Entrepreneurs embrace more risk

Sarasota shoe and sneaker entrepreneurs Molly and David Jackson are taking yet another step in their contrarian recession business plan.

Their latest move, opening an independent “sit-and-fit” shoe store, could be their biggest risk yet. It comes at a time when much of the shoe business has gone away from independents and toward big chains.

The move follows the summer of 2008, when the Jacksons opened a second New Balance store in the early days of the recession. It also follows the Jacksons' decision to move their first New Balance store, which they did last fall.

The new store, which is not yet named, will sell mostly women's shoes, with some room for men's and children's merchandise.

“It will be everything we can't carry in the New Balance store,” Molly Jackson tells Coffee Talk. “It's something we've been looking to do for a long time.”

That time began to come together last fall, when the Jacksons moved their first New Balance store from the backside of a Sarasota strip mall to a front and highly visible location of another strip mall at the foot of the Stickney Point bridge to Siesta Key. The new location, says Jackson, “is like our 24-hour billboard.”

The Jacksons plan to open their new shoe store directly next to that New Balance, in 2,000 square feet of empty space. The lease, says Jackson, wasn't so fantastic she couldn't refuse it, but she did say the landlord agreed to some concessions that made the decision easier.

There is another factor that mitigates the risk for the Jacksons: past success.

The couple's first New Balance store, which they opened in 2002, has been one of the company's top performers nationwide for several years. The Jacksons decline to discuss specific revenues, only to say that their flagship store generates more than $2 million a year in sales. (See Business Review, June 13, 2008.)

The company presented its first ever Chairman's Award to the Jacksons last month for being the top store in the 147-store chain in terms of sales, employee training programs and community outreach.