Have A Happy Friday & Enjoy Spring Break

We’ll see you after Purdue’s Spring Break! Meanwhile, join a clothing drive. Hank

Bespoke Shoes: Shoes of Prey

From software to footwear: New online business enables women to design their own personalised shoes.

Wiki states: “In women’s fashion high-end clothing made partly incorporating features requested by the client and to her exact measurements is called haute couture. In menswear, it is usually called bespoke. In menswear, one further distinguishes between made-to-measure (or ‘semi-bespoke’), in which a standard pattern is adapted to the customer’s measurements, and (full) bespoke, in which a new design is created from scratch for each customer. Savile Row is a famous district in London legendary for its bespoke tailoring. Charvet in Paris is an example^[1] of a famous men’s bespoke shirtmaker which offers both a high-end ready-to-wear as well as a bespoke service.” This blog is about a new startup that makes custom shoes, or bespoke shoes, for women only.

In lives past I have purchased bespoke shoes and as the Geico ads suggests, they are “The bees knees.” I had a black pair to wear with my Navy uniform made in Hong Kong, where you can bespoke virtually everything in a matter of days, and a great pair of tan boots made in Tijuana, back when it was safe to travel there. Shoes of Prey was recently started by three Aussies with legal backgrounds two of which are also ex-Google employees. Lots of juice there. Their press release states:

Finding the perfect pair of women’s shoes just got a lot easier and more interactive, with the launch of Shoes of Prey. The first-of-a-kind website uses online technology to turn women around the world into high-fashion shoe designers.

Shoe shoppers can visit www.shoesofprey.com, design the exact fashion shoe they want and have it shipped worldwide. From high heels to low heels, bows to straps, open toe to closed toe, suede to snakeskin, there’s near-endless choice, with more designs continually being added. As of today, Shoes of Prey’s simple online shoe-designer can be used to create 3.81 x 10²² types of shoes (that’s 381 followed by 20 zeros!). No design experience or special software is required – all that’s required is a web connection and some personal taste. Users can save their designs and get their friends’ comments. The shoes are individually hand-crafted from top-quality materials and are home-delivered with a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee.

Like all good fashion projects, the site has been in stealth mode for a number of months, before its big unveiling. Its founders are three Australians – former Google employees Michael Fox and Mike Knapp; and Michael’s wife Jodie, the business’ “Director of Fashion”.

“As most girls will know from experience, buying shoes is often a long process that ends in compromise. We wanted to develop a way that girls can easily design the exact high-quality shoes they want. Hopping online and experimenting with our shoe-designer is a fun and easy way to do it,” Jodie said.

“I never thought I’d use my computer coding skills to build something like this.” Mike said. “But the response from our “beta” testers has been off the charts.” (At Google Mike worked as a software engineer on the popular Google Reader application.)

Shoes cost between $180 for ballet flats, up to $280 for a 4½ inch heel. Shipping is $25 per order. (Prices on this page are in US dollars.)

For further information or an interview please contact:

Jodie Fox
Email: jodie@shoesofprey.com
Phone: +61 412-446-958 (Sydney, Australia)

Download a printable PDF copy of this release

High resolution images of shoes and the Shoes of Prey insignia are available here:
http://www.shoesofprey.com/content/media.html

Profiles of the founders can be found here:
http://www.shoesofprey.com/content/team.html

How Shoes of Prey was started and named

Three friends, Jodie, Michael and Mike (well, Jodie and Michael are more than friends – they’re married) had always talked business together – mostly on Michael and Jodie’s oversized couch, laptops in hand.

Jodie had often paid visits to a very special shoe maker in Hong Kong to purchase bespoke shoes. Her popularity amongst her girlfriends had grown in proportion to the number of trips she took there for this purpose. Jodie’s girlfriends loved the shoes as they were hand-made and completely personal to the girl who wore them. After long discussions, Michael thought that Jodie’s passion for bespoke shoes was a potential business idea to share with Mike. And so it was that Mike, Michael and Jodie sat down for a few beers and a chat about heels.

