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All moms can attest to the fact that entertaining kids during summer vacation can often require out-of-the box thinking. Such was the case when 42-year-old Sheri Schmelzer saw one of her three children stick flowers into the holes of her Crocs shoes. Immediately she thought “Yes! Great craft idea!” and quickly gathered up other materials such as clay and rhinestones to further accessorize their shoes.
When Sheri’s entrepreneurial-minded husband, Rich, came home from work and saw the pile of decked-out Crocs, he immediately knew his family had hit on something big. Twenty-four hours later, the couple sat in the gazebo of their Colorado home grappling with a huge decision: Could their innovation be turned into a successful business?
Should We?
The decision to launch a business is never an easy one. The Schmelzers discussed the necessary steps such as filing a patent, launching a website and the big one: how to raise the money required to get it all started.
“When Rich got to the part about topping out our home equity line,” remembers Sheri, “my heart started racing and all I could think about was three kids and college funds. And then I heard Rich say, “Sheri, do you think kids are going to love them and consider them really cool?” And I said, ‘Yes, yes I do.’” Many of you know the decision they made that night in 2005. All you have to do is look around your home. If you spot a pair of Crocs lying around, chances are they are sporting a Jibbitz charm, or two, or three…
What Are the Odds?
The Schmelzers launched the Jibbitz website on their wedding anniversary, August 9, 2005. Almost immediately, Sheri went from being a stay-at-home mom to simultaneousl running a business, spending a good portion of her day making Jibbitzes by hand in her basement. She began buying things like hearts, happy faces, peace signs and rhinestones at craft stores and gluing them onto cufflinks. “It was certainly not a subtle entry into the work force,” she laughs. We received 200 to 250 orders a day.”
Jibbitz’s rapid growth forced the company to relocate in January 2006 from the Schmelzers’ basement to a large commercial office. The company quickly outgrew that space and relocated a second time in June. Manufacturing is contracted to overseas companies. Within one year, the charms were offered in thousands of stores, and over eight million pieces had been sold worldwide.
One day when Sheri was busy working, her dad took the kids to the local pool. Their decked-out Crocs caught the attention of none other than Crocs’ co-founder Lyndon “Duke” Hanson. He handed the Schmelzer kids a business card and told them to have their mom call. When Sheri’s daughter, Lexie, came running into the house with the news Sheri was stunned.
A believer in feng shui, Sheri had recently put a mirror over the fireplace and tucked a note behind it that said, “Sell Jibbitz to Crocs.” “I don’t think that’s why my daughter met Duke at the pool,” says Sheri, “but it is similar to The Secret by Rhonda Byrne in that you should put your thoughts and energy out there in a positive way and hope you get it back.”
In December 2006, her goal was realized when Crocs, Inc. snapped up Jibbitz, LLC for $10 million, plus a potential earn-out of up to $10 million based on hitting earnings targets. “It was bittersweet because it was hard to let go,” Sheri recalls, “but they promised to let us operate as a wholly run subsidiary and they have kept their word.”
Reflections of Success
Sheri currently holds the title of Chief Design Officer at Jibbitz, but will always choose to define herself first and foremost as a mom. As many of us do, she admits to reviewing every night when she finally gets to bed the family/work scale. Is it tipped too far in one direction or the other? She appreciates her own mom’s advice: “Sheri, the kids have perfected the guilt game. They are healthy, doing great in school and they love Jibbitz so don’t let it get to you.” And then there is the peer factor: “I think it is really cool and my friends really like it because they get free Jibbitz all the time from me,” remarks her daughter Lexie. Sheri knows they feel tremendously proud of what they helped to create and this too eases most of the worry she
feels about her packed schedule.
The Schmelzers still live in the same home and her children attend the same schools as they did “pre-Jibbitz.” The only thing that has changed is the number of people in her community that come up to her in places like the supermarket saying things like, “I saw you on Oprah” While Sheri confesses the media part of her job is still a challenge, she knows it is inevitable. “I spent about two weeks before the taping of Oprah freaking out and losing sleep but I knew I had to do it. When I finally got there and she said my name I felt like I needed an oxygen tank. I kept repeating to myself, ‘OK, walk. You remember how to walk, don’t you?’”
Advice—Make It Yours
Another byproduct of her success is the number of women who email her for advice. She gets anaverage of 20 emails a day from women looking to find out how to get their idea or product to the next level. She answers them all and her first piece of advice is this: Protect yourself and get a patent, copyright, or trademark. If you don’t, your idea is out there and it’s up for grabs. Sheri’s kids did not wear their decorated Crocs anywhere until this step was completed.
Secondly, you cannot let the decision-making process paralyze you into not making a move. “I could have sat around for weeks saying: I don’t know, should we or shouldn’t we?” says Sheri. As a very practical and organized woman, it wasn’t easy for Sheri to choose an uncertain path. Shewanted a guarantee from her business-minded husband that it would all work out. He reminded her of the many times in life where they didn’t have assurance of a positive outcome, like whether or not they were going to have a healthy baby every time Sheri was pregnant. You calculate this risk but know the payoff will be so rewarding that you proceed in spite of it.
“He was right,” says Sheri, “and this is something I realized sitting in the gazebo that night. You can’t always have certainty; sometimes you just need to jump. Close your eyes and take a leap of faith and hope that it all works out in the end.”
On the Net: www.jibbitz.com
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