Chowkin
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A little bit of history of Edward Green from an interview of Andrew Murphy who's now with Foster & Son:
My next step was when I left New & Lingwood to start the Edward Green brand of ready to wear for retail. Edward Green was a shoe manufacturer, they’d never run their own store. So in 1991, when John Hlustik was the owner of Edward Green and he decided that he wanted to start a retail business, everybody around said: "Don’t do it, you are manufacturer, you don’t know anything about retail. It will fail, what you are doing is crazy!" Edward Green was the first factory with its own shop in London. Of course, I knew John Hlustik from my time in New & Lingwood and told him that I’d help him to open the store. There were three of us, John Hlustik, the owner, me and another guy, and we opened the first store in 1991, when I was 23. Nobody had heard of Edward Green and customers would ask: "Who are you? Where do you come from?" We explained that we were manufacturers with a Northampton factory that had been in existence for more than 100 years, that we had never had a shop before and that we made lovely and beautiful shoes. And people said: "Well, yes, they are quite nice". And, slowly, slowly, we were educating people about who we were.
In those days there was no Internet, no social media, you couldn’t advertise for free. If you advertised you had to pay lots of money to magazines and other publications and that was not an option for us. So we worked by word of mouth. Customers came in and we talked to them. They might buy shoes, they might not. In those early days we might sell two or three pairs of shoes a week, and every pair of shoes we sold was a true victory for us, we celebrated like we’d won a cup. Like any business, we had to start with tiny steps, from nothing to something. As we started people slowly began to understand the brand and the shoes, they realized it was a high-quality product and we went from there, from strength to strength. So we opened two more stores - one at Jermyn Street, one at the Arcade. Today Edward Green has one store at Jermyn Street and they have great brand and a great product. Edward Green sell their shoes around the world, they came from that humble beginning, as a retail store, and just take a look at where they are now. Now they are very well known in the market place. I stayed until 2000 when I left to work with John Carnera again.
http://www.pennyyard.com/#!andrew-murphy-interview-eng/ck1l
My next step was when I left New & Lingwood to start the Edward Green brand of ready to wear for retail. Edward Green was a shoe manufacturer, they’d never run their own store. So in 1991, when John Hlustik was the owner of Edward Green and he decided that he wanted to start a retail business, everybody around said: "Don’t do it, you are manufacturer, you don’t know anything about retail. It will fail, what you are doing is crazy!" Edward Green was the first factory with its own shop in London. Of course, I knew John Hlustik from my time in New & Lingwood and told him that I’d help him to open the store. There were three of us, John Hlustik, the owner, me and another guy, and we opened the first store in 1991, when I was 23. Nobody had heard of Edward Green and customers would ask: "Who are you? Where do you come from?" We explained that we were manufacturers with a Northampton factory that had been in existence for more than 100 years, that we had never had a shop before and that we made lovely and beautiful shoes. And people said: "Well, yes, they are quite nice". And, slowly, slowly, we were educating people about who we were.
In those days there was no Internet, no social media, you couldn’t advertise for free. If you advertised you had to pay lots of money to magazines and other publications and that was not an option for us. So we worked by word of mouth. Customers came in and we talked to them. They might buy shoes, they might not. In those early days we might sell two or three pairs of shoes a week, and every pair of shoes we sold was a true victory for us, we celebrated like we’d won a cup. Like any business, we had to start with tiny steps, from nothing to something. As we started people slowly began to understand the brand and the shoes, they realized it was a high-quality product and we went from there, from strength to strength. So we opened two more stores - one at Jermyn Street, one at the Arcade. Today Edward Green has one store at Jermyn Street and they have great brand and a great product. Edward Green sell their shoes around the world, they came from that humble beginning, as a retail store, and just take a look at where they are now. Now they are very well known in the market place. I stayed until 2000 when I left to work with John Carnera again.
http://www.pennyyard.com/#!andrew-murphy-interview-eng/ck1l
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