These Two Women Launched A Vending Machine Of Flats
At the Harborplace Mall in Baltimore nestled next to Starbucks, there's a vending machine that doesn't sell salty snacks as a quick-fix to hunger, but instead displays comfortable shoes for the woman on the go who needs a break from the pain that often accommodates a pricey pair of heels.
The vending machine is called Sole Savers, and it's the brainchild of 33-year-old business owner Melodie Narain.
Like many entrepreneurs, it started with a problem. When Melodie slipped on a pair of heels just two months after giving birth, she quickly discovered that she could no longer wear her stylish pumps for more than a few hours.
A conversation with her mom and business partner, Teresa, who also could no longer wear heels due to knee surgeries, soon turned into an idea of creating affordable shoes that any woman with aching feet could conveniently purchase on-the-go.
But creating a vending machine to push out a rollable pair of flats was no easy feat. In fact, when Melodie first came up with the concept for Sole Savers, she didn't intend for her mother to be her business partner. "Initially when I started coming up with the concept, I didn't want to share it with my family yet because I was like they're going to say that I'm just bringing another business idea to them. So I said okay, I'm going to fully develop this and I'm going to share it with some of my investor friends that have high net worth."
Utilizing business relationships from previously working with CEOs and executives, Melodie brought her idea to a friend and investor. He was sold, but when the duo presented the idea to his wife they ran into a roadblock. “She didn't really want him working in a business partnership with a female, so she rejected the concept," says Melodie. “And who am I to argue with the wife?"
The quest for a perfect partnership didn't end there. She brought the idea back to her mom, who jumped at the opportunity to also bring a philanthropic element to the business through the mission of helping others and donating to non-profits organizations.
With her background in fashion marketing and her business acumen, Melodie was able to wear two hats as both creator and strategist. She first researched all of her competitors to determine if there was room in the market for what she was offering, even going as far to reach out to let them know that she was starting the business not just for profit, but in hopes to help others such as her two-year-old niece Teyana who was born with Congenital Heart Disease, by partnering with non-profit organizations.
She also heavily researched her product to find the right kind of shoes and material that would be convenient and compact enough to fit into a pocketbook, and read everything she could find on vending machines while looking for the best places to launch her product. With vending machines averaging a cost of $10,000 to $25,000 depending on the level of enhancements from touch screen features to digital ads, it was important for the Maryland native to make sure that her business plan was foolproof.
“A lot of times when people want to start companies they have this idea but they don't do any kind of research, and then they launch something and it completely bombs because they don't do the market research," Melodie says. “The times that we live in everything is so accessible to us, so a person that doesn't do their research, they're just not making a smart decision."
Despite all of her legwork, they still ran into some challenges. When the first machine arrived it wasn't configured properly and instead of buyer's being able to see the shoe through a transparent container, they had to hope that they selected the right color numerically on the touch screen, making it more confusing for her customers. They also realized that the shoes weren't thick enough to comfortably walk on rockier terrain, and had to create a second prototype with a thicker sole to provide the right amount of comfort and cushion.
After a year of planning and designing the product, Melodie and Theresa launched Sole Savers this past September. They placed the first machine in a nightclub, logically thinking that the hundreds of women ready to kick off their shoes after dancing the night away would do well for business, but Melodie, who wanted her customer's to not just buy the product, but to also connect with it, felt like the club scene didn't fit their target customer. So they moved the machine to the Gallery at Harborplace in Baltimore—an area with heavy foot traffic and tourism. Within the first day Melodie had already sold eight pairs of flats, which retail at $19.95 a pair. Though the website generates most of their revenue, she's hoping to expand into bigger markets and into convention centers in the near future.
Working her full-time job in real estate while running a business on the side and being a mother to her two-year-old son leaves little time for self indulgence, but Melodie credits her prayer life and having help from the father of her child to her being able to get through the days where she's burning the midnight oil. Her mother, who also still works full-time with the government, takes care of the philanthropic aspects of the business, focusing on smaller non-profit organizations with less notoriety. For the entrepreneurs, Sole Savers is just as much about saving souls as well as soles.
“We try to find charities that people don't really know about because while Sole Savers is in the infancy stage now, I see it being such a major storm in households, convention centers, conference centers and churches, and I'd like for these other charities on a mission to really help grow with our business."
Recently, Sole Savers launched their spring collection, which includes the red “Teyana" flat named in honor of her niece who has had two open-heart surgeries before the age of two. “When we talked about Sole Savers in the brainstorming stages, we were talking about when Teyana becomes an adult that we will have an avenue that will provide for a very strong quality of life for her."
The remaining shoes were designed to fit the woman who may not be up on the latest trends, but they always put their best foot forward in all areas of their life.
“A stylish woman isn't always trendy. It's a certain level of class and elegance that a woman has and I think that's what's important for me in branding sole savers. It's very stylish; it's very current, but it's not trendy."
While it may not be about the clothes, it's certainly about the mission of doing something that's rooted in love and passion. For Melodie and Teresa it starts with saving soles, one foot at a time.
To find out more about Sole Savers and how to grab you a pair of comfortable flats, head over to SoleSavers.co.
Kiah McBride writes technical content by day and uses storytelling to pen real and raw personal development pieces on her blog Write On Kiah. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @writeonkiah.
ItGirl 100 Honors Black Women Who Create Culture & Put On For Their Cities
As they say, create the change you want to see in this world, besties. That’s why xoNecole linked up with Hyundai for the inaugural ItGirl 100 List, a celebration of 100 Genzennial women who aren’t afraid to pull up their own seats to the table. Across regions and industries, these women embody the essence of discovering self-value through purpose, honey! They're fierce, they’re ultra-creative, and we know they make their cities proud.
