Product Startup Podcast Episode 026: Developing Shoes With Removable Heels

00:00:00 Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako

00:00:11 Filip Valica: Design + Invent and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.

00:00:27 Filip Valica: I didn't understand how emotionally difficult it would be. At one point, I received a phone call. about a year and a half ago and it was from a shoe factory director and they said, listen, there's this blonde French girl in here

00:00:40 Filip Valica: insisting that she's Tanya Heath and she wants us to make this shoe and we looked on internet and she's clearly not you. That just, it floored me. It floored me because it's beyond the product. It's sort of me.

00:00:55 Filip Valica: You know, people pretending to be, it just never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that people would do that. The Product Startup, Episode 26.

00:01:04 Filip Valica: Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, helping you turn ideas into successful products step by step. With your host,

00:01:13 Filip Valica: Filip Valica. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Product Startup Podcast. In the last episode, we talked to Robson Splane. Robson is an industrial designer, and we talked about how he developed the pro rye Cetacist

00:01:24 Filip Valica: and how he helps the elderly and wounded rise from their seats independently. So make sure to check out episode 20. If you want to hear more about how Robson prototypes his ideas and how he pitched investors and other companies.

00:01:39 Filip Valica: So thank you, everybody, for taking a time to leave a review on iTunes. It's really much appreciated. I use all the feedback that you guys send me to help improve the show.

00:01:49 Filip Valica: Today, I'm joined by Tanya Heath, who created a multi-height shoe with removable heels. One of the most interesting parts of the interview for me was that she was able to do this in Paris,

00:01:59 Filip Valica: where the idea of a convertible shoe is almost a sacrilege, and she even gets into how she sources manufacturing and production locally. So everything is made in France. So let's get started.

00:02:12 Filip Valica: Hi, Tanya. How are you doing today? Very good. Thanks. So I really wanted to have you on the show because I think your product is interesting. Long time ago, I had a coworker that had this crazy idea

00:02:21 Filip Valica: to say, hey, wouldn't it be great if women could change out the heels for their shoes and go from, you know,

00:02:29 Tanya Heath: just that. So can you talk a little bit about your product and how it came to be? Well, first of all, I'd like to address what your co-worker said. That's something I like because I find that our innovation is kind of at the level of urban myth. So since I've

00:02:43 Tanya Heath: started working on this project, the number of women who've written to me and said, oh, I had that exact same idea is absolutely overwhelming. And I think that for me, that's actually

00:02:52 Tanya Heath: reassuring because it makes me feel like maybe my innovation isn't to Star Trek. You know, maybe it's a bit more down to earth and maybe it addresses things that women feel and that they need and that they've thought about for a long time.

00:03:05 Tanya Heath: And in terms of my own personal inspiration, it's probably no different that you're co-workers. It's simply because I really love high heels. I like the way I look in them and I like being taller, quite frankly. But I don't like the pain.

00:03:19 Tanya Heath: I don't like the inconvenience and I don't like the reduced mobility. And then when I'm coming home late at night on a metro, I don't like being leered at.

00:03:27 Tanya Heath: So I just got angry with the footwear industry and started thinking, isn't there another way of thinking about the high heel and having a high heel that adapted to me instead of me

00:03:38 Filip Valica: having to carry around several pairs of shoes in my sack. You mentioned that a lot of people might have had this idea before. You know, what's interesting to me is that no one has done it before you. And I think, you know, there's a lot of challenges involved with bringing shoe like that out to market.

00:03:53 Filip Valica: You can't just put a taller heel on a shoe and make it interchangeable.

00:03:56 Tanya Heath: or at least that's what I thought. What are your thought on why maybe it hasn't hit the market before you? I think it's that big piece of literature that you see about, you know, the difference between having a whole bunch of good ideas and actually executing them. So you've touched on several

00:04:11 Tanya Heath: points that are real. It was an engineering problem. So it wasn't just a design problem. So I think some people have tried and possibly not succeeded because they treated it as a design issue. We understood

00:04:25 Tanya Heath: quite early on or initially right away that it was an engineering problem. And we had 14 different engineers working on this at different stages in research and development. So it wasn't just a light

00:04:36 Tanya Heath: engineering problem. It was a, you know, it was a pretty tough nut to crack. Then it became a design problem. So we actually had a proof of concept after two and a half years of research and development.

00:04:51 Tanya Heath: But then to make the shoe really look like a classical shoe, that took another

00:04:55 Filip Valica: year and a half. Wow. There were a whole bunch of different challenges interposed one upon the other that made it complex. So let's talk about maybe a couple of the challenges really quick.

00:05:07 Tanya Heath: When you were creating some of these prototypes and you were presenting them, I assume that you

00:05:13 Filip Valica: had some testers that you were showing this to. Yeah, I had testers both from a marketing perspective and actually also wearing the shoes. So how did the feedback kind of change the direction that you're going with the shoe?

00:05:24 Tanya Heath: Were there any misconceptions that you thought, hey, this is definitely what the consumers want? And it was kind of, once you tested it, it was completely the other way around.

00:05:33 Tanya Heath: There was definitely one approach when we were still in research and development, which I wanted badly to work, because it was relatively easy.

00:05:43 Tanya Heath: And when I showed it to a panel of Parisian women, they were so, you know, underwhelmed, wouldn't be the word, downright negative and hostile to the appearances. You know, so, so yeah, that one got

00:05:55 Tanya Heath: scrapped. At another point, we thought we'd actually got it. So we had a prototype that worked. People could walk around in it. They were really comfortable. And I took it home and I showed it

00:06:06 Tanya Heath: to my children. And they were just watching TV and absentmindedly playing with it. And they broke it. So it was one of those soul-searching moments you thought, you know, should you release something which you know your children can break, or should you go back to the drawing board

00:06:20 Tanya Heath: and keep working on it to make it more robust? So certainly the feedback was coming from, you know, people I wasn't even asking, like my kids, and it could be on any aspect of the innovation.

