Business can be a lonely game, but it doesn't have to be.

Welcome to Boutique Chat, where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek.

We'll hear from product-based businesses of all types, retailers, e-commerce, and wholesale brands,

along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry.

I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the boutique hub, and I can't wait to chat.

Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast this week.

We're going to talk about one of my favorite topics.

Are you ready? Shoes. Michael, you're going to bring us into all things shoes today. I'm so excited that you're here and to get to talk all about Mia. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I can't wait. So lots of retailers are listening of all different types, right? Home and gift,

accessories, apparel, children's, beauty, all kinds of retailers. And I think everyone has some sort of product line that maybe is new to them, right? And for a lot of retailers, I think shoes

are a new experience or it's an opportunity to double down. Maybe they've tried shoes in the past. Maybe they have a limited shoe line, but shoes are something literally every human on the planet needs, right? So all kinds of opportunity to bring in a new line. Mia's been a partner of ours for a long time. So I'm excited today just to start off. Tell me more about the background. Tell me about the foundations of Mia, where it came from,

and you guys have had incredible growth in the last couple of years. So let's get into that too.

Yeah, so Mia, we actually started long before myself. It's a family business started in Philadelphia.

And then late 80s, 90s came down here. And the brand has changed a lot over the 50 years of our existence.

We started off just doing Swedish clogs out of Sweden, you know, wood bottoms, the whole bell

bottom trend.

Yeah.

We still make them today in the little garage factories in Sweden.

But the business has evolved into a much more fashion-focused, fast-fashioned-focused business.

It's evolved into some comfort business and kind of marrying it all together.

So there's been a lot of change here, as I think most companies have to be changing with the times when we've know, when you've been around for this long.

So definitely have had a lot of different looks over the years.

Absolutely. So tell me about your team now. Where are you guys located now?

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