VIEW THE FULL ITGIRL 100 LIST HERE.
Don’t forget to also check out the ItGirl Directory, featuring 50 Black-woman-owned marketing and branding agencies, photographers and videographers, publicists, and more.
THE ITGIRL MEMO
I. An ItGirl puts on for her city and masters her self-worth through purpose.
II. An ItGirl celebrates all the things that make her unique.
III. An ItGirl empowers others to become the best versions of themselves.
IV. An ItGirl leads by example, inspiring others through her actions and integrity.
V. An ItGirl paves the way for authenticity and diversity in all aspects of life.
VI. An ItGirl uses the power of her voice to advocate for positive change in the world.
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It’s been nearly twenty years since India.Arie’s crown anthem, “I am not my hair,” gave Black women an affirmation to live by. What followed was a natural hair revolution that birthed a new level of self-love and acceptance. Concerns around how to better care for our hair birthed an entire new generation of entrepreneurs who benefitted from the power of the Black dollar. Retailers made room for product lines made for us, by us, on their shelves, and we further affirmed that though our hair doesn’t define us, it is part of our unique self-expression.
Today, that movement has turned into a wig uprising where Black women are able to experiment with colors, styles, and more without causing irreparable damage to our hair. It could even be said that we’ve arrived at a new level of acceptance: one that does not equate love of oneself to one’s willingness or lack thereof to wear her hair the way others deem acceptable. Not even other people who look like us.
However, as with Blackness itself, the issue of Black women’s hair is layered.
On the surface, it’s nothing more than a matter of personal preference. However, in a deeper dive, issues of texture, curl pattern, and of course, proximity to social acceptance, as well as other runoff streams from the waters of racism and patriarchy, rear their heads. The natural hair movement, though a wide-reaching and liberating community builder, also gave way to colorism and often upheld mainstream beauty standards.
Sometimes, favoring lighter-skinned influencers/creators with very specific hair textures, the white gaze leaked into our safe space and forced us to reckon with it. Accurate representations of natural hair in various states of being—undefined curls, kinks, and unlaid edges—are still absent from brand marketing. Protective styles, though intended to provide breaks from styling for our sensitive hair, have become a mask to help our hair be more palatable. A figurative straddle of the fence in order to appease the comfort of others in the face of our hair’s power.
And then there’s the issue of length.
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As a woman who has spent much of the last decade voluntarily wearing her hair in many variations of short hairstyles, from a pixie cut to a curly fro and a sleek bob, what I’ve gleaned throughout the years is that there is a glaring difference between how I am treated when wearing my hair short than when I opt for weaves, extensions or even grow it out slightly longer than my chin.
The differential treatment comes from women and men alike and spans professional and personal settings, including friends, coworkers, and industry peers.
What has become abundantly clear is that long hair is often conflated with beauty, softness, and any number of other words we relate to femininity in a way that short hair is not. That perceived marker of the essence of womanhood shows up in how I am received, communicated with, and complimented.
Even more so than texture, length has a way of deciding who among us is deserving of our attention, affection, and adoration. Whether naturally grown or proudly bought, the commentary around someone’s look or image greatly shifts when “inches” are present.
When it comes to long hair, we really, really do care.
In an effort to understand whether I had simply been misinterpreting the energy around my hair, I decided to take my findings to social media. I began with two side-by-side photos of myself. In both pictures, my hair is straightened; however, in one, I am wearing my signature pixie cut, and in the other, I am wearing extensions.
I posited that treatment based on hair length is a real thing, and what followed was confirmation that I was not alone in my feelings. “Long hair, like light skin, button noses, and being thin are all forms of social capital,” one user commented. “Some Black women enforce the status quo too, why wouldn’t we?”
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This also brought to mind the many times celebrity women (like most recently Beyoncé's Cécred hair tutorial) have done big reveals of their own natural tresses in an attempt to silence any doubt that Black women are able to grow their hair beyond a certain length. Of course, we all know that to be true, so why do we still feel the need to prove it so?
The responses continued to pour in from women of all skin tones, who felt that hair length played a role in people’s treatment of them. “When I have short hair I always feel like people don’t treat me like a woman, they treat me like a kid,” another user commented. “When my hair is long I get a lot more respect for some reason.”
From revelations about feeling invisible to admitted shifts in their own perceived beauty, Black woman after Black woman poured out her experience as it relates to hair length. Though affirmed by their shared realities, knowing that reactions to something so trivial have become yet another hair battle for Black women to fight was disheartening. Though we continue to defy gravity and push the bounds of imagination and creativity by way of our strands, will it always be in response to the idea that we are, somehow, falling short?
Unlike more obvious instances of hair discrimination, the glorification of longer length is sneakier in its connection to Eurocentric beauty standards. Hair commercials, beauty ads, and even hip-hop music have long celebrated the idea of gloriously long tresses while holding onto the ignorant notion that it is inaccessible for Black women.
Even as we continue to fight to prove our hair professional, elegant, and worthy in its natural state to the world at large, we’ve also adopted harmful value markers of our own as a community. It’s evident in how we talk about who has the right to start a haircare line and which influencers we easily platform. It’s evident in the language we use to identify those with long hair versus short hair. And it’s painfully obvious in how we treat one another.
It makes me wonder if India.Arie’s brave rallying cry, almost two decades old in its existence, will ever actually hold true for us. Or will we just continue to invent new ways to uphold the harmful status quo?
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Feature image by Willie B. Thomas/ Getty Images