The Two Shoe Salesmen (The Rest of the Story)

One of the most famous motivational stories on the entrepreneurial lecture circuit is that of the two salesmen from competing companies who are sent to a foreign country to assess the market for shoes.

Salesman One scouts around for a few days and then goes to the telegraph office to contact company headquarters. He writes: "Research complete. Unmitigated disaster. Nobody here wears shoes."

Likewise, Salesman Two does his research and heads for the same telegraph office. Once there, he composes the following: "Research complete. Glorious opportunity! Nobody here wears shoes."

The point, of course, is that Salesman Two is the real entrepreneur, the person who sees opportunity where none exists. It's a story designed to motivate us all to see potential and to turn obstacles into opportunities.

What you probably don’t know is that late last year, a librarian at the British Museum found a short manuscript in a forgotten file buried in the basement. It turns out that the story of the two shoe salesman was more than myth.

Last week I had a chance to read a copy of the manuscript sent me by a friend who works at the Museum. Here is a quick summary of part two to this classic story, as written by a daughter of one of the salesmen.

Salesman One returned on the next steamer to London. He was an aggressive young man who had saved the company from a disastrous venture in a terrible market. His reward was to oversee the newly-formed sales territory in France, a large territory that included Paris. Salesman One went on to build a wonderful, booming business in ladies’ dress shoes. He became wealthy and comfortable, mentoring dozens of young executives. A fixture on the Parisian social circuit, he met and married a French heiress. Though wealthy enough to have retired then, he never lost his love of selling shoes, only concluding his career well into his 70s shortly after the start of WWII.

Salesman Two built an office and warehouse in that far off land, ordered a boatload of shoes from his home office, and trained a team of hard-charging local salesmen. He estimated the sale of 15,000 pairs of shoes in his first year of business. The home office was ecstatic that they had such an aggressive and far-seeing entrepreneur on their team.

The end of the first year came and Salesman Two and his team had sold less than 100 pairs of shoes. The home office ordered expense cuts. Threats of abandoning the market were made. The local staff, not having made budget once, was anxious and sometimes depressed. Aggressive, optimistic Salesman Two could but conclude one thing: He had made a serious mistake. This was, indeed, the worst market in the world for shoes.

Wait, I'm thinking?! This is supposed to be a story about hope and seeing the possibility and being entrepreneurial. This was more like real life. What happened?

Since the time of these two salesmen, of course, we have learned two important things about successful entrepreneurs: They innovate, and they persevere. And when they don’t innovate, they still persevere. That’s the reason that investors will tell you they’d rather back an average business plan with a great team than vice versa.

In any case, I picked up the manuscript and kept reading:

Salesman Two had not met his first year forecast, but, after a year of intensive marketing, he knew more about the market than any person alive. For example, he knew that some of his potential buyers liked the idea of protecting their feet but felt hot and silly in shoes. So he imported a small number of sandals to test.

Salesman Two had also concluded that some large part of his market would likely never wear shoes, at least in his lifetime. But they all still hurt their feet occasionally on rocks and debris. So, he found a lotion made by a German firm that, applied to the soles, toughened them up. He imported cases of it.

Finally, Salesman Two discovered that most everyone, shoes or not, walked long distances during the day. All got hot and many got sunburned. So, he imported a line of wide-brimmed straw hats and walking sticks.

Meanwhile, he continued to send encouraging messages to the home office, never giving up, and managed to secure funds to continue.

The hats were an immediate sensation. The sandals did less well, but gained a niche following. So, too, the walking sticks. Salesman Two could not keep enough of the lotion in stock. In year 2 he sold 1,000 pairs of shoes—still a small number, but better than his volume in year one. (Were he raising money, I thought, the lead slide in his PowerPoint would show a 10X increase in volume.)

Year 2 was breakeven. Year 3 better. After seven long years of hard work, trial and error, sleepness nights, staff turnover and one ulcer, Salesman Two purchased the local business from his company, which never had sold many shoes in the market and had come to consider him something of a distraction. He had an asset that, at least on paper, could make him a millionaire. And he had become a celebrity in his adopted country, with a radio ad jingle called Saving the Soles of His People that became a national hit.

Now we were back to having a pretty decent motivational story. It wasn't quite what I had expected, though. None of that doe-eyed optimism and happily ever after stuff. In the entrepreneurial world, of course, there rarely is. Not never; lightening does strike, and the invisible market--the one that only you see--becomes a reality. It just happens less often than the motivational stories suggest. It's far more common that the right product in the perfect market is a multi-year odyssey of trail and error, constant adjustment, and endless perseverance. And in the end, it turns out that the right product is a different product altogether. And the market is not perfect.

But wait--there was an Epilogue:

Sometime in the mid-1950s the two salesmen met, quite by accident, in London. Both in their eighties, they were introduced, somehow made the connection to that long ago time and place, and chuckled about it over a pint at a club just off Berkeley Square.

Salesman Two asked, “After you left the country and returned to Europe, did you enjoy your career?”

“Very much,” exclaimed Salesman One. “Life in Paris suited me well.”

They both laughed.

“How about you,” asked Salesman One. “Did you enjoy your career? You must have—I understand you became a celebrity.”

Salesman Two smiled. “I did enjoy it,” he said, “though not quite in the way you mean. Funny thing, I became so famous they even used to sing a song about me, an old jingle.”