The hunt is on for Lake Forest-based Sole Technology Inc.
The shoemaker, best known for its Etnies line, wants to more than double its size in the next year by taking on another 250,000 to 350,000 square feet of space, according to founder and Chief Executive Pierre Andre Senizergues.
“It’s not easy to find a warehouse that big in OC,” Senizergues said.
Sole currently has a campus in a Lake Forest office park that totals 200,000 square feet and includes its corporate headquarters, warehouses and a laboratory complete with a vertical ramp for studying the biomechanics of skateboarding.
Workers shuttle among the four buildings in electric golf carts.
The company now is scouting around to lease or buy two more buildings for its growing warehouse and office staff. Senizergues said he’d like to stick to Orange County and is looking near the company’s headquarters, as well as in Irvine and Cypress.
“There are a lot of places around the world that are cheaper to do business,” Senizergues said. “But a lot of people in the action sports industry are here. It makes it easier.”
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Lake Forest skatepark: funded by Sole Technology |
Hiring Plans
Sole is bursting at the seams.
In the past year, the company grew 24% to 400 workers. The bulk of the staff is at the Lake Forest headquarters, where Sole hired some 60 workers,up 27% to 286,in the past year. Sole recently opened a 6,000-square-foot showroom in New York.
Sole plans to hire 50 to 60 more workers in OC once it finds more space, Senizergues said.
“But it could be more,” he said. “All the brands are growing.”
Departments set to get a boost include apparel, technology, warehousing and logistics, he said.
Sole has come a long way since starting out in 1994 with one line of shoes, Etnies, which Senizergues launched in the U.S.
Senizergues, a French-born world champion skateboarder, had licensed the brand from a company in France.
In the past decade, Sole has developed several other shoe brands and clothing for men and women.
They include & #233;S (an athletic shoe for skateboard shops), Emerica (an anti-fashion skateboarding shoe also for skate shops) and 32 (a snowboarding boot sold in action sport stores alongside Etnies).
Sales have jumped from about $1 million a year in the mid-1990s to more than $150 million now.
The growth also has allowed Senizergues to work his passion,the environment,into his business.
Sole’s headquarters is solar powered. The company now affixes the soles of its shoes with a water-based adhesive instead of oil-based cement.
Matt Pindroh, owner of Liberty Board Shop in Brea, said he’s stuck with Sole since its early days, when he sold one line of Etnies. Now, he carries all of Sole’s brands and offers some 65 styles for men and women, he said.
“Etnies has still grown but we’ve concentrated on & #233;S and Emerica,” Pindroh said.
Sole played it smart by designing brands for different types of buyers, he said.
“You don’t lose the core customer base, which is what their business was built on,” Pindroh said. “At the same time, you’re able to expand into the main marketplace, which is what Etnies is geared toward.”
Although Sole has grown fast, Pindroh said the company has not forgotten about the little shops, which is always a fear.
“Any small business like I am is always concerned about them getting too big,” Pindroh said. “But they’re always good about coming back to small vendors” and asking for feedback and getting them involved in shoe clinics.
That’s been one of the keys to Sole’s expansion, according to Senizergues.
The company has focused on growing orders with existing stores instead of opening a slew of new accounts, he said. Some of the stores that sell Sole stuff include Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. and Irvine-based Tilly’s Inc. Sole also operates its own outlet stores.
“The way we grow is like a tree,” Senizergues said. “We’re growing our branches and we’re growing our roots even more.”
Senizergues said he remembers hanging at skate shops as a kid and watching the owners struggle to pay bills.
“It’s pushed me to do something for them no matter what,” he said.
But perhaps the biggest driver for Sole is that more people worldwide are embracing the action sports as a lifestyle, Liberty Board’s Pindroh said. The action sports industry includes surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and BMX bike riding.
Like surf, skateboarding has gone through cycles. It exploded in the 1990s but has been flat the past few years.
But acceptance for the sport is on an upswing. One reason: Cities are allowing more public skateparks after years of shunning them because of lawsuit concerns.
“It gives kids a place to go to use the boards that they bought,” Pindroh said.
Sole partnered with the city of Lake Forest and opened a skatepark near its headquarters a few years ago.
The company regularly draws big crowds to its skate and other marketing events at the park.
The 38,000-square-foot skatepark draws some 1,500 visitors each week. It’s free, mainly because Senizergues has made big donations to fund it.
“There are a lot of new teenagers and faces coming to those events,” Senizergues said.
One of Sole’s challenges will be coming up with more shoes for the growing number of people that don’t skate but still want to look cool, said Bobby Abdelfattah, co-owner of Jack’s Surfboards in Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Corona del Mar.
“Their lines change every season. They’re always fresh,” Abdelfattah said. “A customer who wears (those shoes) will find his style no matter what.”
But the market is competitive. Sole is up against other big shoe companies such as VF Corp.’s Vans Inc., Nike Inc. and DC Shoes Inc., which recently was bought by Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc.
Big Rivals
It also faces competition from surfwear makers with their own shoe lines, such as Costa Mesa-based Hurley International, a Nike unit, and Irvine-based Billabong USA’s Element skateboard unit.
Many of those companies have deep pockets,deeper than Sole’s.
“The big guys coming into the industry is always a challenge,” Senizergues said. “We have to be more like a speed boat and act faster.”
Senizergues said he’s happy staying the course and has no plans to be bought,though he’s had plenty of offers. Nor does he plan to go public like Costa Mesa-based action sportswear maker Volcom Inc. did earlier this year.
“I’ve been hearing so many horror stories about going public,” he said. “I just want to be able to plan long term for my employees. By being private you have more control.”
Sole has been stacking its management team with veterans from the industry during the past few years.
Last year Sole hired a new chief operating officer, Paul Migaki, former general manager at Nike’s equipment division, which includes accessories.
