Mari & Matt McNamara
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Mari & Matt McNamara is an American entrepreneur. Mari started No Cold Feet LLC in 2016 and is based in Chicago, IL.[1]
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Mari & Matt McNamara, founder of No Cold Feet LLCCareer
Early Career
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No Cold Feet LLC
Mari started No Cold Feet LLC in 2016. They detail the beginnings of their company in their Starter Story interview: [1]
Q: How did you get started on No Cold Feet LLC?
During college, I (Matt) became enamored with startups, entrepreneurship, technology, and the idea of working for a company that combined all three of these. I ended up with a degree in advertising and anticipated working in that industry where people commonly job hop from one agency to another every couple of years.
I left college with somewhere north of $75k in student loans which largely meant a job at an early stage startup was out of the question. I ended up at a 90-year-old manufacturing company as a Marketing Coordinator where I have thrived there largely in part to an amazing manager and the nature of a small company where you can wear as many hats as you put on.
In hindsight, this was an incredible opportunity for me and largely what allowed my wife and me to successfully launch No Cold Feet. On the professional side, I gained experience in marketing, sales, e-commerce, product development, manufacturing abroad, hiring, and so many other skills that ultimately fed into operating our business. On the personal side, the stability of the company, some early promotions and raises, and living at home for three years allowed me to significantly pay down my student loans, buy a car, and save for an engagement ring...
Fast forward to 2015 and Mari and I got married in November of that year. At the time I saw a trend of grooms having their groomsmen wear brightly colored, and often matching, socks. I think 3 of the 4 weddings I stood in prior to our own wedding I was given socks as part of the groomsman gift. In the scheme of the wedding, the groom often has little decision-making power over most aspects of the event and, while not fully the case for myself, I decided we’d be doing matching socks in the color of my choosing.
The next step was deciding which pair and finding a place to buy them. I settled on a bright green pair from Express but finding a single store to buy the 8 or so pairs I needed to be proved surprisingly difficult. I learned that depending on the brand/store, it was often hard to find the same pair in those quantities. Worse yet was the price because even with coupons and a sale the best price you could get to was $10 per pair (maybe $9 if it was on clearance or something). This felt expensive for buying simple socks in bulk. Fun socks in stylish designs/colors/patterns were starting to become a thing around this time and they were sold between $12 and $21 per pair. I thought I could do better by offering fun designs in a multitude of colors and combining that with bulk discounting. The only validation was researching how common having groomsmen wearing custom socks was and what it would cost to manufacture an initial run of our socks to see if the numbers would work.
For about a year I sat on the idea, often returning to it when I was daydreaming and eventually Mari must’ve gotten annoyed with me claiming I could do this and she more or less said shut up and do it already. With our combined finances, we had paid off my student loans, saved a bit of money, and were at a good point to start something on the side.
Source [1]
References
Contributors
Contributors to this article:
- Pat Walls, Founder @ Starter Story
- Wiki Updater
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