Birdies CEO and Co-Founder Bianca Gates joins Cheddar News' Alicia Nieves on a Walk and Talk through Central Park to discuss how Birdies is breaking into the sneaker category, launching part two of its 'What Are You Running' campaign, and plans to expand internationally in the future.

Opening Bell

The Walk and Talk With Birdies CEO

if you've been on social media the past few months, you've probably heard of something called the Hot girl walk, not familiar with the term? Well it's pretty simple. You put on your favorite playlist or podcast or on your favorite outfit that makes you feel strong and you hit the street. The purpose of the walk is to make you feel empowered and confident. But we are taking it a step further interviewing C. E. O. S powerful leaders and impactful influences along our walks. I recently caught up with Bianca Gates Ceo and co founder of Birdies in Central Park and Birdies is a woman run woman founded footwear business that just launched its second phase of what's what's your running campaign here? Take a look at our hot girl walk or walk and talk. Since our inception, we've expanded to create other shoes that are equally as comfortable and stylish. We heard our customers asking for us to make more shoes like that, but for outside of the home and during the pandemic we saw many women just going for long walks outside and wanting to look cute and we in fact, you know what, maybe we should expand our assortment to include some lace up sneakers, which we just launched, but we wanted to make sure that we didn't confuse the customer um and selling her like performance sneakers or athletic sneakers. These are really sneakers meant to look and feel amazing when you're wearing a great fashionable outfit. Um so when we thought about how we bring these to life for the consumer, we came up with this concept instead of where are you running? What are you running featuring prominent women who are running amazing parts of their lives and we wanted to feature them. So we featured three amazing women in the spring um and now as we shift into the fall, I'm very passionate about women and money managing your money, my language, spending money, how to invest your money, and so we thought what a great way to feature somebody who is super knowledgeable about wealth and females. Um and so we were connected with um Haley Sachs who is mrs dow jones on instagram and she's amazing, she calls herself the uh financial pop star, so it's like really fun, really a creative way to educate women on finances and we are featuring her this fall in our campaign and we're thrilled. That's so phenomenal that you mentioned the launch of those first ever sneakers, which if we take a pan down really quickly, I'll kind of like model here, but essentially Bernie's is launching its first ever lace up sneakers other than the fact that the first ever lace up break down, what makes these so different and why you decided to jump into the sneaker cat. Okay, remember that feeling you just had when you were putting these on, it was like your elevated your lifted up, you feel like you're wearing a heel, you feel taller, you feel stronger, you feel the arch support with more comfort and they look really retro and cool and funky, but I think one of the things that women do love about high heels or wedges that you're elevated, your ankles look more elongated, you just feel a little bit more powerful and so we wanted to make sure that inside the birdie sneaker, we had that elevation available for women and it's just been incredible to see these sell out so quickly december of 2020 you jumped on this show, different time, a completely different time. We were in the thick of the pandemic. What has changed from then till now in terms of growth for birdies, obviously we're in a post pandemic world, thank goodness, we're able to hang out in Central Park and not be six ft of harm from each other and masked in this heat. Listen, I mean, I think in december 2020 when I was on your show, we were thinking maybe we were close to the end, vaccines were going to be coming out soon and we thought, okay hallelujah, we're out of this. Um, and the reality for birdies, it was like just the beginning of another wave of bad news for us, our global manufacturing partner who we had worked with for years, filed for bankruptcy in the middle of 2021 um and they were partners for design for manufacturing for production and we were just like, wow more bad news for us, what do we do? Um but as women do, we persevere, we fight through it. And we thought we were gonna go factory direct, we're going to start to work with the factories directly. We're gonna hire our own designers and we're going to build this company um directly, which honestly has been a huge benefit because not only are we able to turn our shoes faster, but we've improved our margins significantly, And since 2020 birdies has doubled its business. We're gonna do over $50 million us has a $78 billion dollar industry when it comes to footwear more broadly, there's a lot of competition there. What makes birdies stand out. It's a good question. You know, I think for us we started really niche and we really did try to solve a problem which is what to wear when you're home entertaining friends and family, people no longer like to wear their outdoor shoes inside and they certainly don't want to wear their pajamas slippers when they're entertaining friends and family. And so I think we really did solve a problem for women in the footwear market and we started to gain trust from our customers that our shoes were really comfortable. They were really made with high quality. We put a lot of thought and effort into how we were creating this sort of like hybrid shoe, this indoor outdoor entertaining slipper. And I think that cut on, we gained the trust of our customers and they started to ask us for more, They wanted different materials, something more breathable for the summer months. They wanted other silhouettes, they wanted slides and so we've been following our customer versus trying to jam in something that they just don't need. And I think that has separated us a lot. I think the other thing is we have built a phenomenal community community of women who love our shoes and they love one another and we have always been mission driven at birdies. We believe in lifting up all women and so we're not afraid to tackle, you know, harder conversations on social media as it relates to women. Um, and we also like to have a lot of fun with our brand as you'll see our personality on instagram. I mean birdy is a person, she's arm, you, She's a badass, she's smart, ambitious, she's the life of the party, she throws a mean dinner party at home and you kind of just want to hang out with her and see what she has to say in the good times and in the hard times, she's not afraid to lean into those conversations. Birdies is a young company still, you guys grown so much, but there's a ton of growth ahead of you. What do you see for the future of birdies in the next 5, 10 years. Well I think we've learned that we want to stay very focused on what we are learning to become even better at which is footwear. And so we want to double down in footwear. Stay focused there. We have a big opportunity domestically and so we're really focused on growing our brand here in the United States, but in the next few years we have aspirations to expand internationally and so hopefully in the next few years you'll see us in many countries. And that was my walking talk with Bianca Gates Ceo and co founder of Birdies.