A Scottish entrepreneur whose footcare products have been picked up by Boots and Superdrug has signed a deal with a New York sales agent for distribution in the United States.
Laura Birrell said she will be able to take on her first four staff by the end of the year on the back of the success of a North American trip that also saw negotiations open with a Canadian distributor.
It is hoped the US move, assisted by Business Gateway Lanarkshire, will put the products into a market of a different scale while plans to further expand, in the Asian market, are also under way.
Ms Birrell said the new partner distribution agency is linked to the massive American home shopping network as well as Walmart and Walgreens.
She declared: "We’ve had good confirmed interest going forward for 2019.
"Some of the major retailers have over 10,000 stores, and because of the price of the product you need to have scale for it to really turn a profit.
"Every market I would want to be in was covered and every single one of them was interested in taking it forward."
Ms Birrell said: "I was meeting with major retailers but also companies that sell into hotels, airport shops and college stores, which is a massive market, and into army and navy stores."
Asia is also interested.
She said: “I’ve already had offers to license my product into Asia but I kind of want to do that at my own pace, so I have started to look at doing that in the first quarter of next year and explore that market but we will go into ourselves rather that somebody taking the license for it."
Ms Birrell said figures are not yet publicly available under the agreement covering Sticky Heelz and Hillington-based investment partner Wilson Imports.
he said: “We have run the business quite lean and there has been a lot of costs in terms of property development and intellectual property costs but we are starting to turn on that and we‘re planning to be profitable by the end of the year."
Ms Birrell is able to call on her business partner's staff for assistance "as and when I need it on finance, distribution, graphics, and marketing".
She said: "Everything is outsourced and that’s how we managed to keep our costs low but as we expand and in the American market we will be looking to employee people .
"We are looking to have three or four people by the end of this year just based on the opportunities that I secured from that American trip."
Having earlier secured private investment from Wilson Imports last year, the 48-year-old who launched Sticky Heelz in 2015 believes the targeted sales and marketing campaign by US partner will see her products on the shelves of leading American stores by the end of the year.
She said that "already Sonja Morgan of The Real Housewives of New York has contacted me asking to test my range".
"Her endorsement would significantly raise the profile of Sticky Heelz with our target market in the US.”
About 20,000 units of the £6.99 and £9.99 footcare products have also been shipped across the Atlantic in advance of an American e-commerce website going live later this month.
A television advert featuring an endorsement from Shark Tank entrepreneur Kevin Harrington will also be aired on the E! Entertainment channel.
The heel and sole products help fitting but do so by attaching the foot to the shoe with Velcro-style strips.
She said: "My customers maybe have half shoe-size feet, they’ve got narrow feet, they’ve got low feet.
"In America they were asking for gender neutral version and we’ve started to do that."
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