From Family Legacy to Modern Retail: The Kunitz Shoes Story

In this episode of The Footwear Retailer Podcast, Pete Mohr sits down with siblings and second-generation owners Morgan and Everett Kunitz of Kunitz Shoes—a proudly independent retailer that’s scaled with intention, weathered challenges, and built a private label brand that speaks directly to their Edmonton customers.

From navigating family succession to building out a highly functional eCommerce platform and crossing oceans to source custom-designed footwear, this episode offers a raw, honest look into what it really takes to sustain and grow a legacy business in today’s unpredictable retail climate.

Whether you're in footwear retail, managing a family business, or just looking for smart ways to adapt your operations—this episode is full of actionable gold.

🧠 Key Takeaways for Viewers:

→ Succession planning takes time, strategy, and flexibility—learn how Morgan and Everett transitioned ownership without debt overload
 → Not all expansion is equal—hear why they closed one location, relocated another, and what they’d do differently now
 → Your website is your third store—discover how they built an online presence that fuels in-store sales
 → Private label success isn’t about scale—it’s about timing, relationships, and knowing your customer
 → Marketing doesn’t have to be boring—see how they integrate community, creativity, and local artists into campaigns
 → Sometimes the smartest move is saying no—find out how they handle late deliveries, vendor issues, and when to sit on stock for the right moment
 → Your best investment might be your own business—why they prioritize cash flow, margin, and smart inventory management

🎙️ Connect with the Guest:

🛍️ Visit their website: https://kunitzshoes.ca
📧 Contact Morgan & Everett: info@kunitzshoes.ca
📸 Follow them on Instagram & Facebook: @kunitz_shoes /

The Footwear Alliance—a mastermind group for independent footwear retailers who want to accelerate growth, build long-term value, and lead with more clarity and confidence.

Enrollment is now open, a small group for just 6 to 10 retailers—to allow for deeper collaboration, real support, and tailored guidance.

Book a free call now at speaktopete.com
 

Running your business shouldn’t mean running yourself into the ground.

The 10 Laws for Moving from Operator to Owner is a free downloadable guide to help you systemize your operations, empower your team, and actually enjoy the business you’ve worked so hard to build.

Grab your free copy now at simplifyingentrepreneurship.com/laws.
The shift starts here.

PLUS: Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you move from the Operator’s seat to the Owner’s seat in your business:

1. Take the Value Builder Assessment to better understand the areas of your business that add the most value to your business - Click Here

2. Uncover your Kolbe. Whether just for you, or for your full team, better understand leadership strengths and ways you can advance your People - Click Here.

