The birth of Franco Silva

Over several months, I wore my new boots and broke them in. In that time, I received many compliments and talked to many people about them and that we would be offering custom made boots for men in the future. There was much interest. 

Claudia and I discussed the opportunity and both thought it was a great project to work on together and if it worked, it would help our travel to see each other. Hmmm, a brand based in love? It could work! 

We began to work on securing a relationship with the family of artisans we met in October. We met many shoe makers in October, but this family of cobblers had both an eye for detail and great styles for us to work with. In March, Claudia and I met with the family business and came to an agreement to begin working together. 

Together, we worked on some of the ideas we had around customer experience and how we could showcase our unique value proposition to the Canadian market. We even used the business model canvas, an effective planning tool I recommend to any startup business.

To launch, we selected Shopify as our partner for the online shop - they're Canadian and a pretty turn-key solution, although, I'm still trying to get the hang of their admin panel. I'm sure for the thousand things I've done right to get things started, there are a thousand that are incorrect or could use some kind of improvement... so, a message to our soon-to-be customers: be patient with us while we grow into our business!