Mike, a computer programmer, thought that the idea could fly and started thinking about how he could create a simple, web-based shoe designer. As the site was prototyped and constructed, shoe designs and materials tested and refined, and beta testers enlisted, momentum started to gather. Mike and Michael left their jobs at Google.

It soon became time to give this crazy idea a name. Over sushi, and many bottles of wine, one balmy Sydney summer evening, a mutual friend, Lisa, put her hands to her temples and blurted out “SHOES OF PREY”.

Michael explains: “The name immediately grabbed everyone. Like the personalized shoes that our customers design, it means something different to each of us. The countdown to our official launch had begun.”

Interesting shoe facts:

• A 2007 poll of 1,057 US women by the Consumer Reports National Research Center for shopping magazine ShopSmart found U.S. women on average own 19 pairs of shoes although they only wear four pairs regularly while 15 percent have over 30 pairs.
• UK Research by Olay in 2008 found that almost two thirds of women own an average of 10 pairs of shoes they have never actually worn or have only put on once or twice.

A Google search on bespoke shoes revealed that across the board such custom made items are VERY expensive making Shoes of Prey a thrifty place to shop. Plus, you get to design your own online. What’s not to like? Hank

Butch it up buttercup; these aren’t your grandma’s cupcakes!

It’s funny where your life path will lead when you seem to be at a dead end.  But, you have to keep your eyes open.  David Arrick was formerly an attorney on Wall Street, who at 42, found himself unemployed.  While wandering the streets of Manhattan one afternoon he took note of a long line outside a cupcake store.  Sometime later, he read an article describing cupcakes as “magical” and he thought “Why did cupcakes need to be magical? They’re not magical for me. Where’s the masculine aesthetic?” While between jobs he couldn’t afford to eat out so he learned to be a “really good cook”.  He played in the kitchen taking a traditionally feminine dessert and giving it a masculine makeover and Poof! Butch Bakery was born.  At the moment his special blend of cupcake recipes are baked in a commercial kitchen and only available by special order.  The novelty business has quickly taken off in The Big Apple so he plans on opening his first cupcakery in New York City this spring. His concoctions are unusual and unexpected, not your average cake.  While some might expect to see a selection of sports themes frosted on top, his are definitely edgier than that.  Twelve delicious flavors are available with such offerings as  kahlua soaked Madagascar vanilla cake with Bailey’s Bavarian filling, rum-soaked lime cakes with mint white-chocolate ganache, and chocolate  beer cake with beer infused buttercream topped with crushed pretzels (do you see a pattern here?).  They sound delicious, even to a girl.  Each one is topped off with a decorative chocolate disc patterned in manly styles like camo, woodgrain and houndstooth!   Though women seem to be his biggest buyers Arrick says, “We love the girls, we love the guys, we love the gays. We’ll sell to anyone.”  Do you think he has a winner here? Beth Carroll

http://www.butchbakery.com/

Tinkering Entrepreneurs

Americans in particular like to tinker, although tinkering is not limited to our cultural background. Tinkering is hands-on; you get dirty fingernails, smashed knuckles, and a more intimate knowledge of how things work – or don’t. Across the nation, engineering schools are reporting that more and more students are opting for hands-on work in conjunction with theories and ungrounded assertions in their classrooms, so much so, that workshops for students and others to share tools and ideas, “hackerspaces” are proliferating.

In this blog we previously discussed a young MIT grad in NYC who started a new business to provide electronic parts and kits to an eager market. Sparkfun is another such company. Their About page states:

“SparkFun was founded in 2003 by Nathan Seidle, then a University of Colorado – Boulder engineering student. From meager beginnings (Nathan’s college apartment), the company now employs over 60 people in an office in the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. The SparkFun crew works in various departments such as engineering, marketing, production, shipping, and keg replenishment, all united in one common goal – Sharing Ingenuity.