3. Listen my other podcast Business Owner Breakthrough podcast as well for quick tools and tips - Click Here

Transcript

0:00

Morgan and Everett, it's great to have you here on the footwear retailer podcast today. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for having us. Yeah. So excited. I mean, we. This all started when we were at the NSRA conference a couple weeks ago in Phoenix, and I'm like, hey, do you guys want to come on the podcast? You're like, sure, that'd be great. One of the things that I'm trying to do here with the podcast is we want to have awesome retailers, we want to have anybody else that's helping the footwear industry, and we want to have a portion that's dedicated to wholesalers, too, so that we kind of get that full round vision for anybody listening, whether you're a wholesaler or whether you're a retailer. All this kind of stuff about the trials and tribulations that we all go through as retailers, but also the wins and the things that we're doing well and the things that everybody else can pick up from. And it's like, wow, I should be doing that in my business. And these are lessons learned that everybody that's listening can hopefully benefit from. So. So that we're all, you know, independent retail is tough, and we all want to help each other, we all want to grow, we all want to do the things that we do for our businesses, and it's important that we keep the independent retail side of things strong, I think. Do you guys agree with that? I'm sure you do. Yeah, absolutely. I think in Alberta, we are a little bit in the dark out here, which is kind of how Peter, you and I met, which was, I think, just pre Covid or during COVID Um, we didn't have anyone to turn to or. Or see. Like, what are you guys doing? What's going on over there? Um, so you were gracious to invite us to that kind of support group of retailers, which is maintained now for many years. And just to commiserate, and I think there. There's been so many things that have come up with what you guys have done that we've been able to apply to our business, because we're really all in this together and. But it can be hard to find other independents in. In each town, there's maybe one or two of us left, so. So I think that also speaks to the strength of what independent retail can bring, that we're still surviving. But having this kind of group where we can talk has been really beneficial, for sure. Awesome. Morgan and Everett, you guys are second generation, right? Yeah. Family business started in 1981. All that sort of stuff. Give us a little lowdown on Kunitz. Where. Where it all began and where it's at. Yeah, it's. Our parents started the stores in 1981 as a children's footwear specialty franchise, Cobbler King. Morgan and I were theoretically born into it. And in about 1990, they transitioned out of children's only into adult footwear, you know, by introducing things like Clarks. Echo was brand new to the market at that time. So right away my parents were like, okay, you know what? It's a little easier fitting these adults. They were coming in anyways. So they dropped the Cobbler King name, picked up Kunit's shoes against. Everybody had told my dad, you know, nobody's gonna be able to pronounce it. Don't put your name on the store. And he knew, he said he. He used to work on the road. He was in wholesale for a number of years in Ontario, and he knew that all the great stores out east, you know, they had their family names on them. So he was like, that's what I'm going to do. It's going to be my Legacy. So in 1990, Kunitz Shoes was born. Morgan and I, of course, grew up, you know, selling shoes, working the stockrooms, doing all that sort of stuff you do in a family business. And then we went away and had other careers because we were both involved in other things. And in about 2008, I think, Morgan, we both kind of simultaneously came back, just ended up back in Edmonton and never left again, you know, so we now own the business. Theoretically, we employ my parents, but it's a family business, you know, at any one time it's four heads are better than one or two, right? Sure. And from that perspective, you know, I do a lot of work with next generation and helping family business go through all those transitions, things like that, before, we sort of carry on with some of the stuff that's going on now. When. When did you guys actually complete your transfer? What year was that in? It was. It was a series of, you know, I mean, succession planning is tricky. Depending on, you know, can be different where you are in the country as well, different provincial laws that kind of COVID some of this up. In Alberta, we have some stuff that's really great for, you know, handing down generational agricultural businesses and things like that that we were able to pick, you know, take advantage of. So we started. It was about a four or five year period, if I'm not mistaken, Morgan. And we have wholly owned the business now for about four years. Five years. Five years, yeah. So you know it was a, it was over almost a 10 year period. The succession plan, yeah, it went a little quicker than my parents planned. You know their goal was to get, get their retirement out of it and be able to hand over the keys and the inventory. So you know we really feel like stewards of the corporation and that that was given to us and it is our business but the actual like name and the inventory is something that hopefully we can like continue to pass on and I think that's really the success. We weren't saddled with a bunch of debt when we took over and tax wise we were able to work it out that we could just continue it on and that and that was what is best for the corporation to continue the way it's going. And yeah, we've been back for about 15 years now I guess so we grew the business a lot when we first both were back in it because there were four of us full time and then it was like oh, how are we going to continue this when my parents do want to retire and they are starting to step back so. And how are we going to retire then? Yeah, so we created Meta Management and now it's like it's going amazing. We have amazing people and high retention and so we're able to have the time like to work on the business, not in the business as much. And this has just been also with young families. It's been a real gift for us to be able to have it, do it and also have the support of our stuff. Talk a little bit about you have two locations right now I believe and talk about the journey because I know you had a downtown location, you closed the downtown location, you moved. Tell us about sort of the thought process around. Oh, because I'm sure there's other people listening either thinking about opening a new store, thinking about maybe taking a store that's been around for a long time and moving it to a different location or adding stores or go through a little bit of the thought process around that. When you decided through those Covid years sort of to make a shift, make a move and how did you get there? What did you learn through that process and what are sort of the takeaways? Yeah, we've had two locations since 2006. Our business model is a little, I'll back it up one more step and just let you know we have large footprint, high volume stores, you know, whereas we, you know, so it's, we're not replicating 