Sole Proprietor
“We bought a pair of shoes, and every time we went back, we bought more,” she remembers. “And then, my friends and family would say, ‘Oh, bring me a pair.’”
Before Powell knew it, she had both feet in the shoe biz. She’d fill suitcases full of shoes in San Miguel and lug them to furniture markets with her mom all over the East Coast and South, selling them on the side. The momentum carried her through her years as a studio art major at the College. By the time Powell graduated, she had 300 wholesale accounts. But after a decade, during which the entrepreneur from the Florida Keys had moved to San Miguel to try to make a full-time go of it, she decided to pack it in.
“I hadn’t made a dime,” she says.
It was time to reassess. Powell took a breath, had a baby and decided to go back to school – this time to Savannah College of Art and Design to study shoe design. But she couldn’t shake the entrepreneurial bug.
“I wanted to do something for myself like my parents had, and I didn’t want to work for either of them,” she says.
She opened a store in Savannah, Ga., selling her own designs, and three months later, she moved the whole operation to Charleston. By 2019, Charleston Shoe Co. had 32 stores. Retail, it turns out, was her niche.
Looking back on her time at the College, Powell says having a liberal arts education set her up for success. “It taught me so many facets of business, arts and communications, allowing me to juggle all the challenges that I face today,” she says, recalling art professors Frank Cossa, Cliff Peacock and Michael Tyzack as her biggest inspirations. “They pushed me to be bold, which made my confidence soar and take big leaps like creating this business.”
Today, Powell lives on Isle of Palms with her 17-year-old daughter. With its headquarters and warehouse on Upper Meeting Street, Charleston Shoe Co. produces 10,000 pairs of shoes a week, made by a team of 80 cobblers in a factory run by the adult children of the original cobbler in Mexico. In addition to an online and wholesale business, she now has 26 stores nationwide, including in California and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, with three more slated to open this year. During Covid, she started the nonprofit Shoe Joy, which to date has provided $5 million worth of free shoes around the world through partner Soles4Souls. And, coming full circle, she regularly speaks to classes in the College’s entrepreneurship program.
For Powell, one of the most satisfying aspects of running a successful business is nurturing her employees, many of whom have graduated from the College. Four of them have been with her from the beginning, starting when they were freshmen, and now each runs a division of the company.
“They’re passionate about everything they do,” says Powell, “because they feel like they’ve essentially helped me grow this business, which they have.”