Riding in Someone Else’s Wake

Do you wish you were the guys who came up with the idea for the Crocs shoe phenomenon? They weren’t the only ones to hit big with the ugly, but comfy footwear. Sheri Schmelzer, a stay at home mom from Colorado, had an idea to decorate her kid’s Crocs using the holes to her advantage. Soon her creative idea became a business.
From Fortune Small Business:

There are 26 million pairs of Crocs in the world, more than 80 percent of them speckled by holes, and many of those shoes are on the feet of accessory-friendly youth. Jibbitz, as the charms (and the company) came to be known, can be anything — peace signs, flowers, you name it — to please a demographic eager for variety.
Within weeks, the Schmelzers set up a website for sales. By the end of the summer, they were funded by home equity, with their parents working the assembly line in the basement.

A little over a year later they sold their business to Crocs for $10 million and an additional $10 million earn-out if they hit their earnings targets as a subsidiary of Crocs.
Why didn’t I think of that!!
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