1200, 1600 square foot locations. So another location for us is A big undertaking. It's a, you know, it's a huge investment in those sorts of things. My stores are, our stores are 5,000 and 6,000 square feet respectively. And the inventory to support those locations is much larger than you'd anticipate in a general locations. We had a small location 2006 to about 2016 just out of the downtown core area. It was originally an echo store that we thought, you know, we'll get into that first. And then we kind of transitioned that into a little multi brand store. And it was about 2,000 square feet, did its thing. We moved that then right onto Jasper Avenue, which is kind of our city's grand avenue, I guess you'd say. And we were there for about 10 years in that location. And right in the middle of COVID you know, we'd been having some landlord issues. We were dealing with kind of an asset manager and it was just not a great fit after all that time. And in the middle of COVID the lease was coming up and we thought, you know, what are we doing here? Like, why are we paying this? Why are we doing this thing? Business was, was falling off. It had fallen off the cliff because we were closed, but also just because of where we were. So we literally went on. I think it was on like Kijiji or something or Craigslist. We're like, you know, commercial warehouse space that has retail zoning. We were looking like a warehouse storage. We're like, where are we going to put the inventory? Maybe we'll close the store. Like everything was on the table. There were no bad ideas. No bad ideas of that. I think you remember it. It was literally like you put it out there because you had. We'd just been delivered an entire season's worth of shoes. We found where I am today in our west and it just fit like a shoe. It was a, it was a family owned little shopping center. Fit all the things that we look for in a location. We've since expanded this location to the bay next door as the opportunity came up. And people think you just open a door in generally, but I'm going to be honest, for what the size the second location is today, it took 15 years for us to get here. Like that's no, that's no joke and that's building the inventory, incremental growth, getting to where it's a good fit, then expanding again. Like it really took us time to grow to what we are today. We didn't just open the door. So people always ask us, why don't you open more Stores and you know, part of it is, well, there's only two of us and it says Kunitzchi's on the door, but I think we're over that. We know we have, we could do it. But how do you, how do you triplicate that thing that took 15 years to get where you were or the first store which took, you know, 45 years to get where it is on day one? Opening the door because our, our customers, especially in our market, they will not accept a store that is smaller or has a less selection or a satellite store. It's just the brand we have growing at Edmonton is selection, vast backup stock and they won't settle for any less. So if we open a subpar location, people just will go, will not shop there. Go to the other locations. Yeah. Victims of success. I guess. Sometimes it's so interesting when we build our brands. I mean we've opened a store and closed it. It didn't go well. It was an unproductive store. It didn't meet the goals. We closed after only being open about two and a half years. Wasn't fun, you know, those kind of things. And some of this stuff, when I think about that and going through that particular journey where I thought I knew better and I didn't, I was proven wrong. It's an interesting thing when we go through all of these different things. I thought I had done my homework. I thought I had everything aligned. It's like this is a no brainer. But it wasn't a no brainer. It's not always that easy to pick the location, to align the right clients, to align the right product, to have the right staff. All of these things when we're adding stores and it does take time. It does. And I think you had it there. Like sometimes everything lines up and something just says no. I say this all the time in buying meetings. You know, when you come back to buy a product and a vendor lets, you know like, you know, you say like, sorry that this part of the product line didn't work for me in our stores. And they go, oh, I can't believe it. We sold this in like crazy. And I just always respond with, you know what? We said yes. The store said yes. The staff said yes. The shoes said yes because they look great and they did the thing. Customers just said no. Sometimes you don't know what it is, right? And it's probably, it's the same for a location. Everything lines up perfectly. Tick all the boxes, do all the thing. Sometimes it's just who knows what it is. Right. And that's what makes the journey fun or the other more dangerous. Yeah. In my case, on that particular store was more dangerous. Dangerous. And we have had a successful store opening too, which we continue to run and does well. So we, like you, we have two stores too. But one of the things I know you've really focused on is your third store, which is your web store. And you guys do a really great job on your web store. And tell us a little bit about. That journey for Everett's baby. I would say I'll chime in. Yeah. I mean, we've been. We're about to enter our 10th year in E commerce, which is by. No, like, we weren't. We're not the earliest adopters, but we came in at a time when it was kind of like touch and go in E commerce. It wasn't a time when there was, you know, like stuff like Shopify was nascent. You know, it was just. Especially in shoes. It's either you were doing Zappos had already come and gone in the Canadian market, for instance. Right. Shumi Ca. I don't if you remember that project. I do. Right. So those sorts of things had come in and failed in Canada because not understanding the market and those sorts of things. So I thought, you know, now is the time for us to just give this a try. But so the first iteration of our website was. It was. It wasn't immediately successful, you know, huge development costs as you know, to get it done properly. Footwear inventory is incredibly complex. And generally speaking, E commerce consulting firms or design development firms do not understand the complexity and, and the nature of the inventory and the expediency with which you have to be able to work on a thin inventory, generally with a huge SKU count. So anyways, all of these problems we sort out in the first two years and then started to grow the website. Then, of course, we have the pandemic. And if you had a functional website and you had, you know, everything your processes worked out and your shipping worked out, we moved 40% of our business online overnight. So we were able to, you know, Mike, of course, you know, the other 60% was gone. Shut your doors at the same time. We launched a second iteration of our website in 2022, just at the tail end of the pandemic, which had, you know, increased functionality. We went back to our customers, we asked what features you were looking for, what's not working, how do we do? Our beta testers were customers, you know, like, we gave them coupon codes and we're like, go break the website. Go do what you can do to make it not work. We've done our best customers and our highest, a few that are high return rates and find out why that, you know, so. And yeah, it continues. I'm going to be on after the pandemic, you know, it dropped off and we actually had a couple years of correction on the website for sure. And in the last year, it's just growing again. I think people are buying shoes online. That's all I can say about it now. It's. You have to chip away at it every single day. It's not something you just put it up, you publish a shoe and somebody will find it. You can spend a lot of money on SEO, you can sink a lot of money in Google, you can do all that sort of thing. We focused on direct marketing. It's a promotional business. Quite often you've got to give incentive to get those clicks and you've got to get incentive to follow through on the shopping cart. And that's how we focus it. But really it's also a necessity in our stores. 