Sydney designer Kari Maitz is taking a brave step forward with the first showing of her children’s shoe label Minime at the Australian Shoe Fair this month. She spoke to Kate McDonald about putting the mini into me.
Kari Maitz admits preparing for her first trade show is one of the most daunting things she’s ever done, but it’s all for a good cause.
Maitz is launching her children’s fashion footwear range Minime Sydney at the Australian Shoe Fair in Melbourne later this month, and while recruiting stockists and making sales is obviously a priority, what she really wants to do is change the way that parents put shoes on their children’s feet.
As any parent knows, children’s feet are incredibly delicate and require both good support and enough space to grow. Many shoes on the market, however, particularly at the lower end of the price range, are plastic concoctions that do little to allow children’s feet to breathe, and oftentimes fashion is forgotten in the hunt for low prices.
Maitz, who has a background in fine arts but no shoe-making experience to speak of, has decided to do something about it. She has been designing shoes – among other things – for her friends and family for about three years, but has been a bit reluctant to launch herself in a commercial sense.
That has changed now. Encouragement from those same friends and family has seen her get together a summer collection that she will show at the fair, consisting of a range of fashionable sandals, espadrilles and loafers aimed at children in the two to five-year age bracket, or sizes 24 to 30.
“For these shoes, the price range will be from $50 to $60,” Maitz says. “I’m trying to make sure that everybody can have a beautiful, comfortable shoe, not just the wealthy.”
Minime espadrilles have been designed to be as comfortable as possible but also with a mix and match element, she says. The espadrille comes in either neutral beige or hot pink, but both allow wearers to change the ribbon colour, always fun for the kiddies.
“Kids don’t always want to wear the same thing, and some parents are very price conscious in the sense that they only want to go with one or two pairs of shoes a season, so with this you can change it around and it doesn’t cost any more money.”
When Maitz started her business – she got the idea for the name after seeing the model Kate Moss photographed with her daughter and thinking “My God, it’s Mini-Me!” – she undertook a rigorous research project to learn as much as she could about shoe making and design.
“I Googled absolutely everything,” she says. “I learned about uppers and lowers, I spoke to a shoe designer and got lots of information from him. And I spoke to paediatric doctors and podiatrists. It’s important that kids have a flat sole, that they can develop their arch without any issues or any involvement from an unnatural heel.
“And it was just a passion for kids’ fashion really, and to find something that was fun for them to wear that wouldn’t encase their whole foot.”
What Maitz has come up with is a fashionable range predominantly made from natural materials such as leather and linen, for boys and girls. They are modelled on adult shoes in a fashion sense – both boys and girls of this age take a great deal of delight in wearing their parents’ shoes.
“The kids love it because it’s like their mother’s or their father’s, or even their grandfather’s, depending on how groovy their granddad is.”
A potential stumbling block to a commercial launch was the inability to find a manufacturer here in Australia to make children’s shoes at the right price. Maitz approached a number of local manufacturers but found the cost too high.
“They can’t make [shoes at a price] that is available for everybody. They can make it for $120 a shoe, but I can’t sell it for $120 and neither do I want to.”
She found a manufacturer in Indonesia willing to do small volumes, but insists on trying to source as much of the raw materials from Australia. For leather, she mainly sources from NSW Leather, based in Sydney’s Alexandria, which she says has a huge array of high quality product and can make it in any colour she wants.
For linens, she sources online through a company called Thread the Needle and also from fabric retailer No Chintz.
Maitz has two stockists at the moment, both in the northern beaches suburb of Avalon. She has just delivered her summer range to her prime stockist, I Am Kids, and also stocks a furniture store called Beachwood that shows local designers.
Now for the big step – feedback from the trade. “I’m pretty nervous but it’s going to be fun at the end of the day,” she says. “I’d like some people to take the shoes on and start selling them, but also to see what the competition is and whether we can change the way parents are putting shoes on their children’s feet.”