Huie: I contemplated it seriously but I came to the conclusion it didn’t make sense for me.Īdams: Why turn down all that free publicity? They asked if I’d be interested in appearing on the show and they had a list of financials they wanted me to provide.Īdams: How did you react to the invitation? In 2015, “Shark Tank” approached the PR firm. I used my SBA loan to pay the $3,000-$4,000 a month. I was trying to make a paradigm shift in the way people think about compression socks and I needed a PR firm to help tell that story. Huie: I know it’s crazy but I hired a PR agency when I launched. Huie: Easily 14-16 hours a day, between my job and my business.Īdams: How did you get an invitation from “Shark Tank?” Now I have more than 20 sales reps who make a 10%-12% commission on the wholesale price.Īdams: How many hours a day did you spend working? On weekends, I’d drive to different towns and walk into random stores with samples. Huie: I cold-called retailers during three-hour drives from Missoula to Bozeman. In direct-to-consumer retail there was too much education that had to go into the product.Īdams: How did you get the business off the ground? Huie: To focus on retail stores-women’s boutiques, gift shops, travel stores, maternity stores. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, she talks about building her company and why she didn’t want to pitch it to the sharks. She has 16 employees in Montana and expects $3 million in revenue this year. Though she sells the socks on Amazon and on her website, her focus has been small retail stores. Aside from a $100,000 loan from the Small Business Association, she bootstrapped the company. Until three months ago, she ran VIM & VIGR while holding down her full-time job. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Kellogg School of Management, she was working as a pharmaceutical sales rep in Missoula, where she moved to be with her romantic partner, a professor at the University of Montana, when she got the idea for her startup. Her three-year-old business, based in Missoula, Montana, makes $33 compression socks in brightly colored stripes, argyle and flower patterns. But Michelle Huie, 37, founder and CEO of VIM & VIGR, turned down an invitation to apply. Most fans of “Shark Tank” assume that entrepreneurs are clamoring to appear on the hit business pitch show.
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