90% of our customers who come in the store know roughly what they're looking for because they've been to my website or they found what they look for and they've come to us to get it. So it's just a necessity. It's a cost of doing business. If you're not selling online, you are selling in store. The reason you're doing it in store is because they've been on your website. Let's be honest. It's an evolving catalog of what you have in the door, right? And they want to come and try it on in your local location. And they come in and they're like, I saw that little riker in red and you know, can you point me to it? And these kind of things. And you know, I. On the weekend I was working at one of our stores and somebody said, oh, there's one particular product that it was on sale. And I said, I don't think it's here. So all I did was I hopped on our own website and I said, is this the product? And she said, yeah. And I said, well, it's in our Mount Forest or we'll bring it over for you next week and you can come try it on. And you know, I think this sort of idea where they're using the website to pre shop and they sit at home and they're watching their favorite TV or they're watching the playoffs in hockey or basketball or Whatever. And they're kind of flipping through your website saying, hmm, what about these sandals? And what about those shoes? I think it's a really common thing these days. And sometimes they'll press click and have it sent to their door. But I think for a lot of independent footwear retail stores like us, it's more like, I just want to go and try this on. I love the service, I love the people. Every time I go there, I get treated right. They're going to fit me and if it doesn't work, they'll find me something else. It's like your walk by traffic you would be getting if you're on a main street. So it's those people, they're just constantly hitting your website. They're getting the experience there. And then they just go, ugh, this is like, ridiculous. There's so many shoes here, I'm just going to go in. But they come in then ready to buy. So it really takes a lot of that stuff selling off the sales floor, which we love. One of the things I find really funny or fun about online is it's really extreme product. So it'll be, you know, Birkenstock, of course, is huge online because people want that color that is a limited edition that's sold out. So we'll sell that across North America for people that are looking for that thing in their size and in the really strong brands are very strong online, even though they're very distributed. And then our own brand also sells online because of the value in it. So it's kind of like the stuff in the middle doesn't move as quickly unless it's like in the promotional newsletters and things like that. But I love that they're finding the Kunit shoes product, which tells me that they can just see the value in the photo and in what it is and the pricing. So it gives us good feedback. Like, especially within our brand, if segments of it aren't moving online, then you know that, like, it's not good enough or it's not priced right or whatever. Because that is one of the things that actually does sell, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the creation of your brand. And for those that are listening, Morgan and Everett have created their own brand and go across the ocean and source different things, all this sort of stuff. But, you know, it's been a really great journey. When did you start it? Why did you start it? How's it been? A couple of learned lessons and a couple of real wins. Okay, I'll tell The story about six or seven years ago now, we were going to be going to Milan. We just wanted to. We were feeling not very excited about the shoe business, I have to be honest. Like, a lot of stores were closing. It was. There were a lot of older people in it. We weren't finding those until we met you, those younger people. So we thought, let's just go to Milan. It had been a long time since we've been to an international trade show and just to see what's out there, the trends, and let's look at some people in the shoe business. So we went to that. We'd also been told that in general, you won't be able to buy anything in Milan because they're only going to speak to you if you're buying 3,000 pairs per color. So that's what we were sold on. Yeah, that's what we were always told. We went to Milan and we're walking around and there are tens of thousands of people there. Like, you're shoulder to shoulder in the concourse and the music's bumping and yeah, there's whole fashion halls with influencers and this whole thing. But then we go into, like up more than half the halls. I think there were at that point, there were like eight or nine halls. And they're humongous, you know, and we walk in and there's people, you know, from Germany. And I look in the room and they're writing their little onesie twosie orders on the. On the carbon paper. On carbon paper, you know, And I'm. Going, well, they're in Europe. They're writing small orders direct with the factory. And I can tell it's the factory. I just went in the booth and it's the daughter and the dad and whatever running the business. Just like us, multi generational. Okay, well, that maybe that's one booth, then we go in another booth and we realize, yeah, there's high volume going on there, but there are plenty of retailers there that are writing orders for their, you know, few stores they have and just going to the trouble to show up at someone's booth and look at their shoes from all the way from Canada. Some people were actually kind of impressed with us. So we came home, just. We called my dad from there and just said, dad, we are part of a global industry. The shoe business is not dead alone. We were so exhilarated and seeing just the diversity of the footwear because it was even like finding shoes was getting hard finding the shoes we needed for our customers. And there was so many Shoes there that we would never get to in a lifetime. So we started going there. There were plenty of factories that we were never going to hit the minimums with. And in particular, a lot of the products that we loved were from Turkey because of the comfort, the soft leathers and the fits. So the pandemic happened and a lot of those factories knew knew us because we'd come and bug them every time. And in Covid, nobody was making shoes anymore. So I would say most of our distributors, just for about, you know, 12 to 18 months stopped