00:06:32 Tanya Heath: The aspects that I was particularly concerned with

00:06:37 Tanya Heath: were really visual. So aspects about appearance, do you like the shoe? Because at the end of the day, you're selling a product,

00:06:45 Filip Valica: And then the other reason is the functional aspects of the product, we were pretty good

00:06:51 Tanya Heath: at understanding those internally. You had a test panel that comprised of Parisian women. You're based out of Paris now, where you're always based out of Paris? Yes, I've been living in Paris for 20 years now.

00:07:02 Tanya Heath: And I've been very involved in innovation in France for, well, I guess 15 of those 20 years. So I used to work for different innovative companies. And I also taught innovation at one of the engineering schools. in Paris.

00:07:17 Tanya Heath: So all of the women who I'd be in discussion with on a first-hand basis would definitely be Parisian. But one of the things that's cool about innovating today is you can put things out on social media. So I always had my sort of closed group on Facebook because I started working

00:07:31 Tanya Heath: on this in 2009. So it was pre- Snapchat and pre- Instagram and pre-other social networks. And I was

00:07:39 Filip Valica: able to get feedback from my entire network, be they in India or in Hong Kong or in Canada. And And having that international input was very, very important for the product. And that's a really good point, too.

00:07:51 Filip Valica: You know, I would think that Parisian women would be maybe the, like you said, the most critical of a design. You know, it would seem that fashion is just so important there.

00:07:58 Tanya Heath: And when you come up with something that's so innovative or that changes the status quo in a way, you're going to get a lot of pushback. Did you experience any of that?

00:08:07 Tanya Heath: Yeah. It was so awful that at some point I'd come home just in tears. And I'd say to my kids or to my husband, I feel like I've just killed. 200 baby seals, you know, the kind of action. So, so yeah, that notion of being

00:08:21 Tanya Heath: accepted in my home market probably wasn't just psychologically important. It was probably important for the future of this company because if a preation is going to spend the money and actually put the shoe on her foot, she has to love it.

00:08:35 Tanya Heath: From an aesthetic perspective. And her criteria and her standards, I wouldn't say that they're necessarily

00:08:43 Tanya Heath: they might not be stronger, but she's certainly might be more demanding than women the world over. Also, Frisian's walking. So the shoe had to be robust,

00:08:54 Filip Valica: and she's looking good probably 18 hours a day. So it had to fit in that kind of lifestyle.

00:09:01 Tanya Heath: So that was immensely important, and it was very difficult. So I guess in a way it was a really good test bed for you. It was a tough test bed, but once you realized that you could succeed in it, everything else became maybe hopefully a little bit easier. Well, that's one thing that I'm grateful for, because A, I already.

00:09:15 Tanya Heath: I knew that it would be the hardest test. And B, imagine the reverse. And, you know, I love my Canadian friends, but they're very supportive. So the Canadian attitude towards innovation and towards an entrepreneur is to nurture them

00:09:28 Tanya Heath: and to give them a lot of positive feedback. But I probably wouldn't have been able to iron out so quickly some of the things that people didn't like. And then, you know, because my friends are wonderful, they would have possibly worn ugly shoes for five years without saying anything.

00:09:43 Filip Valica: and it's nice to have that Parisian bluntness where they would just, you know, it's only now that my best friends have started wearing the shoes for the past two years. Prior to that, they were like cute little project tenure. Yeah, that's interesting. So when you ask people

00:09:56 Tanya Heath: these questions about your shoes or about the project that you were working on to get some of their feedback, how did you structure the questions to make sure that you weren't asking a leading question that you weren't hearing what you wanted to hear? Okay, so that's interesting. I deliberately

00:10:09 Tanya Heath: didn't structure the questions. The way we did our testing, And our testing lasted for about nine months is we actually sold the shoes. So we sold every single pair of shoes. We didn't inform people that they were part of a test.

00:10:23 Tanya Heath: And the entire product team was in sales. So we were just constantly interacting with customers. If somebody didn't buy, we were asking a lot of questions about, was it the price, was it the aesthetic, was it the way it feels?

00:10:36 Tanya Heath: And we continue this to this day. So in the Paris stores, so all the other stores do have real salespeople. But in the Paris store, there are no salespeople. It's really the team.

00:10:48 Tanya Heath: And that presence and that connectivity with our client, it's allowed us to go far quite quickly.

00:10:54 Filip Valica: So that test period for me was vital. And we weren't just testing the product. We were also testing different channels.

00:11:03 Filip Valica: Yeah, that's interesting that you say that because I know a lot of tech companies that have the similar approach where they ask their developers to sit on the customer service calls.

00:11:11 Tanya Heath: and they have to do a rotation X amount of time, you know, every week just to get the temperature of the customer every week and see if there's any changes that they need to make. Well, that conviction actually does come from my experience in tech companies.

00:11:23 Tanya Heath: So in France, a tech company wouldn't do that because the tech companies I was with weren't even large enough to have a customer support line. But one of the things that I'd noticed in the previous three startups that I'd worked in as an

00:11:35 Tanya Heath: employee is that the company was really too early stage to have a dedicated sales force. and that it was probably better to have product development and what's it called marketing

00:11:47 Filip Valica: product marketers selling the product just so they could hash out what exactly the client wanted. So I felt that since we were early stage, it was premature to have salespeople.

00:11:59 Tanya Heath: Well, so it was really nice to have a store then to be able to test all this. Did you put up a lot of money in the beginning to get this going so you could have a storefront or were you basically selling out of a kiosk of some kind?

00:12:11 Tanya Heath: So we were selling at that stage out of one of the large department stores in France. So this wouldn't be known in North America.

