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It’s a familiar story, businessman walks away from successful career to pursue a passion in an unrelated field. In this case Ivo Staiano walked away from 15 years as a successful restauranteur to start a passion project based on giving. He's building a community around an everyday product that also gives back, that product being flip flops.
Ivo is the founder of FlyingFlips; a Vancouver company selling unique, artist-designed, limited edition flip flops. FlyingFlips has created an online platform and is building a community of graphic designers to supply beautiful artwork for flip flops. Customers and the FlyingFlips community then vote on which pairs will be manufactured and sold. Being good global citizens, the boys at FlyingFlips will then donate a pair of flip flops to a person in need for every pair purchased, through their partnership with two main charities. As well, they give a portion of every sale to the artists whose designs they sell.
Flip flops in Vancouver you say! As Ivo describes, flip flops are about down time and have a laid back, fun vibe. A true Vancouverite probably appreciates the sun more than anyone, and knows how to kick back, so really, it is a good match.
Over poached eggs at Nelson the Seagull, Ivo and I discussed doing good, one flip flop at a time.
Jessica McIlroy: I noticed you are originally from California, do you consider yourself a Vancouverite now?
Ivo Staiano: Definitely, I realised that a long time ago. If I had to choose between the two countries, I’m definitely more Canadian at heart. I think we are living "the American dream" more up here. The perfect combination of civility and politeness, blended culture, and having any opportunity available.
JM: What is your professional background?
IS: Restaurants. I had moved from server to bartender and managing a little. I didn’t like the lifestyle of easy money and late nights so it was either going to be get out of the industry completely, or open my own place. So I opened my own place when I was 23 and just threw myself into it. It was pretty successful, and then there was another place, and another place; and I did that for 15 years. I just got out of my 3rd restaurant last year to start FlyingFlips.
JM: What made you do that switch?
IS: I sat down and thought about what I want the next chapter of my life to be, and for me that was doing something that had a philanthropic component. Something where I would be working with creativity and artists. Something online so it has the potential to grow without limit. So something that has no real ceiling and is more about how hard you want to work. Also something that allows me to travel, going to some of the developing communities we are looking to work with.
JM: So how did you make the product selection, why flip flops?
IS: It was a bit of an epiphany. I recognised I like the buy one, give one model. I specifically like the idea of working with an everyday item that everyone can get benefit from. I know what TOMS does with their canvas shoes is amasing, and they have been successful with getting their message out. Honestly, I like flip flops because they are a little bit more of a fun product.
JM: You assume beach...
IS: You do, you think beach, backyard barbecues, travel memories. The way I see it, you put on your flip flops for your personal time, and I’ve always wanted to be connected to people in that regard. Restaurants for me were the same. People choosing to spend their personal and social time in my restaurant was always a huge compliment. And as we are getting less and less of that time, it is more and more of a compliment.
As far as the donation model, TOMS are great at what they do. They are a full canvas shoe, so they don't necessarily work well in a wet climate, walking through mud, etc. So something that is natural rubber and basically bulletproof, I felt it was a good alternate option; for consumers as well as the people receiving the donated pair.
Photo: courtesy Flying Flips
JM: Was the added connection of the graphic art community always in your mind as well?
IS: Yes. I really like the crowd-sourcing model and how the community can voice what they want the product to be, and even the company to be! For the people to effectively have a say in the direction of the company, and we make what they ask for. I'd even like to eventually expand on our charity outreaches and have input from the community on what that would be. I love that about the internet! So the idea of doing crowd-sourcing, and the concept of limited edition designs where people may even want to collect them or get a full series, or just support a different artist that you love. That was another component that I loved, profit sharing with the artist community and having them involved.
JM: Have you gotten response from artists?
IS: We’ve had a fantastic response. We probably have close to 200 artists now that are involved. A lot of local artists, and some as far away as Brazil and Australia. Plus we have lots from the West Coast and surf artists from Hawaii and California.
JM: And are their designs being manufactured and sold now?
IS: We are starting to vote on them and because this is our first season we have about a half dozen designs available for sale to start, and we are beginning to see what ones are really popular. Because we are still in beta, we want to see what systems work, what people want. One thing we recognised is that we are selling the idea of having 150 great designs to vote on, so the more designs we can offer for purchase the better. What we’ve been limited with is manufacturing in small batches. So we are looking at technology now to do on-demand printing.
JM: Are there printing capabilities to do that with rubber flip flops?
IS: There are. They are using the technology with T-shirts now, a lot of graphic design shirts are using this process to do small batches. It’s very effective. I want the ability for people to say, out of these hundred designs, I like this one, and this one, and that one!
JM: That custom aspect.
IS: Yes, exactly. What we are finding is that we’re giving people a lot of eye candy so we need to be able to give them the same amount of selection to purchase.
JM: Do you think you’ll always be an online business?
IS: Our wish would be to stay online to keep prices down, and we aren’t convinced that we can’t achieve a high level of exposure just being online. Especially with how much more people are shopping online. And flip flop sizing is forgiving so it works well to buy online.
JM: Do you see any other products in your future?
IS: Right now I want to put all of our efforts and energy into flip flops, get good at the product, the designs, and our network. Down the road, yes, I like the idea of crowd-sourcing designs and using them on other personalized products. But one thing that’s not really being done is limited edition, artist designed flip flops, and we want to have the market in that. If somebody wants to buy a fantastic, unique pair of flip flops, we will be the place to go to. That’s my vision. There's still a lot of sky and road ahead that we need to fill up to get to where I want to go.
You can connect with Ivo (@flippinfounder) and FlyingFlips (@FlyingFlips) on twitter and vote on designs and purchase flip flops on their website.