making shoes and sort of sold that they had. And everybody was scrambling the containers on. One side of the world and the boats are on the other. And so these factories in Turkey, a couple of them started just. There was a woman, parish, who is amazing, and she started reaching out to us with samples and she's like, hey, I know, you know, before we wanted to make shoes, right now we have open production. And that was when it just took off because we got into some of the factories that we knew we could really move that product. And then more and more factories came on board and that's when we were really able to do the private label. Before, we'd been importing factory brands directly, which were great, and they already had nice branding and some people knew them from traveling. And then we got to put our stamp on a shoe and getting that first Kunitz shoe, it was a woven sandal from Spain. It was right after we'd gotten back from one of our Milan trips and we were about to shut down. And just seeing our name on that shoe like it was just such an amazing experience for us. And then we could promote it. We could talk about what we were doing for edmontonians and albertans and Canadians, but really Edmontonians. Nobody was telling us the price we could put on it or how we could market it. And it just grew from there. Now we are going to Garda, which is more of like a wholesale based show, to get those early deadlines because now we've had all the logistic learning period, getting the shoes in time, getting the currency locked in, all that stuff. So we've done a lot of customization, special collaborations with artists and things that are really unique. And that's just more marketing towards the brand. And I would say some people in Edmonton might consider us a household brand. And by focusing in that really micro market, we've been able to do something that no chain can do, no brand can do. Nobody's making shoes for someone from Edmonton except for us. I love it. I love It, I mean, I think congratulations, you guys have built not only the brand on your store but the brand within your store, which is super cool. And when you look at all of these things, it's been a quite a successful venture. Give us one thing that didn't maybe go as planned along that journey of creating your own brand. I mean when you're smaller, we're small production, small fries for a lot of these factories, let's be honest. And one thing that ends up happening is sometimes your production gets bumped along the line until they're after you have a couple days they need one day open to produce that. Right. And they don't need, you know, they're going to shuffle you down. Sometimes we, sometimes you get late deliveries and we've learned, you know, so for us you got, you're going to get a spring product. I need it on my shelves by like early February because we have such a huge travel market in Alberta. And if it misses those first six weeks of early selling in the spring, for instance, you know that really sinks my cell to by up to 20%. So we get late deliveries of some of these imports. We made the mistakes over and over again of just waiting and then putting it out while they came in April let's you know, they're still great. Put them out. Let's put you will promote. We'll put them out. Well, you know, the mistake we would make then is that tanks the sell through for that product, erodes the margin for that product, but it also then muddies the water for everything else that I'm going to be need to moving at the end of my season. If we work on a full fashion model here I have a 90% change over season the season in my stores. So I've got to get the product in, get product out. So what we've learned to do is if it comes in after a cutoff date for us is typically March 15, March 31, I put it away. I've got two deliveries that came, you know, April 15 or so from one from Turkey, one from Italy. And I'm just going to hang on to them. I'm going to release them January 15th, earliest spring stuff I can have. And it's going to be great product for that early customer. But I'm willing to sit on that cash because and it's not, it's nobody's fault. It just came late. You know, sometimes the boat arrives late, sometimes you can't afford to air freight it. Whatever it is, it shows up late. But if you have the cash and you can sit on that product. I can put it out at the exact moment when I need to, but it has to be willing to sit on it. And then we're buying the margin, right? So we're going to get the margin in it. So it's worth sitting on it. We actually paid for those shoes like before we even paid the factory because we locked in the currency four months before. So that money has been tied up for so long, but it works if you have that cycle and product like that. So we did that, this spray spring with one of our best collections, which is our midweek collection. It's kind of its own brand within a brand and we launched those in January and they're, they're gone. Like it's been a really good sell through. So it's something that was a, it was a mistake. We're like, man, these import business, it's, it's really good. You know, we got our name on the shoes, blah, blah, blah, but they keep showing up too late and we have to put it, we have to mark it down and get it out. You know what, let's just, you know, turn it into lemonade a little bit. Let's sit on these and put them out when our customers need them, you know, and so we've learned. So some of these, some of these cycles are actually 18 months. Right. Like with this, with this one factory, I know we're going to go buy the spring collection right now, but I know I'm not going to release it potentially till spring 27. But if you have the cash, it's good to be able to do that too. It's a good shoe. A good shoe is a good shoe. We're not buying, like I said, we're not, we're not looking for the hottest thing that's coming down, you know, from TikTok. That's going to be the, you know, we're buying great shoes for great customers. Like it's, and we've always been willing, like we always keep a lot of cash in the business to make sure that we can make these maneuvers. We're our best investment. Right? So having those shoes that are ready for when we need them to be ready has been, has been great and not, not over drawing out of the business. And I would say that is the secret sauce. You know, when our vendors are offering us extra dating for us, that's not a value to us. Like I would rather take the margin. So if there's a choice, you know, or, you know, if a shoe of theirs is Shipping late, and they're like, oh, we'll give you more dating. We said no, but we'll take a discount, a bigger one, you know, and then I'll move it. But to do that kind of maneuver, I think definitely is been part of the success that my parents really instilled in us, which is to make sure that we're funding our ourselves. What? Talk a little bit about your vendor relationships, like for somebody who's never crossed the ocean to buy shoes, and they bought either in north, you know, down in the States, in Atlanta or Las Vegas or here in Canada, in Toronto or at their local show shoe shows. Tell us a little bit about somebody who sort of has, you know, said, I kind of like to do that, but I just don't even know where to start. Yeah, I think the first thing in the import business is