(Andy Polk, FIF executive director and FDRA senior vice president)
These days, it’s an eight-day-a-week job just keeping up with trade war twists, turns, and fallout. Layer on mounting supply chain, regulatory, environmental, and operational challenges, and it’s abundantly clear: The industry needs all the help and resources it can get to meet the challenges head on.
Enter the recently launched Footwear Innovation Foundation (FIF), an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit scientific research organization led by industry veterans. Its mission is to champion inventive solutions for pervasive industry-wide challenges in a way that helps shape and transform the future of footwear. Companies helping to set up and/or financially support FIF include Rack Room Shoes, Steve Madden, Shoe Show, Deckers Brands, Skechers, Caleres, Target, BBC International, Michael Kors, Oka Brands, RG Barry Brands, PLC Detroit, Footwear Distributors & Retailers of America (FDRA), Jones & Vining, Insite Performance Insoles, Souls4Soles, and many more.
“We need a place for forward-thinking discussions to make sure the whole industry grows and thrives, not just one segment,” says Andy Polk, FIF executive director and senior vice president of FDRA. The exec notes that since the pandemic there are fewer workers overall taking on more responsibilities. “People don’t have time beyond their day-to-day jobs to actually think strategically about the future,” he says. “FIF’s role is to help do that for them and to feed meaningful ideas back to the industry. Critical thought and forward-thinking aspects are what FIF is trying to provide.”
FIF’s mission was enough to lure longtime Genesco exec Andy Gilbert out of retirement to serve as chair. “I’m excited to participate and give back to the industry that gave so much to me,” he says. “Also, it’s a way to continue to engage with industry leadership, where I have so many friends and colleagues, on the topics that are most critical to our industry’s future success.”
Gilbert says FIF will have the latitude to work on projects like sustainability, domestic manufacturing, and innovation. “Some of these topics are so large and broad that no individual company is able to address them,” he says. “Most teams are so busy managing the calendar and checking task boxes, there isn’t time to focus on them.”
Gilbert believes his extensive industry experience makes him a good fit for the job. “I’ve worked on the selling floor, in stock rooms, in warehouses, designed and developed footwear, sourced footwear, sold footwear at wholesale and retail, managed brand marketing for Johnston & Murphy, Dockers Footwear, and Nike cross-training,” he says. “I’ve been responsible for the financial management of businesses at the enterprise level and been part of the corporate leadership of publicly held companies. This broad exposure has given me a unique ability to assess a broad range of innovations that could impact the industry and businesses across many functional areas.”
FIF has spent two years in the incubator phase, making sure it hit the ground running. Projects already include helping companies comply with U.S. and EU sustainability regulations, conducting research on ways to strategically enhance domestic manufacturing and inventory management through automation and advanced technologies, developing an emissions accuracy study to replace outdated carbon data with real benchmarks for footwear, and creating a program to identify new talent and ideas outside the industry in order to help transform products, business models, and more.
Polk describes FIF as a hub where new ideas can be heard. “It could be anything that supports the industry, like new financial modeling or retail experience that just needs to be heard, vetted, and supported,” he says. That effort will include an innovation challenge, where FIF will contact engineering, business and finance schools, and professional associations in aeronautics, automotive, and furniture for any footwear-related concepts to submit into a competition. Think Shark Tank for shoes. Eight ideas will be selected that will then go through a footwear boot camp educating the contestants on how the industry works and whether the idea should be prototyped. “We’ll help them commercialize their idea and then award the top three,” Polk says, noting that winners can launch their own business, sell their IP, or license it. “Overall, it allows FIF to strategically find new talent and pull that into the industry’s orbit.”
New FIF members are welcome. Donations are 100 percent tax-deductible, and contributors gain early insights and a first-mover advantage on innovations. So far, so good on the launch, Polk reports. “FIF is a bright spot in troubled waters,” he says. “People are excited that someone is thinking about the industry’s future.”
Visit footwearinnovation.com to learn how you can support FIF and get involved, contact and Andy Gilbert at andy@footwearinnovation.com
(Andy Gilbert, FIF chair)
