There are a lot of designers of women's fashion boots who don't always make boots for their market. It's hard to keep the Isaac Mizrahi Saxton boot in stock because of its simple, elegant lines. There's only one explanation for why short classic Ugg Australia boots are hard to find in many women's sizes: they're unencumbered. People don't buy ornate boot designs. Any online boot dealer has those in all sizes. Basic models disappear so fast. What's with all these belts, buckles, fringe, odd toes, or fur pieces on boot models? What's the point of choking a perfectly good boot? How do these styles do? In a roundabout way, I learned the truth. My first job was at a surf-clothing company. The experience made me realize why some products sell out and others don't.
It always blew my mind when our main designer would design daffy styles that had no chance of selling. Many of them didn't. Our best-selling styles were always basic but elegant, so it didn't make sense to me. We sold a lot of black nylon surf trunks. Even though it had killer triple stitching and classic lines, it wasn't amazing. But the public sure loved it. There were thousands of them sold. As inventory manager, I saw what sold. A few hats couldn't move at one point. In addition to the simple black hat with a white logo, I suggested that the designer also design a simple black hat. He didn't like my idea. "It's boring," he said but eventually gave in. Eventually, the hat became our biggest seller.
Why do designers and manufacturers keep making things that don't sell? There are a lot of factors at play here. I think it's partly due to ego. Almost all artists have this trait, and so do boot, shoe, and clothing designers. This is especially true for high-end women's fashion boots. Like most creative people, boot designers just want to do what they want without too much concern for business. They're fabulous and it's about their art. Season after season, they have to top themselves. People don't care about what the public likes until the designer loses his job. Then everything changes.Artists and business people have a long-standing argument. Isaac Mizrahi is a great example of what happens when art and business butt heads. He mostly designed clothes, shoes, and boots for friends and models. Every six months he'd come up with something more wild and crazy. After a while, he got bored designing the style the public kept clamoring for, so he stopped producing it. His company and he lost steam in the end. Then he signed a new deal with Target and was reinvigorated. Now he designs for the masses and enjoys strong sales numbers for simple well-designed products.
It's probably ego in some cases, but the rest has to do with merchandising, marketing, branding, and retail store buying. Boot and shoe manufacturers want to get as many styles out there as possible. Hopefully, they'll get more merchandise in the stores by offering lots of different looks. To see what sticks, designers create as much as they can. At the end of the day, store buyers pick out what they think people will buy. We don't really know what'll sell, which is funny. Most of the time, they guess. Those styles sit on the racks if the store buyers guess wrong. There are still a lot of ugly women's boots available or going on sale soon.That's why Harley Davidson makes so many crap motorcycle boots for men and women. Harley's motorcycle boots are the weirdest and wildest. This is what makes their boots so popular. These gaudy models can't be sold. Harley also brands their boots louder than anyone else with huge logos on almost every style. Again, I find it funny that a Harley Davidson engineer boot is hard to find compared to the more outlandish models. As a result of all this, we can deduce that ego plays a small role in why women's fashion boots aren't more simple, but more of the reason lies in the marketing and branding practices of boot manufacturers and the buying efforts of retail store buyers.
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