A CONVERSATION: DAWN DICKSON (2012)

Dawn Dickson is somewhat of a visionary. The midwest native, whose career kept her in the celebrity mix and on the front lines of what was hot, saw one too many women in pain after spending one too many hours on their feet in clubs across the country. She empathized with them, knowing all too well that post-nightlife struggle that was caused by high heels, all in the name of looking good. However, instead of just feeling their pain, Dickson literally took steps to alleviate it, creating the ballet shoe Flat Out of Heels — the sole purpose of which was to give ladies a chance to look both comfortable and chic once the heels come off. We caught up with the entrepreneur and talked about how things got started, leaving her footprint at several places across the country, and Flat Out’s quick ascent from simple accessory to fashion staple.

WD: Tell everyone where you’re from and how you got started.

DD: I’m from Columbus, Ohio, a graduate of Ohio State University. My background is journalism, fundraising, marketing and special events. I had that career for 10 years. I was a consultant all over the country. I worked primarily with athletes and I worked a lot in nightclubs. Over the course of those years, I’ve seen women, night after night, after night, after night, after night, taking off their shoes, standing on the furniture, walking out barefoot, wearing flip‑flops, wearing, in the case of some, sneakers.

Really, I knew that I wanted to get out of doing events. I have a young daughter, and being out all night long, every night, and traveling wasn’t the best thing for my lifestyle at that time. I knew I wanted to get out of the nightclub and that fast life.

I prayed and prayed. God sent me, really like a dream, what I was meant to have…

Just like that?

Yeah, it was just like that. I was out one night, and my feet were just killing me, killing me, killing me, killing me. I wanted to take my shoes off, but I couldn’t because it’s not classy. It’s not. I said, “Why isn’t there a way for women to get some shoes right now when they need them?” I was on South Beach. It was about 2:00am. There were definitely no stores to go to, so that’s when the idea came to my mind for the vending machines.

I said, “If we had vending machines where you could buy shoes when you need them, that would be great.” Then I just set to motion. I researched. I did a lot of research about if there are shoes that are emergency footwear or what’s out there currently in that space.

There were a few brands in drug stores or party stores, but nothing that was…definitely wasn’t anything in vending machines, and definitely there wasn’t a brand that catered towards a woman that is like the fashionable, classy, upscale woman.

Someone who wants more than just a basic black shoe. That’s when I just wrote my business plan and pitched it to some good friends of mine, and my friends gave me…I started out with $30,000 just to get my idea developed, get my business going, and it’s been going from there.

I incorporated April 5, 2011. By August, I had my prototypes…I had my first shipment. I had about 2,000 shoes that I shipped over just to test. I got them made in China, so I went through a whole six months of just product development. After we got our first prototype, they sold really well.

Where were they sold?

We were selling online. We really launched on Black Friday last year. We sold a lot, because they were on sale, and everybody was in a buying mood. But that also allowed me to get some feedback on the shoes, see how they wear. I honestly wasn’t pleased with the durability and the quality of my first run, so I pulled them. I just stopped selling them, and I went back to the drawing board and redeveloped my product, and that took me about three months to redesign and get a new product to market. We re‑launched our newer product with durable bottoms, way better fabrics. It’s a shoe that you wear, not just for emergency, but you can wear all day if you want to. The other shoes were really very thin and not very fashionable, in my opinion.

Really, when I think about my product, I have to love it, and I have to want to wear it every day. I didn’t want to wear those other ones every day, so I had to create something that a woman like me would want to wear. It just evolved from there. While I was getting my vending machines fine-tuned and trying to get the right machine developed, I just fell into the shoe business. At this point, we have 10 different designs and colors. We have five now, and we have five more coming out in the spring.

We have three limited edition shoes coming out in the winter that are going to be out this year for Black Friday, which is zebra, hot pink, and I’m doing a satin pink with a green bow.

Now, have they always looked like a ballet shoe?

Absolutely. It’s always going to be a rollable shoe, but I have more ideas. I want to do a boot, or maybe a bootie. Because women who are in colder areas, if you’re walking out after the club and it’s snowing out, the Flat Out as it stands right now, your foot’s going to be cold. It’s going to get wet, so just thinking of different ways to develop the product. Again, we’re a year old. I’m taking my time and making sure to just pace myself. I definitely want to launch an expensive marketing campaign. We’ve never had a marketing campaign. Everything has been grassroots. We’ve sold thousands of shoes through social media and online.

