traction and agility. Hence, serious players wore sandals, flip‐flops, or other shoes to and from a game in order to protect the integrity of their basketball sneakers;
many basketball players would not even think of wearing their performance sneakers outdoors. Soccer, football, and baseball players also wear specially designed athletic shoes—
like high‐technology shoes called cleats—that are designed to
be worn only on the fi eld and are similarly priced at expensive price points. These athletes also typically wear sandals or other shoes when not on the fi eld or turf.
In 2014, what distinguished the ISlide product from the other slide sandals on the market was its high‐end comfort design and its ability to be completely customizable. Customers could have any design they liked printed on the top flap of the sandals as well as a different image on the side of the flaps. Teams could have their logos on the shoes, or even the team logo on one sandal and the athlete’s name on the other. The website www.ISlideUSA.com offered a library of graphics to choose from as well as fonts for writing whatever customers wanted.
Customers could also upload their own image or designed logo that they wanted printed on the slides. Justin noted, “We know that if this [customizable athletic sandal line] takes off, we will have competition from others. This is why we are hoping to get a head start and to establish ISlide as the ‘go to’
brand for customizable athletic sandals.”
In August 2014, ISlides retailed for \($49.99\) for one pair and the company offered a discount on bulk sales. Justin based his pricing on a similar product on the market, the Nike Air Experience Slides, which were adorned with the Nike swoosh, and were sold for a retail price of \($50.00.
Building\) the Company
By December 2013, just 11 months after Justin started the company, he had five employees: Justin was CEO; Hope and Jackie, who were responsible for graphic designs; Steve, who ran operations; and Demitri, who was responsible for marketing and ISlide’s significant social media efforts. In starting the company, Justin used a strategy of hiring smart, motivated, college students to work during the summer as interns. ISlide had employed over 16 college students or recent college graduates from a number of schools, including Babson, Bentley, Boston College, Drexel, Emerson, George Mason, Harvard, and Villanova. Justin described his interest and experience in working with interns:
I love working with interns. First, it is great for my financials since they are unpaid. Second, it gives me the opportunity to learn from others. I appreciate their input; life is too short to make all the bad decisions alone. However, I have to hire a certain type of person. I need people who will do whatever we need from packing or unpacking slides, identifying sales leads, selling, helping with a social media campaign, or cleaning the bathroom. The interns know this is not a 9–5 job, rather a 7am–11pm position, if necessary.
I ask a lot of the interns, but in return, I try to give them as much exposure to the business as I can. For example, as I’m currently fundraising, I had an opportunity to present my funding pitch to professors with venture capital investing experience who are faculty of the Blank Center at Babson College.
I brought every member of the ISlide team, including the interns, to that session as I wanted them to hear the feedback and understand the fundamentals of my business. I had asked Babson if it was OK if I brought my team…but I think the Babson folks were shocked when 18 of us showed up!
Justin launched the business in an office space in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He noted, “When I left Reebok, a part of my package was an office for six months at an outplacement firm in Wellesley.” He explained further, “The office space, internet, and telephone were all free. However, once my interns joined me in the space—well, the space was not designed for multiple people and we were asked to leave after five months.”
In September 2013, Justin moved ISlide to the Winsmith Mill Market in the Norwood Commerce Center. According to the Norwood Town News, In years gone by, the area was the home of the Winslow and Smith Brothers tannery. Today, it is a revitalized set of mill buildings, a section of which is appropriately devoted to warehouses filled with antique, vintage and repurposed furniture, accessories, tools, “doohickeys,” etc. Another section houses artist lofts. The remaining portions house manufacturing and commercial businesses.9 As described in the article, the Winsmith Mill Market houses an eclectic group of businesses and shops. There are numerous antique shops and galleries in the complex, which open for business on the weekends, Friday to Sunday. ISlide’s location was on the third floor of one of the buildings in the back; it was essentially a walk up since only someone familiar with the manually operated elevator would even consider getting on it. Justin described his rationale for moving to the Norwood antique warehouse location:
In this location I am paying \($4.50\) per square foot and that includes utilities. As you can see, we have plenty of space for our inventory. Our printing approach is proprietary; we have a secure room where we house our printer. We have an office here for Shooting Touch, the basketball‐based not for profit that I started in 2006. And, given the expansive space, we can host events. For example, in a few weeks we will have a pizza‐eating contest. People will pay \($25\) to enter; the winner will receive a pair of ISlides and all proceeds will go to support a charity.