What does “Sharing Ingenuity” mean? SparkFun believes everyone should have the tools, hardware, and resources to play with cool electronic gadgetry. SparkFun’s goal is to get our hands on current technology and information and pass it on to you – we want to share the love!  We set out to make finding the parts and information you need easier, more intuitive, and affordable so you can create your awesome projects. By getting technology in your hands, we think everyone is better off!”

NYC Resistor is another such hackerspace[<-YouTube link]. Their web site states “NYC Resistor is a hacker collective with a shared space located in downtown Brooklyn. We meet regularly to share knowledge, hack on projects together, and build community.” Another one, more mechanical related, is the A2 Mech Shop in Ann Arbor, MI. The Hobby Shop at MIT provides like facilities for their students, as does Carnegie Mellon and Stanford University’s Product Realization Laboratory where students can get their hands dirty. TechShop in Menlo Park CA is a for-profit hackerspace that operates along the lines of a gym. Their web site states “is a 15,000 square-foot membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a creative and supportive community of like-minded people so you can build the things you have always wanted to make. You can think of TechShop as a health club but with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment. It is sort of like a Kinko’s for makers, or a Xerox PARC for the rest of us. TechShop is designed for everyone, regardless of their skill level. TechShop is perfect for inventors, “makers”, hackers, tinkerers, artists, roboteers, families, entrepreneurs, youth groups, FIRST robotic teams, arts and crafts enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don’t have the tools, space or skills. TechShop provides you with access to a wide variety of machinery and tools, including milling machines and lathes, welding stations and a CNC plasma cutter, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws, industrial sewing machines, hand tools, plastic and wood working equipment including a 4′ x 8′ ShopBot CNC router, electronics design and fabrication facilities, Epilog laser cutters, tubing and metal bending machines, a Dimension SST 3-D printer, electrical supplies and tools, and pretty much everything you’d ever need to make just about anything. TechShop is for EVERYONE! If you already know how to use all the stuff at TechShop, that’s great. But most people only know how to use a few of the tools, machines and equipment at TechShop. If you want to learn about the equipment and tools you have never used before, you can take an “SBU” (Safety and Basic Usage) class and get up to speed on that tool or machine in about an hour. You can also explore with more in-depth class on any subject to learn about it more fully. Don’t be afraid to try new things, no matter if it is welding, using a milling machine, working with fabrics and leather or plastics, or cutting keyways in a gear. The whole point of TechShop is to enable you with a wide variety of new capabilities so you can start to see the pathway that lets you make new and exciting things.”

Although Porsche’s ad copy positions their cars thus: “every Porsche ever built is a race car,” it is  the racers, the tinkerers if you will, just like the juice behind the VW at top, that brings innovation to the table and pushes technology to new levels and unveils “unintended consequences.” And even among tinkerers, there’s more than enough room for entrepreneurial startups as evidenced above. And yes, I am a tinkerer at heart, and very proud of it. Hank

Olympic Skeleton Racer, Mother, Entrepreneur

Noelle Pikus-Pace [left], 27, is the youngest of eight children and a native of Orem. She grew up running track and playing softball at Mountain View High School. She began competing in skeleton in 2001 through a developmental program at the Utah Olympic Park, according to Mt MormonTimes. She digs roaring down a mountain head first while going over 80 miles an hour inches from the ice. My kind of woman. Bet she would make a great Porsche racer. But she is also an entrepreneur, having started SnowFireHats.com, a business which sells neat hats of her own design to support her “habit.”

Her web site “about” page states: “Whether you are about to hit the slopes or simply take a walk around the block, SnowFire wants you to show who you are. We have designed a wide-variety of beanies just for you. The colors and styles are designed to suit your personality and add a little character to your outdoor adventure. SnowFire Hats are made specifically for you: the athlete, the mom, the adventurer, the student, whoever you might be… be original. Why settle for any ordinary beanie when you can be so unique? Thanks for helping me achieve my dream of going to the Olympics by supporting SnowFire Hats!!!” I’m all for it. Hank

Dr Paul’s Piggy Paste

From web site

Fungal infections affect the appearance of the toenails, making them unsightly Once a nail fungus, also called onychomycosis, makes itself at home in your nail bed, it can be hard to eliminate, and needs to be treated with proper medications. [Footsmart] Enter Paul Kinsinger, M.D. a Board Certified Family Physician who practices at Illini Family Medicine in Washington, Illinois. He comes from a family or tinkerers [subject of next Tuesday's  blog]. One of his brothers who is local, Michael Kinsinger, is marketing the stuff in Indiana. Michael has invented an odorless toilet, unique sock sorter, line-remembering bookmark, and a family balloon game among others according to Max Showalter writing in the 2/14/10 Journal & Courier.