That’s what I was going to ask. How did you market it, because it was a new product. Everybody, of course, would want them, because everybody goes out and has a good time. How did you get the word out, because on your site I see you’ve got celebrities endorsing it?

It was very grassroots, but it was because of my network. Me being in the entertainment and sports network or 10 years, I could call up these people, people that do gifting suites. My friend did a gifting suite at the Emmys, so she’s like, “Bring your product.” You pay thousands of dollars for placements like that. I didn’t pay anything, so really my network is my net worth. My personal network, they tweeted about it. They put it out there. They put it on Facebook. I have a very strong grassroots following. I call them “Team Flat Out,” because literally, anything I put out, they’re buying it.

They’re very supportive of me, and I think people buy into the brand because they really like me. It just helps that it’s a great product. Team Flat Out has been very supportive, and with no major marketing campaign or any endorsements formally by a celebrity. That’s where we’re headed for this year with the shoes.

With the vending machines, I finally found a manufacturer in January of 2012 that could develop the machine that I wanted. Not a refurbished cigarette machine, which when I started, was for the refurbished cigarette machine. Recalibrated the insides to make it fit a box. When I got it, it just wasn’t what I wanted.

Now, I have a new machine. They’re about four feet tall, two feet wide and deep. They have digital screens on the front, so I can play advertising. I can play product demonstration. Also, they can be wrapped to the panels, so they can be custom branded for whatever venue or whatever message that we want to put out there.

I’ve already secured for my launch the Atlanta airport terminal concourse E, which is the part of the international complex terminals E and F. Right by the food court, so very high traffic. Right by the Duty Free and the currency exchange, so you can’t miss it. That’s going to launch, hopefully in December, whenever we finish the wall build‑outs. It’s already a done deal, but we have things to get ready before we can place.

What was that process like? Who do you go to to say, “Hey, I want my machine in your airport or in your space?”

You know what? I didn’t go to anybody. They came to me. It was amazing. My network, once again. Literally, when I first launched Flat Out…I didn’t even have a vending machine yet. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I sent out an email to all my people, because I quit doing events in August 2010 after I had one of my best events of my career. I stopped when I was hot, so I could still be relevant, because I knew I wanted to do something else.

I was missing for six months. Nobody heard from me. Living in Miami, I’m not doing any events. I sent out an email to all my contacts and was like, “Listen, this is what I’m doing. I’m doing these vending machines and these shoes.” Everybody was like, “Oh, this is great.” Somebody responded, “Do you want to be in the airport?” I said, “Well, duh.”

It just happened to be the Atlanta airport contracts are up every 10 years. Last year just happened to be the contract year where you can get in and put your bids in. Just happened. I met with the owners. It’s a company called BTS, and they hold the contract for all the vending in the airport.

I had to go in through them. They’re the only ones that are able to place vending machines, and they have to accept it. Then I have to get approved by the airport. It was a year‑long process. I literally had my first meeting in October 2011, and I just signed my contract two weeks ago. It took that long for the bid to go through, for the approvals.

You have machines at spots here in Miami as well. How did that happen?

Club Liv was the first to sign on. I didn’t even try with that. A friend of mine said, “Hey, do you want to go to Liv…” It was like, “Yeah.” Then Mansion & Cameo here in Miami signed on. It was a matter of one of my friends saying, “I know the owner of Mansion & Cameo. You want to go over there?” “Yes, I do.”

Everything that I have done has been strongly through my network. I would say 99 percent, just people that know me and believe in what I’m doing. They unselfishly shared their contacts with me. They don’t say, “I would introduce you, but you got to give me a percentage.” They’re just like, “Hey, Dawn. Go be in the airport.” I even tried to offer her…I felt like, “Do I owe you some money?”

Like a finder’s fee or something.

