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 Edward Cohen (UG Business Studies 2009)

Taking big steps in business

One of my favourite boyhood past times was listening to success stories about projects - the building of an airplane, a resort hotel, an industrial plant... As a little boy I actually became involved in what for me were projects on a very small and modest scale by starting from scrap and completing and constructing models. As I got older this fascination turned into reading about innovation and projects that succeeded because of the translation of an idea into an actual material product. Unlike in the service sector, I always had a feeling that creating something that can be touched left a specific trace.

During my last year at City University where I followed the Business Studies undergraduate bachelor programme, and as I wondered what I was going to do after my studies, a really intriguing opportunity came to me by chance. When my best friend whom I’ve known since early childhood came back from an exchange programme in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he literally stepped off the plane wearing on his feet a kind of espadrille that was just so cool and so unusual. Fun, attractive, and comfortable, I in the first instance just wanted to have for myself shoes that are called “alpargatas”. These are authentic canvas shoes traditionally worn by gauchos and peasants that had become a fashion item in Argentina where almost everyone has at least one pair. The alpargatas had become part of the lifestyle nationwide. And in one fast blaze of light my fascination with building a product and my eye for style (I guess I was always interested in looking good), turned into a business project. This was a real market opportunity that my friend and I seized to create our own company. In April 2009, we began the process of making into a real material product, by setting up a new company called Co’s Footsteps ( both me and my partner ‘s last names begin with “Co” ) and we called the beautiful comfortable fashionable ( you can keep going with adjectives) brand TREADZ.

I found in this business idea the perfect opportunity to express my creativeness and my will to construct. We followed through on making a product from scrap, and have been building it during the past three years into something real.

Here’s what we had to do:
- design – redesign the shoes over and over to make them look better and better and at the same time more comfortable to wear;
- production – find capacity at the lowest possible cost without a major compromise to quality;
- financing - raise funds in every which way possible, including going to our parents for help;
- accounting – setting up an accounting system for logistics, financial reporting, cash flow control, and taxes;
- transportation – arranging cost effective and import control transportation;
- sales and marketing – finding a distribution system to get our Treadz into stores and on the net;
- communications and public relations – the concept and the actual design had to get out to the widest public possible via press articles, photos, and events;
- logistics management – warehousing, stock control, returns, individual shipment.

Everything had to be dealt with by two individuals who had absolutely no experience or particular expertise in any of those areas. And that was an exciting challenge. I think the key to putting TREADZ together was some courage, a lot of self confidence, and a bit of folly. I was amazed by the amount of things that we could get done on our own, but still keeping in mind that we needed specialized individuals to help us.
Part of life and a big part of success in my opinion depends on human relations – something that looks easy but, from our experience, something that encompasses a whole spectrum of dealings and that almost everyone thinks he’s good at but very few are as good as they think they are. Someone once said: “You only have one chance to make a first impression”. This goes from the boutique owner who really wants to do everything not to have to make a decision to purchase stock, to the bank officer who doesn’t want to open an account for a twenty one year old who doesn’t have a weekly paid job, to the eventual finance partner, to the journalist who needs a good story but is drowned in requests from start up guys like us – the list is endless.

This business put me in contact very often with people who have not received any education and I want to mention a word about the important role that City University plays in this endeavour. My finance stream orientation was more of a programme aimed at forming individuals to the banking sector, although I was taught some basics in balance sheet and profit and loss accounting that I use today. City gave me the opportunity to learn how to be structured and how to think in a business perspective. Being structured is essential to learn how to learn, and that is key to being a good entrepreneur. My bachelor’s degree also made me at ease with numbers and perhaps gave me a little extra confidence and reassured me in accomplishing all the tasks and challenges I had to face. What I would have wanted more of was a case based study of business development and also more advise and support in career opportunities – that would have had relevance for me because constantly as entrepreneurs we are confronted with partners/suppliers, manufacturing agents, etc who are expecting a similar kind of C.V. as an eventual employer.

Finally I want to speak of the charity involvement of Treadz. My partner and I have always been independently concerned about our society’s environmental impact, starting way before we engaged ourselves into any form of business. We both developed consciousness about the Earth’s degradation and tried our best to influence our households to change some bad habits. We cannot boast of being activists but we profoundly dislike wastefulness, so we decided to apply our philosophy to the way we run our business. We immediately chose a production process that respected international norms for pollution and gas emissions, and reduced waste by using recycled packaging. We also decided to use smaller boxes than those usually used for shoes. My partner and I wanted to go further in our implication so after exploring many different possibilities, we decided to team up with the World Land Trust, a charity organization. They now purchase on our behalves endangered parcels of rainforest in South America. Each pair of Treadz sold results in the purchase of 25 m⊃; in the Missiones rainforest in Argentina. Up to this date, we are very happy and proud to have saved more than 100,000 square meters of forest. It is essential to redistribute profit to a cause we strongly believe in.

Today, TREADZ is still a very young company trying to find its place in the competitive world of apparel and fashion. Its trend is rather positive and I’m confident that we will meet our sales objectives this year. TREADZ is slowly growing, and I hope I will be able to take it forward to the level of big names in fashion. One major obstacle we have to overcome is the slow down in general economic activity and particularly the financial weakness of small independent boutiques that had been our principal outlets for sales. Now we have to turn more and more to sales on the internet, a terrific way to sell but completely dependent on a specific image and marketing of our product – something difficult for us compared to similar products with big time financing, of course shoes that are not as good as ours!

The environmental implication of TREADZ combined with the trendy style of the product has led us to create a small web community which I hope more and more people will bind to, hence our slogan “TREADZ, FOLLOW THE FOOTSTEPS”.