00:12:23 Tanya Heath: But in France, a department store doesn't purchase your product. So how would I describe it? Yeah, it's kind of like a concession. So we had a concession in a department store, but not in Paris.

00:12:36 Filip Valica: And I didn't want it to be in Paris because I wanted to protect our reputation. And then we also had two or three boutiques that we're willing to try.

00:12:46 Tanya Heath: So online boutiques and physical boutiques. That's really amazing that you're able to create those types of relationships. Did you start creating those relationships with people before you started creating the product? Or was it kind of something that happened in parallel? It happened in parallel

00:13:00 Tanya Heath: because in France, we won quite a few innovation awards. Some of them very high profile. So during the R&D stage of the company, I mean, in one respect, it was terrible because we were getting a lot of

00:13:13 Tanya Heath: media attention before there was even a product. But the thing that was positive about it is we were

00:13:18 Filip Valica: getting a lot of media attention before there was a product. So we could start communicating with people who could help us move forward. And some of the boutiques, in fact, all of the boutiques

00:13:27 Tanya Heath: came to us because they were excited about the product due to the media coverage we were getting. Sounds really exciting. Did you get any negative coverage that you felt like, man, that didn't really portray us in the way that we wanted to?

00:13:39 Tanya Heath: coverage, no.

00:13:42 Tanya Heath: I did get heartbreaking comments. So I was in the finals for, I guess, the largest entrepreneurship award in France. It's called the FM Academy.

00:13:51 Tanya Heath: And I lost the finals by two votes, which was good because when I went in, I was given a 20% chance of winning. So it means I recovered myself to a certain extent during the finals. However,

00:14:04 Tanya Heath: the final judge, you know, he said what all French people were saying at that time. And I do want to be very clear. This was four years ago. He said, you know, the idea is great. Everything is perfect. You as a team, you know, your team is

00:14:17 Tanya Heath: really strong. And he goes, too bad. The shoes are ugly. Ouch. Yeah. And we've been working so hard to make them beautiful. I think the other thing, which is misunderstood about us, is the price point.

00:14:31 Tanya Heath: So I get a bit of hate mail about the shoes costing a certain amount, but there's no real way of doing it in a in a in a cheaper version at the moment so our shoes are made in france and we are using luxury

00:14:43 Tanya Heath: leathers and oh actually i just bought my own hill factory two months ago oh wow um yeah so that's going to be really good for the product and it's going to be good for innovation subsequent innovations

00:14:54 Tanya Heath: because i now have my own technical room but all of this sort of we're devoted to quality we're devoted to craftsmanship um and we're devoted to ethical productions so for example there's

00:15:06 Tanya Heath: no cruelty leathers in my products. All of the leathers come from the food chain and they come from a French or a Dutch food train. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of attention to the product

00:15:18 Tanya Heath: that just makes the price what it is. So, you know, we're not like a tier one luxury company where

00:15:23 Filip Valica: the price is a marketing price. It really just is that price. And I think that that's currently,

00:15:29 Tanya Heath: I'd say the criticism that possibly stings the most. We're not a made in China to chew coming from a death march to cow. You don't want to just be known as the manufacturer or the brand of shoes where you can change the heel.

00:15:44 Tanya Heath: You're also a brand that has a really quality product. It's actually more than that. We're a brand that would one day. So today I think it would be pretentious to say that we're a brand.

00:15:54 Filip Valica: So we're trying to become a brand. And eventually I'd like to become a fashion house. So the mission of Tanya Heath-Paris is very clear, which is if we can combine fashion with innovation or technology to make the life of modern web,

00:16:06 Filip Valica: and simpler, we'll do it. And we're already looking at other products. That's really exciting. And so to touch on one of the points that you mentioned, the price on your e-shop now and shoes

00:16:17 Filip Valica: range from $290 euro all the way up to boots that are at $700,000. You know, by US standards,

00:16:24 Tanya Heath: that's definitely a luxury shoe, but it's not anything that's in the stratosphere. So it would maybe be something that you could convince people to pay money for once they were able to handle the shoe

00:16:34 Tanya Heath: and see that it was really a high-quality shoe, but it doesn't seem like it's completely out of the ballpark. Well, here's the economist in me coming out. So, you know, if I look at the proper relation, let's say of the United States, I'd say

00:16:47 Tanya Heath: realistically, I'm only addressing two to five percent of the entire American population. The rest simply can't afford it. And then within that two to five percent, yes, I definitely have arguments to convince my core

00:17:02 Tanya Heath: 2 to 5%. I think where I'm perhaps sensitive is that when I began this project, I hadn't necessarily sought,

00:17:12 Tanya Heath: how would you say this? I hadn't decided to create a luxury product. It became a luxury product because of the reality of the product.

00:17:21 Tanya Heath: I don't know if that's clear. Basically, I'm saying, you know, when I set out to do this back in 2009, you know, when I really started research and development, I had my mission statement. So that hasn't changed.

00:17:32 Filip Valica: changed very much. But I'd never set out to create a luxury company. The company has become

00:17:39 Filip Valica: a purveyor of luxury products because I think our commitment to quality and values is so strong

00:17:48 Tanya Heath: that that's the only way we can make it. No, that's a really good explanation of that. You won this award and you got some press from it and then you were able to test out your idea through some stores. And it sounds really straightforward. I'm sure that was a challenge

00:18:02 Tanya Heath: in itself. How were you able to then set up manufacturing? That was equally gruesome. So, okay, it's funny going back to that time period because as you say

00:18:13 Tanya Heath: it, you know, the award and the stores, that sounds easy. But in actual fact, so you've got the award and then you've got the stores and everything's going wrong. So you're trying to correct it and you're trying to figure out why it's going wrong on the product side. And then this obviously

00:18:27 Tanya Heath: translates to the manufacturing side, but the manufacturing side might be worse because, first

00:18:32 Filip Valica: of all, your volumes are low. Second of all, you've got this quirky techno shoe that nobody knows how to produce. Third of all, you have no reputation and you've never been funded so you don't

00:18:42 Filip Valica: have very much money either. So, you know, the ability to convince people to work with you and to

00:18:48 Tanya Heath: build a supply chain that can produce to your standards, that was sort of harrowing in itself. Yeah, I can only imagine. Did you approach some smaller manufacturers? Did you always start out making the shoe in France and just approach maybe some smaller

00:19:03 Tanya Heath: manufacturers or smaller artisans to maybe come up with your initial set? Okay, that's exactly what I did initially, but very quickly I realized that artisans would be too small.

00:19:14 Tanya Heath: So, yes, then we were left with, you know, the manufacturers who were so desperate for business that they would take us. I'm looking for politically. I'm assuming no one will listen to it. So it took us a long time to get where we are today.

00:19:28 Tanya Heath: So today we're with the best shoe manufacturer in France that does work for other brands.

00:19:34 Filip Valica: So they're the only shoe manufacturer left in the country that can do a luxury shoe for a third party. And on the heel side,

00:19:44 Tanya Heath: you know, I just really felt that the future of the company lay in our ability to control quality. and research and development on the heel. So that's why we bought the factory this July.

00:19:59 Tanya Heath: And that must have been a huge step. Can you maybe say how much you had going on in terms of sales? Was this a purchase that was easy for you? Are you having to look maybe 10 years down the line to say, okay, hopefully that we can make this?

00:20:11 Tanya Heath: So the decision to make the purchase, if that's what the question was, I made it automatically. As soon as I heard they were for sale, my associate called me and he's like, should we buy this factory? and I was at the dentist with my daughter.

00:20:26 Tanya Heath: She was getting braces. And I remember just being bothered by the phone call and saying no. And then I thought about it. And I called them back three seconds later. And I was like, yes, we're going to buy that company.

00:20:37 Filip Valica: One thing that shows how we've changed is when I was starting Tanya Heath, Paris,

00:20:44 Filip Valica: you know, I couldn't raise money. We couldn't get a bank loan.

00:20:47 Tanya Heath: you know, the company has been funded by love money and mostly by me, you know, me and a lot by me. So we couldn't get money into the company, but there to buy the Keel factory, our reputations

00:21:01 Tanya Heath: good enough that we've done the whole thing with debt. Yeah, that's really excellent. And were you able to also do that maybe because you had some collateral at this point because the bank saw that you were purchasing physical assets with maybe property or

00:21:14 Tanya Heath: certainly that, no, that definitely helps. That definitely helps. I think what really helps, though, is that we've paid back our bank loans.

00:21:22 Tanya Heath: Like, we always have debt because I think it's healthy to progress with debt. So we pay back our loans. I think that track record is good.

00:21:30 Tanya Heath: And I think a lot of people who didn't back us financially, in fact, I know so. A lot of people have written me sort of letters saying they wish they had.

00:21:38 Filip Valica: So I think the fact that we're still there and that we're selling has been important. In 2016, so we're going to do.

00:21:46 Tanya Heath: are closing at the end of August, so in two or three days, we'll probably break even or be a bit under this year due to considerable investments. But the year before, we actually made a profit.

00:22:02 Filip Valica: And I think, yeah, and I think that astonishes people. Yeah. And so while we're on that topic, how long did it take before you were able to draw anything from the company? I did

00:22:12 Tanya Heath: four full years without any sales. Wow. That's really difficult. It was incredibly difficult, and you're still paying engineers in France. They're not cheap. And it's a physical product, so you're prototyping. Right. Yeah, constantly. Yeah. That's really difficult.

00:22:27 Tanya Heath: At any point during that time, did you think that you weren't going to make it? Nope. That's funny that you say that because I think everybody that's had that really amazing success

00:22:35 Filip Valica: never really entertained the idea of failure. Well, the thing is, is I don't have a success yet. You know, unless you define success by I'm still alive. I guess I thought it would be hard. I think I was astonished by how difficult it would be.

00:22:51 Filip Valica: But if I project 30 or 40 years down the line, I have no doubt that we'll achieve our goal

00:22:57 Tanya Heath: of becoming an internationally respected fashioners, which sounds insane. No, that's a huge goal, but it's something that you seem to be well on your way to achieving. As you're going through this process now, how are you able to manage some of this growth

00:23:12 Filip Valica: and kind of, you know, make sure that, like you said, you want to make sure that you keep some debt because it builds credit and because it helps you grow faster, I imagine. But how do you manage that growth so it's sustainable?

00:23:25 Tanya Heath: Growth has been sufficiently organic that there's not being a huge challenge yet that we can't bite off. However, I'd hope that in the next five years, growth would be less organic. So I am looking for investment at this stage.

00:23:40 Tanya Heath: that's very interesting too so now that you're able to approach investors to say hey look here's our track record here's what we've been able to do on a small amount of money how

00:23:51 Tanya Heath: do you feel that their response is going to be or have you already started doing this we haven't started yet response in the past was so negative that you know and i don't

00:24:01 Tanya Heath: i'm not the kind of person who believes in in santa claus so i'd rather start my business plan and see what the numbers look like myself

00:24:09 Filip Valica: To be very honest and coming full circle to how you introduced the concept, it is a concept that's out there. So it's something that a lot of people have imagined and a lot of people have dreamed of.

00:24:25 Tanya Heath: I'd say if I'm being frank with myself, I'm astonished that we haven't been funded yet. I would have thought that it was such an obvious innovation that there would be somebody who would be interested in being part of it.

