From Forbes Magazine

"Like my shoes?"

By Luisa Kroll

BACK IN 1979 Candie's Slide shoe was a
hot fad among young women. Worn by American
females aged 14 to 30, it was a slip-on
with a teetering, pencil-thin high heel.
Candie's Slide sold 14 million pairs in its
first three years on the market.
Sex was the bait: Risqué TV commercials
starred half-naked coeds chasing each
other around college dormitories.

Many parents forbade their daughters to
wear the racy shoes. That in itself guaranteed
sales. Nobody seemed to care that the damned
things were uncomfortable. Brooke
Tomlinson, now a 30-year-old manager
of a catering company in Marlboro, Mass., recalls:
"I used to wear them with my Jordache and Sasson
jeans on the nights I knew I'd be seeing boys."

Suddenly it was over. Stacked high in bins
at discount stores, Candie's products no
longer sold. Sales crashed from $190 million
in 1984 to $29 million in 1991.

Neil Cole, 40, is trying to bring back
the tarnished label. Retro is hot: Bell-bottoms,
go-go boots and slip-on sandals are the rage.
Cole has reintroduced Candie's Slide
in 15 modern colors from tangerine to
lime green. Last month he launched a raunchy
marketing campaign: one ad features MTV dating
show babe Jenny McCarthy sitting
on a toilet in nothing but a skimpy get-up
and a pair of spike-heeled Candie's sandals.
Cole has persuaded four groovy Seventh Avenue
designers—Nicole Miller, Betsey Johnson,
Vivienne Tam and Anna Sui—to design their take
on Candie's shoes.

The ads seem to have gotten women's attention.
On a recent Saturday at Macy's junior shoe
department in Manhattan, girls too young to
remember the original Candie's ooh and aah
over the wooden soles and funky colors.
Candie's Nasdaq-traded stock has more than
tripled in value in the past three months,
recently reaching 6 9/16, giving the company
a market capitalization of around
$64 million. This fiscal year (ending
January 1998), sales for the Purchase,
N.Y.-based firm are expected to reach
some $85 million, double the revenues for
the year just ended.

Neil Cole is the younger brother of the
publicity-lusting shoe merchant Kenneth Cole
(Forbes, Nov. 20, 1995). Neil and Kenneth
grew up hanging around their father's
dilapidated Brooklyn, N.Y. shoe factory,
where père Cole made predictable, solid
sandals for his company, El Greco.
On a 1978 shopping trip to Italy, father
Charles and Kenneth stumbled onto what would
become Candie's Slide. They bought 600 pairs
on the spot and started importing them from
Italy. Sales for the little El Greco
company jumped sixtyfold in just five years.

In 1982 eldest son Kenneth, then 28, left
to start his own shoe company. With a flair
for design and self-promotion,
Kenneth built Kenneth Cole Productions
up to sales of $148 million.

In 1985 Neil, too, struck out on his own.
He registered the phrase No Excuses and licensed
it to companies who manufactured No Excuses
handbags, underwear and jeans. He built a
franchise for the phrase by coupling it in
advertising with notorious characters like
Gary Hart's former mistress, Donna Rice,
with the implication, "I do
what I want and make no excuses."

With his profits, his father having retired,
Neil Cole bought his family's old company
from its subsequent owners. He liquidated the
El Greco shoe business, but he did want to
keep the Candie's brand name and image.

He soon had a mess on his hands. He licensed
the Candie's name to Millfeld Trading, which
was charged with customs fraud and subsequently
crashed. To salvage what he could, Neil Cole
raised just short of $10 million in a
private placement and public offering. One of
his first new products was an outdoor boot
called G.I. Joe, manufactured in China. At around
$40, it sold for less than half the price of
the look-alike Timberland boot. Last year
he introduced practical $30 sneakers and
comfortable $35 sandals with thick heels.
Neil Cole had enough of the fashion business.
He wanted lines that would sell year after
year and not be susceptible to becoming uncool.
Instead of naked coeds, the new advertisements
were homey images: lace curtains and fruit bowls.
The packaging was earthy. "We've traded the
flash and trash of the Eighties for a more
Nineties look," Cole told Forbes just six
months ago. "I'm no longer interested in fads
that are here today, gone tomorrow."

He has since had to eat those words. There
wasn't enough interest in the so-called
Nineties look. Tony department stores weren't
buying. So, it's back to sex sells. Cole's new
line consists of reissues of the original
spike-heeled shoes. He says he is using demand
for retro Candie's to persuade department stores
to carry his staple lines, the idea being
that some of the glamour will rub off on his
more casual sneakers and sandals.

At the moment the plan is working. Macy's,
Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom stock both
the racy stuff and the stodgy stuff.

Candie's barely broke even in 1996, but
operating margins are picking up. Why bother
at all with sneakers and hiking
boots? "Fads come and go," says Neil Cole.
"This time, I want Candie's to last."

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