- May 2, 2024
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Panache Shoes opened with a ‘$39.99 or less’ sales model. This March, the company hit three years in business.
Mother-daughter entrepreneurs Christine Rosen and Jodi Lass preach a back-to-basics business approach.
After the bottom fell out of the housing market, Lass left her job as a mortgage broker and in 2009 opened Panache Shoes with her mom, in Palm Coast’s City Marketplace.
But for the first few weeks, the two were biting their nails. Their storefront wasn’t exposed to Cypress Point Parkway and, with a fancy hutch nestled in the front window, housing high heels and flats, no customers were coming in. They figured people thought the place was “too high-end.”
So they hung a sign in the window: “Everything in store $39.99 or less.” It had always been the policy but now was in the forefront. And interest began to grow.
To Rosen, the sign was the store’s “magic bullet.”
About a year later, Panache moved to European Village, where it still offers shoes as low as $9.99, but also some as pricey as $160.
“If we didn’t start there, we wouldn’t be here,” Rosen said, sitting on one of a few couches in the center of the store. Beneath her is an ornate throw rug; above, chandeliers.
The store has a boutique atmosphere: clean, bright, colorful. But to its owners, words like that are nothing but padding separating the everyday shopper from the store owner.
Panache Shoes. No wordplay there. Reflected in the name’s simplicity is a philosophy echoed often by its co-owners, who constantly return to themes of warmth, friendliness and old-time business values.
“We want to bring that concept back,” Rosen said, citing her youth, when instead of malls there were specialty shops filled with bootstrap-type entrepreneurs who really cared about their customers.
In a city filled with chains and big-box stores, Panache is a lone mom-and-pop. For Rosen, that’s its edge.
“We’ve gone through our own hard times in life and we know what’s it’s like to be at the bottom,” Lass added. That’s why they donate shoes to battered women’s shelters and help nonprofits like the United Way and Second Chance Rescue.
It’s also why Lass is so quick to rally behind new entrepreneurship.
“There are a lot of people who are scared of opening businesses,” she said. “We’re trying to show that you have to take that chance. The more businesses that open here in Flagler County, the more jobs are going to be available here.”
It’s an awakening she says she’s beginning to see already — at least in European Village, where Farley’s Irish Pub just opened and the city has launched a new concert series.
“I think the worst is over,” Lass said. “This town just needs good positive reinforcement.”
Piggybacking off the back-to-basics mantra is a push toward carrying more American-made goods. About half of the store’s current customers, they estimate, won’t buy a shoe if it was not made in America, so Lass and Rosen have increased their American stock up to about 50% of their total inventory.
Panache also serves as an incubator to a handful of smaller businesses, like handbag painters and jewelry makers, who stock their inventory there for a commission on the item’s sale.
For the first two years, Panache was in business, its owners made no money. Every dollar brought in went straight back into new shoe orders. But now profits are being turned. Their surrounding complex is looking up. And, in the back, about $100,000 worth of inventory is stocked for the future.
Rosen taps the couch and nods to the store. “And this is — seriously —” she said, “all from City Marketplace, when we had nothing.”