Social media and celebrity endorsements had provided a very cost‐effective way for Justin to get the word out about ISlide and market the new business. Slam and Dime magazines ran print ads for ISlide and ISlide advertised on their websites, which were popular among basketball enthusiasts. Similarly, ISlide placed ads on other basketball aficionado websites such as HoopRootz (www.
hooprootz.com). Further, Justin and his staff frequently updated the ISlide Instagram page, and many custom sandals were produced for Boston Celtics players, NCAA draft players, and other athlete celebrities such as Tom and Gisele Brady. Justin noted:
A unique aspect of our business is that we can customize one pair of ISlides or 500 pairs of ISlides. To that end, we have a website that allows customers to go online and customize one or many pairs of ISlides. Our slogan is “Stand in What You Stand For.” As such, if we are making shoes for a basketball team, we can put the team name on our shoes. A player might want to put his jersey number on his shoes, or his name on one shoe and his jersey number on the other shoe. As we state in our catalog, we offer “Endless Custom Options, your logo, your brand, your team, even your wildest dream.
In 2013, ISlide sold approximately \($50K\) of slides. Most of those sales were to individual customers. The company hoped to achieve revenue between \($250\) and \($350K\) in 2014, and while they still sold to individuals, they were increasingly targeting teams and other bulk‐sale opportunities. Justin’s sales approach was to be constantly on the road attending basketball tournaments and trade shows and calling on large companies that supply uniforms and equipment to teams. For example, Dick’s Sporting Goods, a large sporting goods chain retailer, has a division that focuses on team sales and volume purchases.
Justin noted, “A deal with the team sales and volume purchases division of Dick’s Sporting Goods would be huge for us.” Justin also used an independent sales representative for team athletic wear, a father and son, who carried the ISlide line in their shoe offerings. As independent sales representatives, they were paid a percentage of the ISlide shoes they sold. Justin felt that was a great way to get the line in front of customers, for a minimal cost. In late 2013, ISlides with the logo “Boston Strong” were available at The Tannery and at Puritan Cape Cod, two local shoe retail chains. A portion of the proceeds, from the Boston Strong line of ISlide, would be donated to the Boston Strong foundation.
Justin shared his view on how he envisioned growing the company. He noted, I love the “Life is Good” model. They started selling t‐shirts out of the back of their car. They had a cool logo that caught on. Now they sell a wide variety of products. I hope we have a similar trajectory. Currently, we have one product but I hope to expand. Like “Life is Good,” my plan is to build a company. Of course, if we get an outrageous offer, I would consider selling ISlide. Exhibit 3.4 summarizes Justin’s professional journey and shows the parallel journey that Justin and Lindsey experienced with Shooting Touch.
The Future
Justin used his own funds to start ISlide. He noted, “I made some good investments early in my career that I used to start ISlide. Thus far, I have not taken a salary from the business. I am currently seeking investors, both friends and family and venture capitalists; an influx of capital will provide the funds I need to grow the business.”
Justin continued, I am proud of what we have accomplished so far, but I wonder what we should do to grow and scale this business.
Should we add other products and if so what kinds of products?
Should we develop strategic partnerships, and if so, with whom? Should we focus on selling to retailers and if so, how can we reach them and manage the relationship with those companies while maintaining appropriate margins?
Or should we stay the course and focus on selling to the end user?
Discussion Questions
1. Is Justin an entrepreneur? Why or why not?
2. Who is Justin? What does he enjoy? Where is his passion?
3. What aspects of his background can you identify that led him to start ISlide?
4. What resources does Justin use to start ISlide? How does he research what he needs to do?
5. Whom does Justin know? Whom has he engaged so far to help him with his ISlide journey?
6. What should Justin do next?
Step by Step Answer:
