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John Vlagos is a cobbler in Chicago, USA. He's popular, and has owned and operated a shoe repairing shop for over 30 years. He's what we would call a mochi. A good, popular mochi, with his own shop.He did what he did for a living, but clearly wanted more from life for his son George.
He didn't want George to become a mochi like him - he wanted him to get into more respectable professions - maybe a lawyer or a teacher. George would come in the weekends to his father's shop, to help out. John often gave his son a lot of work, thinking it will put him off the cobbler trade, and set him up for something better in life. George went off to college and in due course became an English teacher for a while - just like his father wanted.
Sensing a BIG opportunity
But his fascination with shoes refused to go away. He was out shopping one day for a pair of boots - he was specifically looking for boots made out of natural leather with genuine leather soles. To his amazement, he found that he just couldn't locate a pair of good old fashioned boots. It dawned on him that the age of "disposables" had caught up with the shoe business as well. The market was flooded with imported shoes and boots, often made with synthetic material, which were inexpensive and therefore brought about a consumer behaviour of treating them as "disposables" - wear them for a while, and at the first sign of them wearing out, chuck them and buy a new pair. The good old habit of repairing your shoes and boots, resoling them and wearing a single pair for years was completely forgotten in the new age of "disposables".
He suddenly saw a BIG opportunity for himself, in a trade he always loved - making and repairing shoes. He went about crafting his first pair of boots - for himself. He loved the feel of his hand crafted boots, and sensed that there would be many more out there who felt a similar need, but couldn't find the original stuff any longer.
The birth of Oak Street Bootmakers
That insight set him up on his new business venture. He located a shoe making factory in Maine that was being shut down, for lack of business - a victim of the new trend of "disposables". The factory had a bunch of old world shoemakers, who knew how to make the "good old all-American hand crafted leather shoes and boots". He bought over the shoe factory with the help of funding from a friend, and began making Oak Street shoes and boots - made from 100% genuine Horween leather, boots that boasted of Goodyear welted construction. That's how American shoes and boots were originally made.
New age marketing
George combined this strategy of bringing back a good old product for discerning customers who yearned for the original stuff, with new age marketing strategies. He didn't open a store. He opened a website in August 2010, which he called Oak Street Bootmakers. He quickly understood that in the new world, the most influential opinion makers were prominent fashion bloggers. He got some of the more prominent of them to review his boots. They loved his all American original genuine leather boots, and covered his products extensively in their blogs. That got traffic swelling on his website, which resulted in orders pouring in, and in no time, he ran up a waiting list of 6 weeks for delivering his boots across America.
Premium product, but with a life time service proposition
Oak Street boots don't come cheap - they are anywhere in the range of US$ 200 - 400 (that's Rs.13,000 - Rs.26,000) for a pair. But the promise of 100% genuine leather plus a promise to re-craft the shoes anytime, meant that you went back to doing what your grandparents probably did - you bought a pair that lasted you almost a lifetime. If you buy a pair of Oak Street boots, you can get them repaired, re-soled, re-crafted anytime. Boots for a lifetime is the promise, not boots for this season. After all repairing and recrafting worn out boots was something he grew up with - working weekends at his father's cobbler shop.
Oak Street Boots went on to sell its hand crafted boots in a few upmarket stores across key US cities, and now has a long and growing list of celebrities who come to these stores, buy their boots, and then post pictures on Instagram and Facebook showing off their cool new boots. Oak Street Boots is now a multi-million dollar business that employs dozens of workers producing tens of thousands of hand-crafted genuine leather shoes and boots each year.
George Vlagos continues to be a hands-on promoter, despite growing BIG
George Vlagos continues to be almost as hands-on as he was when he personally hand-crafted the first pair of boots. He takes pride in personally answering every mail that comes in. He inspects every box of shoes before it gets packed and shipped.
Saw opportunity where others saw a dying business
George's father, John Vlagos, who tried his best to push his son away from the shoe trade to something he believed will be more substantial, is dumbstruck at the thought that his son's shoes are not only worn by the elite across US, but are shipped to countries as far away as Japan besides many across Europe! John's business - the mochi trade - is one of the casualties of the trend towards "disposables". Fewer Americans are bothering to go to a cobbler to repair or re-sole their worn out inexpensive shoes. They just chuck them and buy another pair. But John's son George saw an opportunity in the same shoe trade that everyone saw as a dying business. He thought BIG when others thought small. He thought differently. He built a business by finding flaws and chinks in what had become the mainstream business model. He promised a return to the good old ways, and found a growing bunch of takers, who were fed up with mass-produced commoditized products.
George Vlagos' story is a unique combination of undying passion for his chosen trade, an uncanny ability to sense latent demand for "the original" high quality product that went out of fashion after the advent of mass produced "disposables" and tremendous foresight in choosing new age marketing, promotion and product delivery mechanisms, despite peddling good old values.
Lessons for financial advisors
There are many financial distributors in our market who think exactly like George's father John did - that this business is not good enough for their next generation, that their sons and daughters should look for more rewarding careers, outside of the financial intermediation business. There are increasing fears that between e-commerce platforms, robo advisors and shrinking distribution margins, the good old fashioned relationship driven advisory model will gradually become extinct.
For every parent in this profession who believes this is not a "good enough" career option for their children, we hope George Vlagos' story inspires them and their children to think differently, think BIG, and build a BIG and successful business on exactly the platform that George built his - undying passion for the profession, commitment to highest levels of quality, belief that there will be enough customers willing to buy a high quality product for what it is truly worth, providing life time value as a core part of the proposition, and at the same time, embracing new age marketing techniques, to engage with the new age customer who continues to value some things that are done the good old fashioned way.
Content is created by Wealth Forum and must not be construed as an opinion by Reliance Mutual Fund.
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