00:24:37 Tanya Heath: Now, I remember seeing maybe a couple similar products at something like an airplane shopping catalog that you read in the front of your seat. So the only reason I'm bringing this up is because maybe people have this initial connotation

00:24:50 Tanya Heath: of it going in that direction, like a product that's kind of like a fad or it's more interesting widget than piece of fashion. Okay, that's fascinating that you say that because one of my very good friends in Paris,

00:25:04 Filip Valica: one of my best friends, in fact, every time she saw me for three years, she'd be like,

00:25:10 Tanya Heath: Tenya, how is your inspector gadget shoe going? And I think that her insistence on the inspector gadget aspects of the product made me really determined to make sure that

00:25:21 Tanya Heath: Tanya Heat Paris had nothing to do with Inspector Gadget. So we've deliberately been

00:25:26 Filip Valica: shying away from anything that would make us look like a flash in the pan, fly away, gimmick. Yeah, and we're very strict about that. And I think, once again, And we can credit the French woman for that. Great strategy for sure. You want to separate yourself from that. Yeah.

00:25:40 Filip Valica: Also, I guess our attention to craftsmanship. I mean, very clearly, our shoes are produced in a leading luxury shoe supplier. Our heels, so the heel factory that I just thought was the leading heel factory in the entire country. Wow.

00:25:54 Tanya Heath: So it's not this crappy product that's made in some zone. It's truly not. You've got a broad assortment of different accessories.

00:26:04 Tanya Heath: or, you know, different heels and things like that, how did you go through the decision-making process to say out of all these combinations, and there seems to be almost an infinite number of heel heights,

00:26:16 Tanya Heath: widths, you know, whether it's a chunky or thin heel, colors, finishes, whether it's matte or sparkly, high gloss. How did you even get down to, okay, here's the top, what looks like

00:26:26 Tanya Heath: a couple dozen options? Okay, so from a shoe perspective, I have some basic design guidelines. So the shoe has to be able to take you seamlessly from any situation.

00:26:40 Tanya Heath: So the way, I guess the catch-all for that would be the shoe has to take you from day to night. And then within that, shoes fit into one of three categories. So the first category is power. Those would be professional shoes to take you from work and beyond. The second is liberty.

00:26:55 Tanya Heath: And that would be very much Parisian casual chic. And then the third value of the company is seduction. And those are shoes that can take you to a restaurant or to a party or to a

00:27:05 Tanya Heath: marriage. And that's kind of the three values that we design around. And those would be the values of Taney Heath-Paris. Then in terms of heel heights, we won't go over nine or nine and

00:27:16 Tanya Heath: half centimeters in height because we know that if we do, we're inherently starting to really screw up women's health. We could break their arch or we could, you know, push them towards

00:27:29 Filip Valica: a podiatrist so we don't do it. And then in terms of colors and styles for those heels, We have colors that we keep all of the time. That's internally known as the Tanja Heath-Heath-Paris rainbow. So those colors don't change too much.

00:27:44 Tanya Heath: And then we have seasonal colors, which we change every six months.

00:27:48 Tanya Heath: And then in between that, we have successful colors. So there's a few colors that you'll see on the website, which are neither part of a seasonal collection nor part of the Tanja-Heath-Paris rainbow, but they just do with so well commercially that we always keep them.

00:28:04 Tanya Heath: no and that's really interesting did you and were you able to kind of narrow this down by talking to your you know target audience about this early on or was it just something

00:28:13 Tanya Heath: that you created of based on your you know your experience as a woman or your research into the market no so actually that idea of

00:28:24 Filip Valica: having colored heels came from one of our clients so she called me one day and she's like tanya you know i love this shoe but it is so boring and you are so boring And she's like, why don't you do a pink heel?

00:28:38 Filip Valica: And I don't like pink. So I was like, let me test that.

00:28:42 Tanya Heath: So we went out into our courtyard and we spray painted a blackheeled pink. And we clicked it into a black shoe and it looked really great. And, you know, I thought, wow, this is astonishing.

00:28:54 Tanya Heath: It's a lot better than I thought it would be. And you know what? I'd wear that. So that's where that whole notion of colored heels came from. It came from a client. That's really interesting.

00:29:05 Tanya Heath: As I look through all these options, I'm thinking that it's just a chore to kind of keep making sure that you're on the forefront of fashion and that your product doesn't look dated or that it doesn't look behind the trend.

00:29:17 Tanya Heath: Do you have a way of making sure that you stay on top of the pulse of the customer in that way? Well, that's when you're suddenly very, very, very happy to be in Paris. So we go to trade fairs that are entirely trans-based.

00:29:30 Tanya Heath: So, for example, some of the trade fairs I go to, you're not allowed in with a camera,

00:29:36 Filip Valica: and you're really seeing the way the industry projects everybody will be two years before everybody else sees it. So we're highly aware of trends. What's still complex is that we have to choose one.

00:29:50 Filip Valica: So for my last trade fair, you know, they were presenting eight different directions that the industry

00:29:55 Tanya Heath: may or may not move in. And you as a fashion brand, you have to decide. Am I going to join one of those eight? If so, which one? And if I don't, what am I going to do?

00:30:06 Tanya Heath: But this awareness of trends, I'd say, is inherent to being an actor in Paris. There's a lot of trends forecasters and there's a lot of trade fairs. And that's really difficult. You know, speaking from my experience, like you said, you have to just choose one trend.

00:30:18 Tanya Heath: There's certainly trends that are really hot in one part of the world that don't translate to other parts of the world. So you can't just look at, at least for the industry that I was in, we couldn't just look at to see what was happening on one part of the world. and say, great, this is where we need to be a year from now,

00:30:33 Tanya Heath: because that may or may not hit. For me, it's harder than that, because if you go to Institue Francaise de la Maud, and I have the privilege of going to a few courses because the French Federation of Shoes paid for my coursework,

00:30:45 Tanya Heath: I don't have a diploma, but they let me audit a few classes.

