Twenty years ago, a man stopped a 40-foot trailer on a busy New York City street and refused to move it for three days.
This one-man traffic jam wasn't working for a film crew or a utility company -- the only groups that the city normally allows to park there.
Kenneth Cole had come to sell shoes.
Cole, the head of Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc., spoke last night as part of a co-presentation by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and the Musser-Shoemaker Leadership Lecture Series, sharing with a packed Huntsman Hall auditorium his ideas about business, fashion and social issues.
At the beginning of his career, Cole said he immediately learned the importance of creativity in running a successful business.
"The best solution in business and in life is not always the most expensive, but is always the most creative," he said.
To get his shoes noticed, he decided to sell them outside of a shoe convention at a Manhattan hotel, instead of paying to join the 1,100 other companies competing for customers' attention inside.
In order to set up in front, the shoe designer changed the name of his company from Kenneth Cole to Kenneth Cole Productions and applied for a permit to film a movie entitled The Birth of a Shoe Company.
With cameras rolling -- often without film in them -- Cole parked his trailer outside of the Hilton and sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in less than three days.
To this day, his company is still named Kenneth Cole Productions to recognize the importance of innovation.
For Cole, creativity is also key to being fashionable.
"Every morning you wake up, you have a clean canvas and you can be anyone you want to be," he said. "It's an extraordinary opportunity we have to define ourselves."
Cole argued that fashion also plays a large role in how people perceive each other.
According to Cole, most daily interactions are superficial, noting all that people typically learn about each other is what they are wearing.
Because of this, he said, fashion is very important.
Still, Cole acknowledged that fashionable shoes and clothing are not necessities.
"Nobody needs what I sell," he said. "We want [these products]. My job is making you feel good about wanting them."
As a result, many of Cole's responsibilities revolve around advertisements, some of which have stirred up controversy.
In 1987, Cole's company ran a full page ad in The New York Times with a picture of a condom accompanied by the text "shoes aren't the only thing we encourage you to wear."
Similar ads have tackled topics ranging from gun control to homelessness to AIDS.
Cole said the purpose of these ads is not only to sell shoes but also to raise social awareness of important issues.
"We don't think of [our ads] as marketing," he said.
Audience members questioned whether or not Cole worried about his ads offending shareholders or customers.
The fashion guru said that as long as his shoes sell, he won't change his advertising policy.
"I might as well say [what I want] and feel good about it," he said.
Cole added, however, that before deciding to publicly take controversial stances, he "used to sit consciously on the fence no matter how [he] felt about an issue."
Students in attendance said they enjoyed Cole's speech.
"I'm a huge fan," first-year Wharton MBA student Maria Bolanos said. "There's character in the shoes I buy now."
"It was really impressive how he made a business case of all his charity," said Wharton sophomore Chenkay Li, a member of the Musser-Schoemaker Committee.
