Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
No Regrets
With the data to back her up, Rose got a $200,000 loan from the Small Business Administration in 1998. She wore out a lot of her own shoe leather showing samples to independent shoe stores and buyers at upscale department stores."Someone told me it costs $10 million to start a new brand," Rose says. She didn't have $10 million, but she had a good story, and it got picked up by a lot of magazines. Taryn Rose International was on its way.
"I did everything at the beginning: the designing, the marketing, the accounts receivable," Rose recalls. "There were moments when I was so frustrated, I remember crying. The client is saying, 'Where are my shoes?' The vendor is saying, 'Where is my payment?' But when you're faced with saving a patient, you don't think about giving up."
Her natural sense of optimism also helped. "If someone tells me we're $200,000 short of our goal, I'll say, 'Let's sit down and see how we can bring up those numbers.'"
It's barely eight years since Rose, now 40, started her business. The shoes can be found in more than 220 stores worldwide. There are four boutiques in the United States, and one just opened in Paris.
Handmade in Italy of the finest leathers, the shoes are ergonomically designed for comfort, for women and men. They range from $200 to $400 a pair. Rose makes sure they're also available through discount catalogs and websites as well as her warehouse sale. "My family started out in this country with nothing, so I don't have a problem selling to an off-price catalog. Today's off-price catalog customer may one day be a luxury customer."
Now that she can indulge her love of shoes, Rose owns about 200 pairs and, she adds, "a warehouse of 20,000 more that I can borrow from at any time!"
Rose has no regrets about leaving medicine. "What I'm doing is not all that different from what I was doing as a physician. The goal is the same, to relieve pain. A former professor told me, 'You're helping hundreds of thousands of women with your shoes. As a surgeon, you would have helped only the few who made it to your office. You're having a much greater effect.'"
Looking back, Rose admits she caught a couple of lucky breaks. "To me, luck is about being prepared for those opportunities that come knocking. You have to have an open mind, the right skills and all your senses working to see what opportunities present themselves. Luck can open the door, but you still have to walk through it." Preferably, in a pair of good-looking, great-feeling shoes.
And FYI ...
If you've got tired feet, try Taryn Rose's cool Lemon-Mint Footbath:
- Lay flat, smooth stones in a basin. Fill with lukewarm water.
- Add a sliced lemon. For every half-gallon of water, add 3 to 4 drops peppermint oil.
- Rub 2 handfuls of fresh peppermint or spearmint leaves together to release oils; add to basin.
- Slide your feet over the slippery stones for at least 4 minutes. Ahh ...
Advertisement 
Your Comments
See all
...