00:30:49 Tanya Heath: They would say that a brand like my own should be an absolute articulation of the designer, but then you get into this kind of schizophrenia. If you see me from one root perspective, I'm an international designer because I'm Canadian and I live in Paris

00:31:03 Tanya Heath: and I think it would be difficult to take the Canadian out of me but then if you see it from another perspective I'm a Parisian designer because I've lived in Paris for 20 years that she was made in France it features a lot of French craftsmanship and Cervoir Faire

00:31:18 Tanya Heath: and that schizophrenia while it might be beneficial to the brand is actually quite complex because it means from a stylistic perspective

00:31:29 Tanya Heath: we struggled for a long time to define whether we were going to design according to French aesthetics, traditional aesthetics,

00:31:39 Tanya Heath: or according to international aesthetics. As the brand moves forward and we open up more stores internationally, and as I feel more comfortable in this space, we've made the decision to follow international standards.

00:31:53 Tanya Heath: But then it's exactly the tension you just described. We will be going, you know, probably, I'm going with the French Federation of Shoes to China at the end of the month. I have no idea what to expect there.

00:32:07 Filip Valica: I know that in my price point, they expect a lot more decoration. Will they like our shoe? I don't know. Are you talking about entering Asia as a new market?

00:32:15 Tanya Heath: I'd love to enter Asia as a new market. So my comfort level is greatest with Singapore. I might have said Hong Kong a year. ago. However, the retail space there isn't doing very well. And I'm not so comfortable with the

00:32:29 Tanya Heath: relationship between Hong Kong and China. But Singapore seems to be very rules-based. It's got an Anglo-Saxon sort of backbone. And from what I can tell from my clients, so we have a lot of

00:32:40 Tanya Heath: clients in banking, a lot of them are moving their headquarters to Singapore. So I think Singapore will maintain stability and continue to be affluent.

00:32:52 Tanya Heath: Yeah, that's interesting. Are you worried about IP at all whenever you take your product out of the country? It's the first concern.

00:32:59 Filip Valica: So, I mean, I have a patent for China, but that, as any sort of patent lawyer would tell you, only gives you the opportunity to fight. We already have very sick people around the world who've changed their name to Tanya Heath.

00:33:14 Filip Valica: Yeah. So, you know, to have so much, we have a lot of copy at the moment. We even have one in France.

00:33:20 Tanya Heath: So to be copied so widely before you're even successful, you know, on the one hand, it's possibly flattering. But on the other hand, it's annoying.

00:33:33 Filip Valica: We were talking about my results for 2016. One of the things that I have done is I've increased spending on intellectual property.

00:33:43 Tanya Heath: And I can imagine that would be a huge challenge, especially with fashion and design in general, like product design, industrial design.

00:33:50 Filip Valica: It's so difficult to keep a lid on that because it will go viral or something interesting will go throughout all of social media. And now you've just not only are you increasing sales, but you're also increasing the likelihood of somebody copying you.

00:34:04 Tanya Heath: And now you have to be in so many markets at once to protect it. It's immensely complex, which is why it's important to be a brand and why it's important for my quality to be impeccable.

00:34:16 Tanya Heath: So so far, for example, the copies that we've seen, the quality is terrible. I imagine it would be. I imagine the very first copy that is out there is probably someone that says, hey, they're selling this for, you know, two, 300 euro. We're going to sell it for 20.

00:34:30 Tanya Heath: Yep. That's exactly what it is. And they're really crappy shoes.

00:34:34 Tanya Heath: So is there anything that you can do to help differentiate your, the true Tanya Heath brand from all the copycats physically maybe in the box or in terms of packaging or in terms

00:34:45 Tanya Heath: of marketing or, you know, some people will put a hologram sticker on the inside of a product? Is there anything that you've found that maybe helps deter that? I don't know. We might be looking at some kind of combination with an wearable application

00:34:57 Tanya Heath: where the client could activate it when she purchases. I haven't thought about it too deeply. I'd go more in that direction if I have to.

00:35:06 Filip Valica: At the moment, just to give you a general answer,

00:35:10 Tanya Heath: I've seen $20 copies of the Kelly bag where I can't even, I literally can't tell you that it's not a Hermes product. Wow.

00:35:21 Tanya Heath: So copies of Tanya Heath-Paris at the moment are crappy, but I don't underestimate a counterfeiter's ability to copy well. Right, to just get better at it.

00:35:31 Tanya Heath: And then the other thing for me at the moment would be because I'm not a brand yet, you know, because Tanya Heath-Paris isn't well-known, I think it would just be easy to copy the concept.

00:35:45 Tanya Heath: But once again, so on the other hand, my intellectual property is strong. So it's being tested a few times now, and we've won every single time. Wow. Well, good congratulations for you for doing that. That's really difficult.

00:36:00 Tanya Heath: It is. It's, I mean, once again, that falls into the emotional category.

00:36:05 Filip Valica: I think one of the surprises from this company is I didn't, you know, back to those 200 seals, did I really kill them? I didn't understand how emotionally difficult it would be.

00:36:17 Filip Valica: At one point, I received a phone call about a year and a half ago, and it was from a shoe factory director in a part of the country, or in the part of the world that I won't name.

00:36:27 Tanya Heath: And they said, listen, there's this blonde French girl in here insisting that she's Tanya Heath, and she wants us to make this shoe. And we looked on internet, and she's clearly not you. Wow.

00:36:39 Tanya Heath: That just, it floored me.

