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Meeting The Angrypreneur Making The Brand: Sweet Pedtooties Ever wonder what it would be like to start your own footwear brand? Susie Freedman Tapper, a footwear industry outsider, did. Last year she and her partner Mara Zipursky had a bright idea for an infant shoe line and began working on Sweet Pedtooties. We asked the fledgling entrepreneur to share her adventures, triumphs and missteps with us. This story continues from our April issue.  On our continued quest to create a new baby shoe line, researching and getting the advice of other people with footwear experience was at the top of our list. If they had something positive to share, we wanted to hear it—and something negative? Even more useful! Then we could learn what not to do.
Living in Canada, we have been used to the helpfulness and good cheer of others. Until recently, our province’s slogan was “Friendly Manitoba,” and it truly is. However, in the midst of our efforts to learn about the footwear industry and manufacturing in China, my business partner, Mara, and I experienced a very uncharacteristically unfriendly Manitoba moment. We met with a local entrepreneur who was kind enough to take the time out of her busy schedule to meet with us. That is pretty much where being kind ended. Our reason for meeting with her was to listen to (and hopefully learn from) her experiences with manufacturing her product in China. She did not have a positive manufacturing experience, to say the least, and seemed angered and jaded by the experience.
The first thing she said to us was, “You need an agent,” and went on to explain how she got cheated out of thousands of dollars before she found her own agent. Okay, we thought, this is potentially very good advice. She explained how her agent found the factory that she is working with now, how he sources her materials, deals with freight forwarding and does quality control. Quality control! That’s something we were very interested in. We’d already found our factory, sourced our materials and had a freight forwarder, but we wanted someone to ensure that a high quality shipment is leaving the factory.
She said that her agent might be a good fit for us since he deals with a well-known children's line of clothes. Wow! That would be great to get in touch with him. So, Mara asks, "Oh, great. What’s his name?" and what does Miss Angrypreneur say?
"Oh, I’d charge you a finder’s fee."
A finder’s fee? We were shocked! Why would she ask for that? We’re not even remotely competition for her, since she is not involved in the footwear industry. But we play it cool and ask how much such a finder’s fee would be.
She wanted $10,000! We were flabbergasted. We were struggling small business owners who still did not have any secured funding for our venture. We were looking for assistance, knowledge and advice wherever we could get it and she wanted $10,000 for a name? Shameful. Maybe that is just how the business world works, but I didn’t think so.
Don’t get me wrong. I understood where she was coming from. She went through so many hoops at the beginning, why should she make it easy for someone else? I get it, but I do not agree with it. To be honest, outside of this most unpleasant encounter, we have yet to come into contact with any other businessperson that operates that way. I am used to dealing with people who get joy and satisfaction out of seeing others succeed, especially here in friendly Manitoba. I know it’s “just business,” but I do not plan to run my business that way. I will always be happy to provide information and advice to those who need it. Why not? Unless someone is your direct competition, making things harder for them is not going to make life easier for you.
As it turned out, we did not have any use for her agent after all. We needed someone who would travel to the factory to check on the quality of our product, which was not something that this agent did. So, while we walked away from our meeting with very little knowledge about manufacturing in China, we certainly learned a very important lesson: how not to conduct ourselves in business with others.
Susie Freedman Tapper is the co-owner of Sweet Pedtooties Inc. Find out more about her soft-soled infant shoes www.sweetpedtooties.com. Read more about Susie’s adventures at www.wsatoday.com
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