DC Shoes picks local company to design new shoe
Osoyoos clothing and accessory store Unity has landed a great marketing opportunity.
The local store has been selected to design a shoe for DC Shoes, a $100 million shoe company based in California.
The shoe company, which is now owned by Quicksilver, is the third largest in North America, following Nike and Reebok. The street shoes are durable, well-made and are popular among skateboarders and the general consumer alike.
DC Shoes have given Unity a blueprint, based on a popular model already in production, the Lynx 2.
Following this blueprint, Unity can choose the colour combinations, the material and can incorporate the Unity logo in four separate places on the shoe.
Elder said that he will be choosing a new material that has been coming up in the skateboard world, synthetic nubuck.
The material is long-lasting and animal-friendly, which Elder said was important to him.
DC Shoes offered this to a handful of stores in the United States and the Canadian distribution centre based in Vancouver heard that DC Shoes were possibly bringing it into Canada, Elder explained.
Only about five shops in the States have been chosen to design a shoe so far.
One of Elder's big business beliefs is to keep good relations with his distributors and companies.
Elder went on to say that DC Shoes is a well-run company from production to distribution and that he has a great working relationship with the people who work there.
When the idea came up to offer it to a shop in Canada, our shop came to mind and DC Shoes thought they'd give us the opportunity to be the first shop in Canada to get to design our own shoe.
The company has done a similar program with some of the pro-skateboarders such as Colin McKay and Anthony Van Engelen, letting them design a shoe with their signature logo on it.
Pre-orders for Unity shoes are already strong from the Vancouver office.
Elder, along with his partner Jillian Buchanan, will work on the design together to come up with a shoe that will be appealing to both men and women.
Derald Ulry from Osoyoos Signs will be scanning all the design work for us, Elder said.
Unity will have exclusive sales of their own shoe at first and DC Shoes plans to release all the shop-designed shoes together at a later date.
The shoe is slated to be released this summer as part of the DC Shoes back to school line.
It's definitely a unique and amazing offer, Elder said.