that it's a cash business. So, you know, if, if you're, you know, if you're operating on vendor credit, you know, or that, that sort of thing, if that's how you run your retail model, which is, you know, which people have done for generations, right. That's a model. It might not be for you because you're. You're putting up 30% when you basically when that order is accepted, and you're putting up 70% when they load those pallets off the factory floor. So it's a cash business. So being ready for that, I mean, it doesn't have to be a huge volume, but being ready for that. But it also spreads your payables. So. Right. So you've got your vendor payables, which are all going to come due mid season, but you've already paid for your import product by the time it's on your shelf. So for us, it's taken almost you know, 20, 25% of our seasonal buy is paid before it lands. So we really spread out the inventory cash flow. Right. So what else do we need to. Morgan. Morgan can speak more to vendor relationship. She really. She's like, she walks in there and, you know, everybody wants to talk to Morgan. I mean, you know this Pete. Well, it took them a while to figure out that I was Morgan because they all thought I was a man. From emailing over Covid because it's a man. And then they want to talk to me because I'm the man. He's Morgan. I'm like, she's. You're going to be dealing with her. She's going to pay you. She's going to, you know, so, I. Mean, I have to be honest Going into this, we did have some amazing vendors in Canada that we felt safe and, and that we could ask them some questions about importing. So people that helped us get the actual import companies and agents to land the product, currency brokers. So we, you know, I'm not going to the bank and like asking Royal bank to do the. We were doing that at the beginning and they don't actually even know how to get the money where it's going and safely. So having all that and then because you can make margin on the currency. Right. So I'm not paying for my August shipments with the rate of the euro in Aug. August, which is at peak time. So working all that backwards to ensure I can lock in my pricing when I'm writing the order when we're buying. So the, when you walk into the booth, you're talking to a person that is one step away from that shoe being made or, or making the shoe. There's somebody in the booth that is that connected to the factory. So they might have factory agents, but they are going on the factory floor. So I would say there's so much investment in both parties on making it work. So never have I felt like my feedback is so listened to and important as when we're at those import trade shows because they know if your product doesn't sell, you're not going to buy from them again. And you bought, bought up a little bit of production time when it doesn't work. You know, we had 400 pairs that shipped once that were completely defective. Like it was really bad. They were paid for, they had landed. But am I going to call that factory and try to ship them back to them and say I'm never buying from you again? No, we, we're both going to lose here. We're going to lose halfway. So we came to an agreement where, you know, I covered the materials so that they weren't out all that cost because they physically existed. I figured out a price I thought I could sell them for. Functionally they were okay. Like you could wear them. They just didn't look good. And we were able to clear that product. They got their material costs. So, you know, we met halfway because it's a relationship. I hope it lasts, you know, generations. I'm not going to burn that bridge. So, so I think that the angle because in Canada anyway, with the vendors, there's a lot of turnover. So the person you're talking to, yes, you care about that relationship and you know that those reps are going to move around and be in the industry, but there's not the investment in the long term. So I think you'll pull things with a vendor. Not to say we're like mean, but you might pull something because it's like, you know, you have to escalate it to get it up higher. But there's no escalation with these factories. I mean, they care, they want it to work. If you want to change something, they want to make it better. So, yeah, it's been really good. And building the relationship is not hard. The one thing I can say is you can't be a problem. We are the smallest fry. Like Everett said. Don't be making a lot of changes. Don't be writing a lot of emails and back and forth. You know, what you write at the show, that's going to be your order. Be prepared when you go in. Don't take a lot of time at the show. Just understand that they have customers walking in buying 5,000 pairs. I'm going to buy 300 pairs. So I make sure that I am low key as possible. I am the organized side of the relationship so that they, I am worth the trouble, the little tiny bit of trouble that I am. So sometimes I'll get, you know, Everett will say, what about this? What about this? And I'll sometimes push back and say, okay, I think I can finesse this out of them. But I think this would be pushing too much, like making that little label. Do we need that label as well as this label, for instance? So do we actually need this samples? You know, we change the color on the shoe and change the leather. I could see another shoe in the same leather, the same thing. And then they're like, well, do you want us to sample it for you? We always just say no, because we're not going to produce, I'm not going to produce a thousand pairs of that shoe. And they don't know how many you're going to lay down. Right. But the order is going to look like. So we just say. And then they think, they think, wow, that client, that was pretty easy. That was two emails. And then you just send the deposit as soon as they send the thing and they know you're serious. Yeah. And you can start. Our first order we ever wrote for imports was 120 pairs, 60 pairs per store. It's such an interesting story and I know you guys are all about innovation and building the brand and you're doing all sorts of cool stuff around marketing and things like that. Tell us a little bit about some of the things that you have in the longer term look like, what's your sort of one to three or three to five year plan for Kunit shoes for what you want to do, where you want to take it now you know where you are now. Where does, where is this going? Where's the ship at it? Yeah, I mean, we're, we're in, I mean, we're in a really tough spot in terms of. Everybody is right now. The, just the amount of unknowns. You know, I talked to my, we talked to our parents. You know, we're like, well, you know, what would you have done and you know, within this tariff escalation, what would you have done here? And then you realize that their generation, it was tough for sure that, you know, back when they started the business, there's 18% interest on a business loan. Right. So they had, they had different difficulties. But then the reality of the geopolitical situation, let's be honest, they had Desert Storm. You know, we're facing, you know, two major wars in the world right now. We've got all of these instabilities in tariffing issues. We've got a new government in Canada. Again, it's just over everything over and over and over and over. It's adding up. And Morgan and I