According to his The Story of Piggy Paste page, “I had 110 patients try the product, and 81 said that with daily application it completely cleared their toenails of the unwanted thickness in less than three months.” for a 75% success rate. While no mention is made of control group(s), such a success rate is not to be sneezed at and merited Dr Kinsinger moving forward to commercialize his latest “invention.” The name, logo, and presentation is catchy also. Good job turning a few cents worth of ingredients into a viable product. Below is an ad from the 2/20/10 Journal & Courier.  Hank

Who’s Bob Rohrman

Bob Rohrman is one of the area’s largest car dealers in the midst of an epic downturn for the auto industry. He just sued a plastic surgeon for allegedly wooing away his third ex-wife. But, hey, for this irrepressible TV pitchman, the tank is always half full.

Since Toyota has been very much in the news, background on the infamous Bob Rohrman who owns several such dealerships in this area is appropriate. Here’s a link with such information. See the video below for some bloopers. Thanks to my BIL Jerry for this link. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Some Cool Garages

This was set up using Picasa 3.6. The “show” automatically advances. Thanks to my BIL Jerry for the idea. Hank

Digital Ants

Ants are great insects with many traits that may be engineered into hardware and software for us humans. See video below of how they build their own raft out of themselves when threatened by floods for instance. More recently, researchers at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PPNL), have applied ant swarming tendencies to a new breed of anti-virus software for computers. You can read a short article about this novel approach here from which the graphic at left was obtained.

And in preparation for Hal Kirkwood from MEL being in MJIS1001 next T/Th [NOT the Learning Lab in Krannert as was previously announced, but regular classroom]  you should take a look at the SpicyNode he’s working on here: Hank

Goodby Walter

Over 200 million sold!

It happened a little bit by accident, as great ideas often do, when a 17 year old and his girlfriend played catch with a popcorn can lid on the beach in California.  When the popcorn lid lost its shape they began using a more durable round, shallow tin pan.  A passerby offered them money for their pan so Walter Frederick Morrison and his girlfriend, Lu, decided to capitalize on the opportunity.  They began selling 5 cent “flyin cake pans” to people on the beach for a quarter.   They weren’t the first to sail a flat round object into the air.  Yale University students were known to toss empty pie tins back and forth from The Frisbie Pie Company which supplied pies to their university.  Walter and Lu were, however, the first to recognize a market for the object.  It took them a few years to perfect their product and get it ready for consumers, but it was worth the wait.   After Walter returned from World War Two, nine years after they first thought of their idea, Walter sketched a design for the “Whirlo-Way”.  Two years after that, with the help of an investor, Walter got his design molded in plastic.  He named the plastic disk the “Flyin-Saucer”.  Another nine years passed by before he, with the help of his wife Lu, improved upon the design and named it the “Pluto Platter”.   Finally, in 1957, twenty years after first playing with their tin pan on the beach, the couple sold the rights to their saucer to the Wham-O toy company for 1 million dollars plus future royalties.  Wham-O was aware that kids, influenced by the pie company name, were using the term Frisbie for similar objects.  They changed the name slightly to avoid a lawsuit and the “Frisbee” was finally born.  Wham-o improved the design a bit more and got it patented.  Though Walter thought “the name was a horror” he had earned 2 million in royalties by 1982 and said “I wouldn’t change the name of it for the world.”

Walter Frederick Morrison- Frisbee inventor- left this world at the age of 90 on February 9^th. Thanks for a great product Walter!  Beth Carroll