After a long and bumpy ride, Portland footwear startup Mise is ready to start its marketing engine with a holiday marketplace to get the word out about its shoes made for chefs and others in the hospitality industry.
The company’s first shipment of 3,000 pairs of shoes reached its Los Angeles warehouse in early September after months of delays tied to production shutdowns in China. It was able to turn on live sales on its website in mid-September.
Response so far has been good, said founder Erik Hernandez.
“We’ve been slow on doing any marketing. It’s all word of mouth. We wanted to see how the product performs and get feedback from our earliest adopters to make sure our systems are in order,” he said.
One of its first marketing forays is next week. On Nov. 7 from 1 to 4 p.m. the company is organizing a Holiday Market at Steelport Knife Co., 3602 N.E. Sandy Blvd. Mise will have shoes available to try on and purchase along with other vendors such as Jacobsen Salt, Finex, Orox Leather, Ken’s Artisan Bakery and Tiny Fish Co.
Mise has created a shoe for use in the hospitality industry. They are designed to be comfortable like a performance sneaker as well as durable for kitchen use and easy to clean.
The company is also finally confident enough in its supply and systems to do give-aways with partners Chef’s Roll, True Cooks and Spiceology which have teamed to offer a head-to-toe outfitting of footwear, apparel and accoutrement.
The holiday market is the startup’s Portland debut but it is another piece of its community-building strategy, which has been its focus as it struggled with production delays.
“We’ve been community-building for a while. Now we have shoes we can share with people and they can see them beyond the wear testing,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez is a footwear industry veteran and he is augmented by a team at design firm Studio Noyes. The startup is bootstrapping, so securing the first order was key to its ability to make its second purchase order. The sale of shoes enables future orders.
Mise production has been a roller coaster, and even once the shoes were on their way to the U.S. there was a final bit of drama, Hernandez said. Just as he was boarding a flight he got an email that his 3,000 pairs of shoes were being held at customs in L.A. because the freight forwarder was demanding payment.
It was a payment that Hernandez had been told by the forwarding company he would not have to pay. So he spent the six hours of his flight on Wi-Fi trying to free his product. The problem was finally rectified and the first shoes started shipping to pre-order customers in mid-September.
Now Hernandez and the team are working to ensure the next order is able to go into production and get out of Asia before the Lunar New Year holiday starts.
The Mise team and its studio design partner know the footwear industry so all of these hiccups aren’t entirely unexpected, Hernandez said. What's different is the resources available to deal with them. The startup has one full-time employee and then a team of six, including Hernandez who are part of Studio Noyes.
“The things we are leaning about fitting and returns and exchanges, all of it is expected but when you can send an email to the fit team or the quality control team or a group vice president to say something is going wrong and we need support. It’s different than a two person-team,” Hernandez said. “The wearing of many hats is tiring. It’s been the most trying thing. The saying is money doesn’t solve all your problems, but, money would help a lot.”
Mise isn’t likely to appeal to venture investors, Hernandez said, and the team is evaluating future funding routes such as crowdfunding. The dream would be a hospitality investor who understands the needs of the market they are serving and wants to be a partner.
Hernandez is committed to the company’s mission to help support those who are creating the meals or serving the coffees and drinks that people are hungry for coming out of pandemic isolation. It’s been the feedback from customers that has kept him going.
