Kenneth Cole (designer) - Birth of A Shoe Company

Birth of A Shoe Company

Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. is an American fashion house founded in 1982 by Kenneth Cole. Wanting to preview his line of shoes at Market Week at the New York Hilton, but unable to afford the purchase of a hotel room or showroom to display his items, Kenneth Cole inquired about parking a trailer two blocks from the Hilton Hotel. When discovering that permits for trailers were only granted to utility and production companies, Cole changed the name of his company from Kenneth Cole Incorporated to Kenneth Cole Productions, and applied for a permit to film the full-length film, "The Birth of a Shoe Company". In two and a half days, Kenneth Cole Productions sold forty thousand pairs of shoes, while chronicling the beginning of the company on film.

In 1994, Kenneth Cole went public, and has been included on Forbes annual list of 200 Best Small Companies four times.

Kenneth Cole designs men's and women's footwear, men's and women's clothing, and also accessories under the Kenneth Cole Reaction Line. Overall, Kenneth Cole Productions sells clothing and accessories under the following lines: Kenneth Cole New York, Kenneth Cole Reaction, and Unlisted. The company now operates over 90 retail and outlet stores worldwide, and sells in catalogs and websites. Kenneth Cole controls almost all of the voting rights and 45% of the company.

Read more about this topic:  Kenneth Cole (designer)

Famous quotes containing the words birth, shoe and/or company:

    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
    The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
    And cometh from afar:
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
    And Nod is a little head,
    And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
    Is a wee one’s trundle-bed.
    Eugene Field (1850–1895)

    There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)