Yeah. I don’t want to be the kind of person that doesn’t offer you some money. She’s like, “No, just go ahead.” I’m like, “What? You’re just handing me that major assist.” But, of course, I know who did what for me. I’m going to always look out for them, and I’m going to do my own way of showing them my appreciation for what they did. But the fact that just people have been so willing to help me and support me. All of my funding‑‑100 percent of my funding‑‑came from friends, 100 percent.

You were doing events all the time within the entertainment industry. Were you scared changing lanes like that?

I walk by faith, not by sight. I knew that I wanted a different life. I knew the only way to get out was to get out…I wanted to get out for a year, but I was really good at what I did, and I was in demand. I had no shortage of money or clients, so nobody is going to say just quit. I had to literally quit. When I did quit, people kept trying to bring me back. I just stayed firm that I have to have faith that something is going to come. It was a major sacrifice, but I went from making a nice income, living in a nice way, a nice car, luxury to working in a yogurt shop, just living off my savings, trying to be minimum until I could figure out what was going on.

That took me eight months. I had nothing. When Flat Out, when I got the idea that night, I said, “I better act on this, because I’ve been praying for something. This is what I got, and I better just go with it and make it work, because there’s good ideas every single day.” We’ve all had genius ideas, but it’s the difference of acting on it and making it happen.

I said if I get this good idea that I know could work with some effort behind it, and I don’t apply it, I can’t be mad if I never get another good idea. I still do sacrifice, but I’m definitely in a much better place. I’m finally getting to see the benefits of the hard work, especially when I see my customers send me pictures every day. They love the product. People tweet me and send me emails. They’re just so inspired by my story, or they love the shoe. It makes it worth it.

It would have been easy just to walk away and say, “This is too much.” But, I didn’t, kept going.

How far has Flat Out of Heels reached so far?

International. Online, I know for a fact that we’ve shipped to almost every state, and as far as Australia. We’re in certain places in Europe as well. Of course, Canada, Mexico. I actually have a retailer in Zambia, Africa. We have a retailer in Puerto Rico, and we have a retailer in Nassau, Bahamas. I got those when I went to the shoe show, but, literally, we have sales from all over.

I have people contact me from all over the world about carrying the products in their stores, but I just need to bring in a team. In a perfect world, I would bring in another person to be CEO of Flat Out, and they would have extensive experience in footwear distribution, retailing, manufacturing, wholesale, import/export, and they would really just boom, take it out of there because that’s not my scope of expertise.

That’s what I’m working on now. Actually building a team that can take the brand to the next level.

What is the next level for you?

Well, as far as for the shoes, best case scenario in where we’re headed is that we’ll in major department stores, of course, boutiques all over and then internationally. I’m right now working to get a deal with a company that can do that. They distribute their footwear in 26 countries, and that would be a good thing for Flat Out of Heels, so that’s where we’re going, with major retailers. Then as far as online, we’re of course, we’re on Karma Loop now. We’re on Amazon. We’re on our own site, and working on Zappos. I definitely want to get on [ABC’s] Shark Tank, which probably will happen, based on just what’s been going on, and my conversations that I’ve been having. That would be good just to catapult that brand and create that buzz for the shoes.

With vending machines, we’re going to launch our first five, get some good numbers on them, see things like the sales numbers, how often they need to be replenished, and get a strong model.

We’re franchising. We’re going to franchise hopefully 90 machines in two years, with a three machine minimum for franchisees. That’s how we’re going to expand.

We’re going to places like shopping malls, convention centers, conference facilities, of course, airports, night clubs, stadiums, train stations… anywhere that women are in heels. Those are the kind of venues that we’re targeting.

I definitely don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so by getting with franchisees that have these connections to get into these venues already, that would be ideal. The people that I’ve been talking to and the kind of franchisees that I’m seeking are people that have, of course, the capital, but also the connection.

In less than two years, I definitely see Flat Out of Heels in major retailers, and then Flat Out of Heels vending machines. We’re already in the top nightclub in the country, in the top airport. My next stop is definitely Vegas or New York after we do Atlanta and Miami.

Tell everybody where they can find them online one more time.

We’re at www. flatoutoutofheels.com, Amazon, Karmaloop. If you look on our website under “Where,” all of our locations and current retailers are listed. We’re on all social media under Flat Out of Heels. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Foursquare… everything.

2012 © Dawson’s Ink