An Interview with Stuart Weitzman

An Interview
with Stuart Weitzman

Barrie

When we were together last year in New York, we were talking about 2010 probably being our 50th anniversary – fifty years since Joseph started buying shoes from Stuart Weitzman. Did you ever nail it down for sure?

Stuart

Not really. It could be fifty-one years, it could be forty-nine. My father started the business in 1959 and you guys had been customers for some years before he passed away in ’65. Actually, we sold to your grandfather first, before your father took over. So I figure fifty years is an honest guess.

What I can tell you for sure is that Joseph is one of only three Weitzman customers I still do business with who also did business with my father. So that’s a long time. He still had the factory in Massachusetts, selling under the Mr. Seymour brand. During summer vacations I worked in the shipping room, and I know for sure I shipped to you. And then over the years, after we became Stuart Weitzman Shoes and your father took over Joseph, we really grew together. I’d say your company became one of the third or fourth largest independent retailers we sell in the USA.

Barrie

That’s what I wanted to talk about. I mean, I’ve got my own ideas about why we’ve always been such a great match, but what do you think it is? I know we haven’t bought from anyone else nearly as long as we have from you, and Stuart Weitzman shoes have always been a huge part of our business.

Stuart

Well, I must have done, I don’t know how many, trunk shows at Joseph over the years, and I can say pretty clearly that the Joseph customer is the customer I design shoes for. You know, you can put nice shoes – great shoes – in a store where that customer doesn't shop. And there will be no one to buy them. But Joseph is just one of those stores, and now your web site too, that attracts the woman who appreciates what we make. And I’m sure you do well with our stuff in ecommerce, because when the customer thinks of Joseph she thinks of Stuart Weitzman as well, obviously, after all these years together.

Barrie

We certainly do very well with Weitzman on the web site, and I’ll tell you what else – we get significantly fewer returns than we do on some other lines.

Stuart

I would say that’s all about fit. When the customer returns shoes purchased online it’s because they didn’t fit right. Well, we’re fanatical about fit and you’re fanatical about fit. That’s one of the main reasons the Weitzman customer shops for shoes at Joseph. If the web customer knows she’s a true 7 regular or a true 9AAAA, and she orders that size in a Stuart Weitzman shoe, I mean in any category, the shoe is going to fit. And that’s why it doesn’t come back.

In fact, I talked to a number of the online operators that sell my shoes about the rates of return on my merchandise, and then I did a little back of the envelope calculation averaging them together, and it came to about 11% . . .

Barrie

I’m pretty sure we don’t get that much back on your stuff.

Stuart

Great, but what I’m saying is, I was told that returns on another designer, who’s really hot at the moment and more expensive than us, come in at 35%. And I think the difference is that while we do make high fashion shoes, we don’t compromise on comfort and fit. It’s not just fashion, it’s wearability and consistency.

Customers absolutely care about that. And I can tell you that every time I’ve done a trunk show with you guys, I’ve seen women I met at the trunk show four years before. And I hear, “ Don’t stop making the mid-heel shoes,” and, “Keep making those 8AA’s.” Those women are repeat customers and repeat customers are what you want.

Barrie

Absolutely. And speaking of narrows, you know we don’t sell as many as we used to because there are fewer women today who need them. And that’s why very few stores even carry them anymore, but there’s no way we’re giving them up because we have customers who totally depend on us for shoes they can wear.

Stuart

Well here’s the other thing. I’m not giving up on them either, because one of the reasons we have integrity in all of our sizes is that we make the off-sizes. In other words, when a woman buys our AA it’s a true AA because we also make a true AAAA – we don’t have to fudge the AA into something in between the two widths so you can also sell it to the woman who needs the AAAA.

And the other reason we can maintain the integrity of our sizing across all our categories - I mean if a woman is an 8 in our moccasin she’s an 8 in our evening pumps – is that we’re still actual shoemakers. Designing is one thing, a thing that just came naturally to me. But I think my greatest asset as far as the manufacturing is concerned is that I’m a really good shoe engineer. That’s something I had to learn. When I was a kid, like in my early twenties and we had the factory in Massachusetts, my father forced me to sit alongside our old Italian pattern maker, and I learned last making, pattern making and shoe making for several years. So I’ve always been a shoemaker, never a wholesaler.

1, 2 Next Page >>