Nick Brown is obsessed with rope-soled espadrilles, the kind you’d spot during a weekend getaway in the Hamptons or a holiday on the coast of Spain. Which is precisely how the founder of Soludos initially stumbled across the shoe.
The London native spent many of his summers in Spain, where espadrilles have been popular for hundreds of years. He would purchase them from a street vendor or local supermarket for five euros, wear them for two weeks, and then throw them out.
These days he can have as many pairs as he wants, but prefers a pair that he has broken in for a while.
“My friends are still surprised by the fact that I own a shoe company, but will run one pair into the ground before I put on a new pair,” Brown says. “There’s something about wearing them in—they mold to your foot and become a part of your lifestyle.”
When you encounter his footwear, Brown wants you to think of the European tradition of taking off the entire month of August. Everything slows down, and days are filled with countless hours at the beach and long meals with friends. Conversations over a lunch table spontaneously turn into nighttime chatter. This is the type of idyllic feeling Brown wanted to capture and make more accessible in the U.S.
Before Brown started his company in 2010, he soaked up as much advice from friends as possible. One suggested that Brown head to a trade show in Las Vegas to pretend he was a buyer.
“So I went to all these different shoe booths, and sat, and chatted with them, learning everything I could about the wholesale market and business firsthand—from pricing to payment,” says Brown.
He connected with a Bangladeshi man who made espadrilles (95% of the world’s jute is made in Bangladeshi), but couldn’t place an order because he had yet to make his first sale.
“But I convinced him I was serious,” he says. “Two weeks later, I was headed on a plane to Bangladesh, staying there for a month until I had made samples to bring back to the States.”
Brown talks about his friendships a lot, emphasizing the importance of a strong network. When he arrived in the U.S. with his samples, he reached out to a photographer he had met through a friend to shoot his lookbook. He cast some friends as models and relied on the advice of others with industry insight to advise him on the right stores for his brand.
It’s interesting that a man so infatuated by the idea of a laid-back lifestyle decided to move to New York in 2008. Brown says he relishes the culture of innovation that the city fosters.
“New York inspires me in so many ways,” Brown says. “There are so many entrepreneurs and young, driven people. People want to help other people when they have an idea. When you tell someone you are an artist, or you are starting a blog, or creating this product, someone will do what they can to introduce you to the people who can help, if it’s not themselves. And, usually, their intentions are genuine.”
Brown says he has come a long way since the early days of the company when he labeled himself the “Times Square Rolex man of espadrilles.” A solo entrepreneur, he would often pop into shops around the city with samples of his shoes.
Now managing a team of almost 20 people, his creative process has changed along the way. At this point, it’s about maintaining his original vision for the brand while pushing into new markets.
“When you’re starting by yourself, you try and do everything yourself. But after two years, you begin building a team, and that becomes the most important part—hiring people that are smarter than you, and know what they’re doing, and empowering them,” he says. “Every entrepreneur I’ve ever met talks about how things go wrong, but you just have to trust each other to fix, and prioritize, and realize there are only so many hours in the day. You have to focus on what’s important.”
Photo credit: Henry Hargreaves