are. What we're choosing to do is look at what we can control, what is in our purview, what's our skill set and what do we do? We're great merchants in a classical sense. We're not financial wizards. We're not. We both have skills that dovetail really nicely into what we're doing. But we are really great at being merchants. And so we're, you know, even in this time of kind of difficulty, we're starting to take some small steps towards expansion and figuring that out. That starts with operational lockdowns, figuring out how we're running our business, you know, from, from a leadership perspective, because that's not something we've typically had to learn. But our one to three year plan right now is, is looking at potentials to expand. Yeah. And do you think that's door footprint or expand the web store or what sort of does expansion mean to you? Like, I think you need more doors to expand. I mean, there's only a certain amount of hopefulness you can have in increasing traffic. And like we already have, you know, we really feel we, we have added what we can to, to bring people. You can always get more customers. I shouldn't say never. But at the same time, the true value to our input at this point would be to Enlarge our footprint for sure. Yeah, yeah. Do you see, because you've already expanded once, you know, and taken another bay. Do you see an even bigger footprint outside of the 6,000, like maybe going to 8,000 or something like that? Or do you, is that, or do you, do you think that 6,000 is sort of a good spot for people. Walk into our store, Pete, and they are overwhelmed as it is. It is, I would say 75% of the people that walk in, we get the comment, like, where do I start? Like I'm talking about in, you know, I was just doing a skew model for spring 26 just to look at what our SKU count might look like. Like we're going to introduce something between 900 and 980 SKUs in women's footwear. Right. And that's for one season in one year. So I think expanding our, the size of our locations is, would be, I mean you see in the States there's huge independence. 20,000 square foot stored somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. Right. Like those are generational businesses too, but that's, you know, different in hindsight we. Should have had a smaller footprint model. But I guess to, to put it on the nose, we are looking at other locations, but we're thinking about, thinking about it, I would say. And Morgan, you've been to my, one of my stores anyway, if not both of them, I think on one of your Ontario trip throughs. And like our stores are in that 3,000 square foot range, open stock stores. And it's a different and often I'm thinking, oh gosh, we need more space. And you know, these are the things that everybody, all the, all retailers are always playing with this through their head, right. To try to get it straight. Do we have enough, do we have enough back room? Do we have enough front room? Do we have enough, you know, sitting area? Do we all these different things that we all roll through, right. As we're, we're thinking about these different challenges that we go through. Yeah, you can put them all down on spreadsheets, you know, design flow in your space and, and make and design of your stockrooms and all that is hugely important for sure. But at the end of the day, you know, you spend as much time as you want modeling. It's just like you said earlier in the conversation, you open the door and you just don't know what's going to happen. I mean we're not, we're not risk averse in our business either in a lot of ways. Like Morgan is ready to jump, you know, into stuff. We try things, we do. I'm not going to call it all innovation all the time, but we do try stuff. And, you know, it just the scale of trying for us now has gotten like to replicate what we're doing on another scale is because we've added so many layers to the tinfoil ball. One of the things that, that I've noticed through your marketing and through talking with you over the years is that you're big community people and, you know, I know you're both have an arts background and a variety of different things and you tag some of the marketing into some of the community work that you do, some of the different things that you've done and have different artists represented on even some of your footwear and have things burned into some of the leathers, all sorts of different things. And so always kind of in the backside of things. I've noticed this sort of theme and thread of community involvement, engagement too. And talk a little bit about that piece. Morgan. Yeah, I think for Everett and I, you know, I'm a retired semi still doing stuff, performer, producer, director for theater. Everett's a retired ballet dancer. So we grew up really on stage and rehearsing and, you know, where you put a lot of work into something and then the result is like one or two nights, you know, so that. And then, you know, you do a show and nobody comes. So we've done lots of things where we failed and we're used to getting feedback from a director or a ballet teacher or whatever. So we're not afraid to fail, that's for sure. But as far as the creative side, I think a lot of the stuff we do there, you have to be marketing anyway. And it came from a place of us wanting to remain engaged in the business. So I would say a quarter of those initiatives we do are for us because they keep us excited and engaged and that is valuable to the business. Right. If we're in it and we're excited about it, that's going to go into the staff and the customers and the product and everything. And then being involved with the community side, I love that we can kind of tie that all together because we are an Edmonton business. That is our brand is Edmonton. Our brand says our, our name on it. And so being able to tie that together, it just is such a great sense of satisfaction. But it also gives us that point of difference that we are hyper local. So instead of just marketing a shoe, talking about the shoe, we'll try to do it, you know, At a brewery we love. If I have to talk about a shoe, I'd like to talk about a shoe with a beer in my hand or at my favorite garden center. So we have to do photo shoots anyway. And we work with photographers who are performing artists. So we notice if we do a shoot in the same place every time, we're not talking as much, it's not as exciting and the photos don't come out as good because we're not doing interesting layouts or poses or whatever. And so then we'll see, switch it up and, and say someone will pitch a place, oh, I this new coffee shop open. Let's see if they. We can do a shoot there. And then we tie it in with the business. So you're posting about the business and then when you use the photos, they might re share your post and you're harnessing those audiences as well. So it all ties in really well from a marketing perspective. And it doesn't take that much more effort because like you have to shoot the shoes anyway. You have to make some Instagram content, but you can just do it in your store, which we also do, or you can make it a little bit more fun somewhere else and find a way to tie it in. And the cross promotion. Yeah, yeah. And then inviting, you know, I was going to say on the artist collaboration aspect too, like inviting, you know, local artists or commissioning really