The initial idea: a soccer cleat for former competitive players
In 2018, I came up with a business idea - a soccer cleat for former competitive players like myself. I discuss the inspiration for the original idea more here [link to previous blog], but long story short - I couldn’t find a soccer cleat that met all my needs when I transitioned from a competitive soccer player to a recreational soccer player. I still wanted a high-quality cleat, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice comfort for performance anymore and I definitely didn’t want to pay $250 anymore.
Sitting on the idea
I didn’t do much to bring my soccer cleat idea to life initially. I did a little bit of work to size the market and map out the competitive landscape, but that was about it. Partially because I was a busy professional, partially because I was working on a different idea at the time and partially because I didn’t know where to start.
I decided to return to school in 2020 and pursue a JD/MBA at The University of Chicago. I wanted to hit pause on my career and give myself an opportunity to explore different career paths. I had been super interested in entrepreneurship since college and I wanted to really give it a shot while in grad school. The first year of my program was entirely at the law school. The first year of law school is notoriously difficult, so I had very little time to do anything but study. Although I had been sitting on my soccer cleat idea for more than 3 years by the time I finished my first year of grad school, I was still very interested in exploring it seriously.
Finding business school programs to evaluate the initial idea
In the summer between my first and second years of grad school, I finally re-visited my soccer cleat idea. I started brainstorming and business planning. Early in my second year of grad school, I heard of the Polsky Customer Discovery Bootcamp - a program for students who have an idea and are serious about validating it. I teamed up with Brandan, who would later become my co-founder [link blog on finding co-founder], and we entered the program. We also enrolled in a Building the New Venture, an entrepreneurship course where students form teams and “simulate” the process of building a business.
We heard over and over again how important it is to interview potential customers when you’re still in the idea stage. So we did that.
Interviewing former competitive athletes
We tapped into our network of former competitive soccer players and started interviewing them. We learned in The Polsky Center Bootcamp that there is a specific method for effectively uncovering customer needs and it often doesn’t involve asking a person directly - “what do you think of this potential product?” We learned two critical things about former competitive soccer players from these interviews – they are brand loyal and they don’t buy cleats often – both of which made us consider a pivot. The market was smaller than we had thought and it would be harder to gain market share than we thought.
A few people told us that we should consider the kids athletic shoe market instead. We weren’t totally convinced at the time, but we committed to doing our diligence.
Surveying parents to understand their kids’ footwear needs
After comparing the kids’ athletic shoe market size to the former competitive athlete shoe market size, we decided to make a ‘tentative’ pivot to a kids’ soccer cleat. We then went through a similar customer discovery process to validate the idea.
We started by talking to parents we knew. Then we went to different sports practices, where we talked to parents and observed behavior. We noticed something interesting - parents tended to send kids ages ~5 to ~8 to all sports and activities in one shoe. This ‘one shoe method’ made life easier for busy, cost-conscious parents. We looked at the kids’ footwear landscape and realized that although parents send their kids to all sports and activities in one shoe, there didn’t seem to be a shoe on the market that was built for this purpose. An all-purpose shoe that was designed to provide comfort, support and traction across sports and playing surfaces.
This “aha” moment led to our second pivot and current idea.
Validation from footwear industry experts
One of the reasons we knew we were onto something after this second pivot was the positive reaction we received from professionals in the footwear industry. People who had worked at some of the biggest athletic shoe companies in the world were almost more excited about our product than we were. They told us that the industry needed a company like ours and more people with our passion for serving young athletes.
So we are working hard to bring the ultimate kids’ athletic shoe to market.
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