Unisa & the design process
Boot design for DSW was a rewarding process. We’d travel to DSW headquarters in Ohio to meet with the stakeholders and the sales team to work on the initial concepts. Once concepts were sketched, we would fly to Italy to work on the technical drawings, while also shopping the latest color and materials to utilize.
I had the pleasure and challenge of designing for the Unisa woman for several years. Our team brought sales upward of $30 million. My cross team collaboration matched with my project management skills made for a winning solution for both Marc Fisher Footwear and DSW. My daily workload varied each day: from calls with China to approve material substitutions, approving production samples, designing a from scratch makeup line for the customer, to fitting samples on the models.
I empathetically designed for the end user = the Unisa woman, by using new trendy materials and colors, for the comfort dress pumps and wide width boots that our customer was always in search of.
Below are some examples of Unisa boots that had impressive sell-through numbers.
Unisa Saromi
Black Saromi boot worn by Daily Kongfidance
Unisa Praline
Black casual vegan leather bootie. Photo unknown source.
Unisa Jaydi
Off-white vegan snake over the knee boot. Photo via The Saved Collection.