After years of ridicule, the dad shoe has emerged as an unbelievably popular trend that’s hit style outlets like Complex and GQ. This last year of dad shoe mania has earned your padre a couple of cool points. You can get a cool pair of Gucci dad shoes for the ultra-low price of 800 bucks. Now, your pops is waiting for other parts of his wardrobe, such as his fanny pack, or socks with sandals to be the next big thing.
No, Dad. This will never be cool.
But in reality, the dad shoe has been a staple for major shoe companies for years. The Monarch has been a major revenue builder top seller for Nike (the top in 2013), and driver of dad shoe competition with other shoe giants Adidas and Under Armor. Not the LeBrons, nor the Jordan Brand.
The shoes that you’d get "WhatAreThose’d" for.
But we can learn something else about dad shoes selling faster than Girl Scout cookies. What we think is a market need may not be what customers want. It’s estimated that 30% of startups that fail suffer from a lack of market interest. What’s more interesting are some of the insights that startup founders share with us. They failed so that you don’t have to fail yourself.
As good ol’ dad would say, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
1. Don’t solve a cool problem. Solve a market problem.
“We didn’t spend enough time talking with customers and were rolling out features that I thought were great, but we didn’t gather enough input from clients. We didn’t realize it until it was too late. It’s easy to get tricked into thinking your thing is cool.”
-Jimmy Winter, co-founder of VoterTide.
It’s easy to identify a gap in the market, but not necessarily a market need. These two things are not mutually inclusive. Sometimes we identify gaps but we don’t identify why it is a gap. Sometimes, holes in the market are holes in the market for a reason. So when you identify a market gap, ask why is it a market gap?
Nickelodeon went so far as to make two Spongebob episodes that explain this phenomenon. The burger chef twice purchased hi-tech spatulas that were good at everything but flipping Krabby Patties, only to go back and use a traditional spatula that fills his true need — cooking. One of the episodes is even named “All that glitters (is not gold).” Sometimes, actual market needs are really cut and dry.
And now, you’ve learned from dad shoes and Spongebob in one post.
2. Seek validation from the market, not investors.
“A common mistake among entrepreneurs is seeking validation of their ideas and decisions from investors. The most important people any company should seek validation from are their customers.”
-Gary Swart, founder of Intellibank
This is a tough pill to swallow, mostly because we are talking about the people funding your idea. But this the reality of investment—when building your business, you are the subject matter expert, not your investors. You are the one who’s doing all of the pilot testing, research, surveying, and identifying the market need. The reason why your investors believe in you is because you’re always working to find what the customer needs, not them.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t listen to investors at all. What Swart is trying to tell you is to not be a donkey that’s being led around by the monetary carrot, so much that you lose your way, and what your market really wants.
Don’t be a donkey, that makes you an @$$.
Are you sure you're being led the right way?
3. Don’t let your ideals get in the way of what the market is calling for.
“In most cases ideals are opposite of market needs. Ideals are what you want. Market needs are what other people want. We pursued our ideals, and we ignored what other people actually want. Idealism is selfishness. Selling out to the market is generosity.”
-Anders His, Amiloom
We nurture our businesses and ideas like they are our children. We take time crafting them into what we want, and we are always extremely proud of our creations. And as a father myself, I was terrified when I sent my kid to daycare the first time. And the first time that he rode a school bus on his own. I’m sure I’ll be terrified when he goes to middle school, high school, and college.
But I know that I can’t keep him in a bubble away from the rest of the world. It’s not realistic.
We also tend to do this with our businesses and our ideas. We often believe that treat constructive criticism from customers and knowledgeable parties as dream crushing rhetoric. We literally protect our businesses from the people they are supposed to serve. Remember, you identified a market need that is supposed to help your customers, not your ego. If you don’t push your business out the door to the people, it will never grow up.
Let Your Business Grow Up.
There’s probably nobody who saw the meteoric rise of dad shoe popularity coming. It was an organic movement that blew up out of nowhere. But, before the dad shoe was in style, millions of pairs were being sold to people worldwide.
But that’s the power of the market. Even the ugly duckling like the dad shoe can be a beautiful, revenue-driving swan. But sometimes it’s overthinking, listening to others, or hubris that get in the way of us understanding the market for our businesses.
Father (shoe) knows best.
Statistics and quotes pulled from frac.tl and cbinsights.com