00:36:43 Filip Valica: wow it floored me because it's it's beyond the product it's sort of me yeah you know people pretending to be it just never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that people would do that this is the first time i've ever heard of anybody doing that okay well there you go it did not

00:36:57 Tanya Heath: occur to me now you're spending all this money to have to uh play whack a mole so to speak you know there's this game in the u.s that children can play where it's an automated arcade and the the little uh figure will pop up through the hole and you have to kind of hit them back down

00:37:10 Tanya Heath: with a rubber mallet and game gets more and more challenging as more of those little moles will come up through the hole and you can't keep up with it all because there's more that are popping

00:37:18 Tanya Heath: up than you can hit it once. Yeah, yeah, there's a bit of that. And it's also just the pure shock. So, you know, if we're talking about flattery, to be very frank with you, I never felt

00:37:31 Tanya Heath: flattered. It's my friends who are like, yeah, to be copied is it's flattery. I've never felt the flattery part too clearly.

00:37:40 Tanya Heath: While you're going through all this, what has helped you to kind of keep that positive mindset and maybe if there were some stumbles along the way that helped you kind of work past them? Okay.

00:37:52 Tanya Heath: Number one, I don't think I do have a positive mindset, but I think I'm sort of, I've never been positive. So that would be something that would be true of me since the day I was born. So I think one of the things that helps me is that I have a realistic mindset.

00:38:07 Filip Valica: So I might never be as negative as I should be, but I'm possibly not as positive as other people would be either. So I think that sort of realism has helped me. I think also I have kind of a strong support network.

00:38:22 Tanya Heath: You know, my husband, when I started this, he said, I'll give you four years before I say anything. And he really did. He really did. He really left me alone for four years to tinker. and to try.

00:38:37 Tanya Heath: I think another thing that helps me is actually having kids. You know, when I walk through the door, you have to cook a meal. So it forces you to focus on something else. So it's kind of like a mini vacation every day.

00:38:51 Tanya Heath: And if I didn't have those children,

00:38:53 Tanya Heath: knowing my character, I'd probably focus on the company,

00:38:58 Filip Valica: you know, 12 to 18 hours. And because I can't do that,

00:39:02 Filip Valica: it's actually saved me. Just going home doing stuff with the kids has given me a break. Yeah, that's interesting that you say that.

00:39:10 Tanya Heath: My wife will get annoyed with me sometimes because I don't have very good work-life balance myself. And we have a young daughter now, too. And I totally agree with you. I could definitely be one of those people that works 12 to 18 hours a day because there's always something to do. Yeah.

00:39:24 Tanya Heath: And I think also, you know, with technology, one of the things that was fabulous this summer is I spent three days at my parents' cottage. And it's so remote that we didn't even have a mobile network. So we're not even talking about, could I consult my emails?

00:39:37 Tanya Heath: I couldn't place a phone call.

00:39:40 Tanya Heath: And on the one hand, it was like coming out of addiction. But on the other hand, I'm trying to maintain some of those principles. So I'm trying to be really black and white about when I'm working and being connected and not goofing around.

00:39:55 Filip Valica: But when I'm not working, really just not working. It's hard. You know, for example, this morning, daughter's not feeling great. And so I'm running late to work, even though work is 25 feet.

00:40:04 Tanya Heath: away from where I sleep, things just seem to add up. And in my mind, what I wanted to get done today

00:40:09 Filip Valica: is already a little bit behind than reality.

00:40:13 Tanya Heath: And you know what? That's how I looked at it for most of my career. It's only been in the past four or five years that I've realized that having those kids is a true vacation. It just takes your mind off of the constant stress of work. And you have

00:40:28 Tanya Heath: to make a small effort to be humane with them.

00:40:33 Tanya Heath: Then also there's a question. of age. When the kids were younger, you know, when they were babies,

00:40:39 Tanya Heath: it was maybe a little less interactive. So it was possibly a bit more work. Now that they're older and they're reading

00:40:48 Filip Valica: philosophers and they're doing poetry and they're writing essays and they've got complex math equations that I can look over. It's more fun. I can definitely see some of that. I wrestled

00:40:59 Filip Valica: with my daughter the other day for maybe 35 minutes and I didn't do anything. It was nice to just kind of

00:41:04 Tanya Heath: take that time out okay so as you say that i'm going to tickle my son who by the way is translating one of our contracts for us nice indentured servitude get your family to work for you for free i'm going

00:41:18 Tanya Heath: to give him five euros if they sign yeah no it's actually i'm telling him that i'm actually investing in him because i think this is the first time he's ever seen a legal contract and i

00:41:32 Tanya Heath: phone to the lawyers. And the lawyer said, if we could just give, because it's actually destined for somebody who doesn't speak English. So he's translating it into French. And I'm pretty

00:41:43 Tanya Heath: impressed because he's in the intellectual property section and he's looking up the legal terms as he goes through. I like that you're evolving your children in that because that's one of the goals

00:41:54 Tanya Heath: that I have in my life is to pass on my work ethic and my drive and my interest in in business and having an imprint onto the world onto my children. How do you manage that with your family? I feel very strongly about that.

00:42:09 Tanya Heath: So the French system is, okay, I don't want to make too many assumptions about Texas,

00:42:17 Tanya Heath: but the French system's grueling. So they've never strayed too far from a 1940s approach to education. There's not a lot of technology in the schools. It's really about reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography.

00:42:32 Tanya Heath: Latin, Greek.

00:42:35 Tanya Heath: My kids are in a special program, which I love, but it adds a lot more work. So they have the normal French program, and then they have additional hours of something that would be called

00:42:46 Tanya Heath: Anglophone Studies. And then they do the Chinese school program after all of that. So it adds a lot of

00:42:55 Tanya Heath: linguistic work and cultural work. So even in the Chinese school program, they're learning about Chinese history in Chinese culture. It adds a lot of hours to their day. A difference in the French approach to

00:43:07 Tanya Heath: learning is sport isn't really part of the curriculum. So they'll do one or two hours a week maximum, but then they'll go off skiing or they'll go off sailing for a week as a school. So they'll

00:43:19 Tanya Heath: have little concentrations. But within that, there's not a lot of economics, there's not a lot of business,

00:43:26 Filip Valica: and there's very little actual hands-on learning. It's very theoretical learning.

