Accelerator Helps Mosser's Shoes, Inc. Get to the 'Sole' of Its
Business
by Steve Hall
Tom Mosser admits Mosser's
Shoes, Inc. wasn't a natural choice for a consulting project with
the Butler Business Accelerator. After all, during the
worst of the recession the company's business was up, not down, by
half a percent.
"That's like being up five, six, seven percent in good times,
and other businesses would have been thrilled with half a percent
in recessionary times - but I wasn't satisfied with it," said
Mosser, president of the 56-year-old Central Indiana company with
about 40 employees. Mosser's Shoes, Inc. sells a variety of brands
through five stores in Central Indiana and through a website, www.englinsfinefootwear.com.
"I wanted us to shine this spring after having a rocky
spring" in 2009, Mosser said. "My partner Rob Englin and I wanted
to make sure we were positioned to take advantage of other business
opportunities-especially our internet business. That category is
growing faster than brick-and-mortar stores."
His son, Bobby Mosser, is a Butler senior who
majors in marketing and plays on the baseball team. When a
newsletter from College of Business Dean Chuck
Williams talked about the Accelerator, Tom Mosser
saw "a golden opportunity" to build bridges with the University and
tap the experience and insights of professors and the
Accelerator's business professionals to earn more
customers. The consulting project began in December.
The Butler team included students Kimberly
Huber, Kristin McCurdy and Nina
Abraham; Marketing Lecturer Kate King;
and Accelerator Executive Director Lawrence
O'Connor, Managing Director Brian
Landis, CFO Services/Project Manager J. Chris
Stump and Project Manager Melissa
Beckwith.
Envisioning a company's future means understanding its past.
Mosser's grandfather and father, Clarence and John Mosser, had a
retail store in Illinois. Bob Englin of Kokomo was a sales
representative for Freeman Shoes. The Mossers had a good
relationship with Englin and decided to go into business together.
In 1954, the trio bought a shoe store in downtown Kokomo and also
leased shoe departments in stores in Kokomo and Lafayette.
In 1964, Mosser's Shoes, Inc. opened its first Englin's Fine
Footwear in a Kokomo mall. In 1973, when Rob Englin came back from
Vietnam, the company opened another Englin's Fine Footwear in the
Tippecanoe Mall and Naturalizer Shoes in the Castleton Square Mall.
In 1985, the company opened Mosser Florsheim Shoes in the
Tippecanoe Mall-two doors down from the company's Englin's Fine
Footwear location. In 1988 another Englin's Fine Footwear opened,
this time at Keystone at the Crossing.
"Having the different names for our stores may sound strange to
the general public, but it's really about judging the market and
what we think will sell in a particular market," Mosser said.
"Florsheim and Naturalizer, for example, have been longtime
best-selling brands in the footwear industry. Simon Property Group
wanted a Florsheim store in Tippecanoe Mall, and we were the
Florsheim dealer in town. So we put Mosser Florsheim Shoes in the
mall."
With five stores under different names, branding was an issue
for Mosser's Shoes, Inc. In part because the company wanted to ramp
up its Internet sales at englinsfinefootwear.com, Butler's King
zeroed in on the Englin's Fine Footwear brand. A slogan for the
process became "going from fine to finer."
"Because they brand themselves as 'fine,' we went through what
'fine' means in terms of customer service, store layout and design,
merchandise assortment and other elements," she said. "Is your
signage 'fine'? Could it be 'finer'? How can you take the next step
with your presentation, people, pricing, product, promotion and
place to become finer and differentiate yourself from other
retailers selling fine footwear?"
For Huber, 22, a marketing major from Clarksville, Indiana,
examining these different elements meant going into the stores,
talking to managers and doing a sales by square foot analysis.
"We talk in our business classes about inventory and how to
reduce it, but here I was physically counting boxes and seeing what
was in stock," she said. "I got to see a side of the retail
business environment that I'd never experienced before."
Members of the Mosser team, from executives to store employees,
were open and provided information and store data that normally
wouldn't be shared with others. "They took constructive criticism
as well as compliments," Huber said. "It was good to collaborate
with them and give my perspective."
McCurdy, who is pursuing a master's in professional accounting,
helped analyze the company's financial data-what type of shoes sell
best, which store has the most sales, etc.-and crunched different
strategies to see how to get the best results. She and Stump also
traveled to Danville, Illinois, to meet with Beverly Royce, the
chief financial officer of Mosser's Shoes, Inc.
"It's always neat to see the dynamics of a company and get to
know the people well," said McCurdy, a 23-year-old from Lebanon,
Indiana. "Not many college students I know have the cell phone
number of a CFO or have gone to lunch with a CEO and two owners.
That's what I have always loved about the BBA-Butler students do
more than the grunt work on these projects. We get to provide
value."
Becoming comfortable dealing with management and executives
through her Accelerator work helped her turn an internship
at Ernst & Young International into a full-time job, McCurdy
said.
As part of the consulting process, the Accelerator team
ran two focus groups on two popular brands sold by Mosser's Shoes,
Inc. A Bible study group of middle-aged women talked about why they
like Dansko shoes and their experiences in buying and wearing them.
Members of the Tri Delta sorority discussed the allure of Ugg
boots, the unisex sheepskin boots lined with wool on the inside and
a tanned outer surface.
"That was interesting because while all of them wear and love
Ugg boots, none of them buy them," King said. Because most college
students don't have enough discretionary income to afford true $200
Uggs, their parents buy them or relatives give them gift
certificates.
"Englin's has a huge selection of Uggs, broader and deeper in
models and sizes than Nordstrom's," King said. "For them to capture
a larger piece of Ugg business among college students, the key will
be getting the word out."
Ultimately, the Accelerator team presented Mosser
executives with a final presentation involving 60 PowerPoint slides
and 150 recommendations.
Mosser declined to talk about specific recommendations for
business reasons, but said his company divided those initiatives
into three categories by action code. "Code Blue" are actions to be
taken within the next six months, "Code Red" within nine months and
"Code Green" are more long-term projects.
The recommendations "made us question everything," he said.
"Sometimes in business we can't see the forest through the trees,
but the focus groups revealed that our customers pay attention to
the details. We are now seeing things as the customer sees them. By
tweaking product assortment and presentation with store layout,
we've seen immediate results."
Since beginning the consulting project with the
Accelerator, Mosser's Shoes, Inc. sales have been up over
three percent every month. In addition, the company has added a new
line of merchandise that is anticipated to generate an additional
$50,000 in sales this year alone.
Mosser and Englin are enthusiastic about their company's
experience with the Accelerator.
"I would say to other business people: If you think you know
everything about your business, you're wrong," Mosser said.
"Hearing the different perspectives of the Accelerator
staff, the students and the professors was very valuable and a call
to action for our company. If you want to grow your business,
adding this kind of talent pool to your payroll has tremendous
benefits."