is what we're doing. We do. And we're able to do that with some custom shoes that we do at some smaller factories. Morgan had a great point way back when. She said, you know, we've always supported the arts and we, you know, we would sponsor this, sponsor that, get your name in a program, do that sort of thing. And then Morgan finally said, why don't we just start work hiring artists? Just buy the art, buy the art and, and let's employ some artists. And so at the end of the day, it was, you know, putting art on shoes was the best we could do with that. And you commission somebody, you pay them for their art rather than, you know, supporting an organization, which is fine too. But so that was a, that was a good point there. The other thing that Morgan mentioned was that when you go to these brewery spaces, these cafes, these places, and we do these little launches, you're also inviting your customers in to spaces that they sometimes might not. Like a brewery. Our customers are women. You know, a lot of them are over the age of, let's just say 55 plus. A brewery is not generally a spot where you would think of doing an evening event for those people, but that's because they're not typically invited into those spaces. So let's just break that barrier. Let's do it. Let's commission a cask of beer Kunitz brews and then, you know, and sell some shoes and have some fun. Right. Like, like Morgan said, we need to produce the content anyways. Yeah. When we did, we've worked with Lance Cardinal a few times. So he's kind of a Canada wide famous, now famous indigenous artist. And when we first started working with him, it was our first time engaging directly with an indigenous artist, not through an organization we were sponsoring. And in that case, it was kind of the product that was the gatekeep. Right. So he created this beautiful collection and it was so popular. Actually the first collection almost sold out in. Or sold out in like four days. But when we had customers coming into the store the first day, Lance was right there. And it was at that time where it was the appropriation appreciation, appreciation story that was really happening and our customers loved it. And not all of them were indigenous and they wanted to know that they were allowed to wear this product, that it was for everyone and that it was art to be appreciated. And so that outside of the space piece was the actual product was a space that we're inviting people into and then creating that piece of reconciliation. Not just reconciliation. And then on the next or two launches later we did with him, we were invited into his space space. So we got to go up to Wabisa, where he is from, and the. Big stone Cree first nation. Yeah. Invited to a first nation, which was our first time being invited into that space and having some ceremony there which. So it's all about like opening the gates and allowing people in and, and you're selling product and you're not ashamed to be a merchant. And it's okay. I think in the arts and even in anything you're doing community related, it's like, well, you can't make money. No, we're. We're all here to support each other and it's okay to say we're doing this to make money for everyone. And on top of that, there's going to be community elements intertwined through that storytelling. I love it. I don't think I've ever shared this with you, but I'll give you a couple things that we do just to support the arts too. One is that we use some of our blank wall space in our stores for some of our customers who are artists to showcase their actual art and so Lorraine McDonald is one that her husband used to play in my band, basically. And I said, Lorraine, why don't you, why don't you put some of your paintings up in our store? So she refreshes our walls for us with beautiful watercolors. And I think that, that. And you know, they're there for sale, but you know, at the same time we're, it's helping us get some, some interesting things on the wall, but it's helping her too. And the other side is that just from a performing side of things. Several years ago and we thought about doing this again, but we supported our local play playhouse. And by supporting the local playhouse, we were able to get discounted tickets at a play on an off night, like it was a Tuesday night, I think. But we took 40 of our best customers to see a play. That all started by me chatting with the playhouse manager and saying, hey, listen, we advertise in the playbill and what can we do here to have a fun night for some of our key customers? And so we took 40 of them. We had little grab bags for them and all that as they came in. And everybody in the lobby, of course is going, what's going on with all this utopia stuff? And they were asking questions. But it was just kind of a fun night to treat some of our best customers. We've done that a couple of times over the years, but probably time we do it again. That being said, it was just sort of a fun little customer appreciation way that we've injected that too over the years. And then you just, you went to the show, you supported the artists as audience. I think sometimes we forget in the performing arts we need audiences to come to the shows. Yeah, I love that that was so directly. We are going to come and take our time and enjoy this piece. Yeah, it's finding. Finding fun ways to market. Whenever we go into business like Everett NY's favorite thing anywhere we travel is go into. Not just we always go into shoe stores, obvious. But go into businesses and just look at what they're doing. Look at what they're doing. Well, find someone to talk to in the back room. There's a shoe store in Milan, actually we go to every time we're there and we weasel our way. Yeah, we weasel our way into the back, back room and then we start pulling out shoes and talking about shoes with them and going in and getting a behind the scenes look at any business is just my favorite thing because there's. They're always going to do something that you can take away as a nugget and apply to your business. Especially stuff outside of the shoe business like in the food service or we were at a soap factory, a local. I don't know how it all ended up but anyway they ended up doing a pop up in our store. They wanted to come to our store and do a pop up which was amazing. I love it. It's been a great conversation. Morgan and Everett, thanks so much for joining me here. I'm sure the listeners are going to take away a lot here and some stuff to think about and do tell everybody how they can learn a little bit more. Where can they find Kunitz and and if they want to dig a little bit more into how they can maybe even talk to either of you. Yeah, I mean there's our website kunitshoes Ca. You can reach out to either Morgan or I infoonachews ca. We still get the main email inbox so you can shoot us an email if you if you want to connect at infocunetshoes Ca or visit our one of our stores here in Edmonton. If you're in town, it's a lovely city. The drive in is awful from any direction but once you're in the core it is amazing. Please follow us back out. Follow us on Instagram because that's how you can see all the silly stuff we're talking about and the fun we have in the stores. That's all on Instagram and Facebook. I love it. Thanks again and make it a great day, both of you. Yeah. Same view. Kate, Bye.