00:43:32 Filip Valica: If you contrast that to North America, you know, in Canada at least, kids work in the summer or they used to when I was a kid. I think now kids are working less everywhere.

00:43:43 Tanya Heath: But when I was a kid, you'd have your summer jobs and you'd learn a lot on the job. And I think for me as a child growing up, that was very valuable.

00:43:52 Tanya Heath: So I try to involve my children now that they're older in as many aspects of the work as I can. I want to make it clear in their head that work isn't a four-letter word, I guess, even though it is.

00:44:06 Tanya Heath: And then from an academic perspective,

00:44:09 Tanya Heath: this sort of cultural balance is very important to me.

00:44:11 Filip Valica: So we're just getting back from Canada where everybody was at University of Toronto doing different entrepreneurship classes or economics classes or business-related classes.

00:44:23 Filip Valica: Last year they were doing build a robot or build a rocket. it. So that whole sort of creativity and innovation and entrepreneurship approach, I've tried to build it into their what's called fun time.

00:44:37 Tanya Heath: Sounds really fun for me. Going back, I would redo parts of my childhood now and focus more on things that were innovative in that way. I was one of those kids that had a job before it was legal to have jobs under the table work, so to speak. But I wouldn't replace that

00:44:51 Tanya Heath: experience for anything. I think it certainly made be a better person today.

00:44:55 Tanya Heath: I completely agree with you, and I'm the same as you. At a very basic level, it teaches you how to interact with adults.

00:45:02 Tanya Heath: And I see so many 24-year-olds come through my door, who work as interns here, who literally can't interact with adults. And it's because they've never been confronted with a work situation. And they've got great degrees.

00:45:16 Tanya Heath: So I think that that's something that's missing from the way we bring up our children now. And I want to make sure that my kids can at least have a,

00:45:25 Tanya Heath: conversation with an adult. Well, and then that's a really good perspective on that. You know, as we wrap up the show, I wanted to ask you one last question. Can you give some advice to someone that's starting their own product-based business and they're just having

00:45:38 Tanya Heath: a problem getting to that next stage? They're starting to doubt their product or their future. What would you tell them to say, hey, you know what, this is something that helped me or this

00:45:48 Tanya Heath: is one way of getting it done? I've never been asked that question before. I shy away from universal advice because to me a lot of it is difficult to transpose to different situations.

00:46:03 Tanya Heath: I would say, you know, you have to expect to fail and that hardship is part of the process

00:46:13 Filip Valica: and

00:46:16 Filip Valica: that succeeding does have something to do with your conviction. So for example, we were talking previously about supply chain. It was incredibly difficult.

00:46:26 Tanya Heath: to convince people to work with us. But I think it was my conviction that actually got the ball rolling.

00:46:34 Tanya Heath: And I think at the end of the day, that's the one thing that the entrepreneur themselves can control, how convincing they are, how much conviction they can convey.

00:46:43 Tanya Heath: And then if I look at what happened this summer when we were purchasing the Hill Factory, you know, we weren't the only people positioned on the Hill Factory.

00:46:51 Filip Valica: I was up against other people who wanted to buy the same factory. and we actually had to present our business cases and our vision and our strategy at a French tribunal.

00:46:59 Filip Valica: And we won, and I think it's once again because I was better able to convey my conviction that we would succeed.

00:47:08 Filip Valica: So perhaps that sort of inner fire, even if it's not expressed in a positive way, even if you go home and cry for three days, even for me for three

00:47:20 Filip Valica: years, you probably couldn't talk to me socially about what I was doing. because it was just so harrowing,

00:47:26 Filip Valica: even if that's the case,

00:47:28 Filip Valica: I think there has to be some kind of fire.

00:47:31 Filip Valica: Very great advice. I think even though you said you don't like giving general advice, I think that was really good general advice. Okay. Thanks very much. So, Tanya, if someone wanted to buy a pair of shoes, where could they go and where could

00:47:44 Filip Valica: they find you if they wanted to find out more about you? Okay. So to find out more about us, there's www.w.com.

00:47:54 Filip Valica: that's T-A-N-Y-A-heath, H-E-A-T-H-E-A-T-H-H-E-H-E-H-W-W-Wodd.com. There's a lot of stuff about us if you

00:48:02 Tanya Heath: Google us, and if you want to get in touch with us directly, it would be contact at Tanyaheath.com. Great. So thanks again for coming on the show, Tanya. We'll have all those links under the show

00:48:15 Tanya Heath: notes. And we wish you all the success that you deserve. You certainly had a crazy journey. And I appreciate you sharing your story with us. Definitely all the ups and downs. You have an amazing product, so I wish you all the best. Thanks very much, Philip.

00:48:30 Tanya Heath: And that concludes today's episode. Thanks for listening, everybody. If you've got any questions or comments, I've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes posted on

00:48:37 Filip Valica: the productstartup.com slash episode 26. Join me next time as I speak with Brandon Adams, who invented the Arctic Stick during his college years. He pushed that product through concept, design, manufacturing and funding,

00:48:52 Filip Valica: and that path led him to where he is today. Brandon established his business, Keys to the Crowd, a firm that consult with clients launching products and services on various crowdfunding platforms. So tune in next week to hear that episode.

00:49:06 Filip Valica: If you use Twitter, shoot me a message and let me know what you thought of today's episode and what you'd like to hear next. My handle is at Product Startup. So thanks again for joining me today and I'll see you guys next week.

00:49:19 Filip Valica: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast with your host, Filip Valica. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit theproductstartup.com.

00:49:30 Filip Valica: Your guide to getting there.

00:49:37 Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent,

00:49:50 Filip Valica: the first firm in North America to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses.

00:49:58 Filip Valica: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to macawdesign.com. That's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-Design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.