Names: Katie Shea and Susie Levitt
Job Titles and Description: Co-founders of FUNK-tional Footwear and creators of CitySlips, which are foldable, portable flats perfect for carrying in your bag to throw on after a long, painful night in heels.
College and Major: New York University, Leonard R. Stern School of Business
Website: cityslips.com
Twitter Handles: @cityslips, @susielevitt, @katiesheasays
Her Campus: What does your current job entail? Is there such a thing as a typical day?
Susie Levitt: As of now, Katie and I are small business owners; we launched FUNK-tional Footwear out of our NYU dorm room back in 2009. Our first product that we launched were CitySlips—CitySlips are women’s ballet flats that fold up to fit in your purse so you can wear them if your high heels are killing you or if you just need an extra pair of shoes. Everyday is really different: we dabble into sales calls, customer service emails, and try to allocate some of our day to brainstorming about new products and new ideas we’ve had.
HC: What is one thing you wish you knew about your industry when you first started out that you know now?
SL: As of now, we’ve definitely learned a lot about shipping to retailers, manufacturing overseas, and making sure everything is really detailed and precise.
Katie Shea: When selling the products, realizing there are a lot of different types of distribution outlets. For us, there’s the standard department store—we sell to Neiman Marcus—as well as e-commerce, catalogues, and home shopping channels. So I think knowing in advance the different types of distribution outlets is great because it can diversify your risk. If something doesn’t work out with one store that you were trying to get into, it wasn’t like you put all your eggs in one basket.
HC: Who is one person who changed your professional life for the better?
KS: We’re really lucky; we’ve had a lot of great advisors. We have our lawyer, who is great—every small business owner should have a great lawyer and a great accountant. I don’t think people think about that enough.
SL: Both of us came from entrepreneurial families, so I think our dads probably played a really big role inspiring us and demonstrating every aspect of entrepreneurship in very different ways.
HC: What words of wisdom do you find most valuable?
SL: Actually a sales rep said this to us, it’s extremely important to figure out what kind of marketing works for us, and our product has been extremely word of mouth—we’ve had a few editorials in magazines and online. She said, have PR that gets you P.O.s, and P.O. stands for purchase orders. So, at the end of the day, just making sure that your efforts are going towards something that’ll make you money, versus just getting mention somewhere, everything should have a bottom line of some sort.
KS: Another way to say that is just spending money where your money already is. Since we’re working with one of our big accounts like Neiman Marcus, we’ll put a little money aside to do marketing for Neiman Marcus. It’s a win/win because that’s where our distribution is right now, versus us going out to a magazine that we’ve never been in and spending $2,000 for placement.
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HC: What is one mistake you made along the way and what did you learn from it?
KS: I think something we’re learning and getting much better at is inventory management. For us, especially because we have a product that’s sized, you have to be really careful to have smalls, mediums and larges in all different colorsand know what sells. You also don’t want to have too much inventory because then a lot of your cash is tied up and you’re not able to spend it on other areas of the company.
HC: What is the best part of your job?
SL: Having a happy customer. Someone who just really believes in our idea and uses it on a day-to-day basis is probably one of the most rewarding parts of having a small business. There are so many pieces that go into what we do, and knowing the outcome is happy customers is really rewarding.
KS: On a more personal note, it gives us a lot of variety in our day-to-day. I think with my personality, I would be really bored if I was just doing marketing, manufacturing, or operational work. Since there are only two of us, being able to jump around to different topics at different parts of the day, and talk to different industry experts are really rewarding as well.
HC: What do you look for when considering hiring someone?
SL: The specific type of person is someone that can deal with the chaos and all of the different aspects of a small business. We’ve had interns that have helped us with PR, trade shows, and fulfilling orders. Being able to hop around and fulfill different skill sets when needed is really important. Since we’re so busy, it’s great when we have people that are really proactive and stay on top of things that need to get done.
KS: There’s a difference between a good intern and a great intern; a good one is someone who will come in and take care of all the projects we need. A great intern will come in and say, “Hey, I have a great idea for this new project.” It’s a fine line, but it’s someone who is thinking about things that we didn’t think about and coming up with things on his or her own.
HC: What advice would you give to a 20-something with similar aspirations?
SL: A lot of people with ideas are afraid someone else will take them, and it takes a lot of time, energy and passion to really take it off the ground. We found that speaking about our ideas have actually benefited us more than keeping it a secret. Someone might know someone, or have a friend or family member in the industry that wants to help us out. So I feel like talking about your idea is just really important.