Serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore on why her footwear brand is 'really an engineering company'

Sep 6, 2023

Serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore discusses her journey from selling her first business to launching FitFlop, a groundbreaker in footwear engineering. She reflects on her traits as a successful entrepreneur and shares insights into creating successful business ideas. Kilgore also talks about the rapid expansion of FitFlop, the challenges faced during the pandemic, and the process of growing teams and finding the perfect CEO.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Reflections on Upbringing and Traits of a Successful Entrepreneur

01:36 • 2min

Creating Successful Business Ideas

03:15 • 17min

Fitflop: Wellness and Expansion

20:24 • 16min

Growing Teams and Finding the Perfect CEO

36:42 • 2min

An Idea for a Highly in-demand Product and Fueling Inspiration

38:32 • 4min

Marcia Kilgore was born to be an entrepreneur.

"I found it very difficult to take direction from other people, … and I always found it difficult to work in places where the standards of the person who was running the place were, from my perspective, mediocre; it would frustrate me to no end," she said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast.

Plus, her personality traits are befitting a successful entrepreneur, she said. Among them: "being super curious, being solution-oriented, loving to experiment, having solutions for any kind of hurdles or roadblocks that come along, and being tough enough to never give in."

Based on her track record, she's used that to her advantage. Kilgore sold her first business, Bliss Spa, to LVMH in 1999. That was before starting the "masstige" beauty brand Soap & Glory, which she sold to Walgreens Boots Alliance in 2011. In the years since, she's launched Soaper Duper, Beauty Pie and FitFlop, the latter of which she described as a groundbreaker among footwear brands.

"I had this idea for a shoe that would align your body when you walked in it and give you energy [by] rebounding the energy from the ground up," she said. "Shoes had always just been drawn [by designers]. No one was thinking about how the shoe affects the person walking in it. … [FitFlop] is really an engineering company."

Kilgore said her entry into the footwear category, after building her career in beauty, made sense given that she’d been "very into reflexology" while running her spa business. As a one-time personal trainer, she was also into wellness. The shoe "connected the dots," in terms of her experience, she said.

Since first launching through the retailer Sweaty Betty — through which one customer email sold 8,000 pairs of its shoes — FitFlop has taken off internationally. Now, having opened the brand's first U.S. store, in SoHo in April, Kilgore is charting its stateside growth.

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