the shining
Wealth Creator Magazine / youngentrepreneur Journalist: Jonathan Jackson (Editor)

November/December 2006

Kicking off our new series of young entrepreneurs and upstart businesses is Kate Kay, who is leading a revolution in shoe shine and picking up a few business tips from clientele along the way.

It is big business overseas. From London, to Paris, to New York, the shoe-shine business is one that brings all people from all walks of life to the shiner’s office, whether that be the foyer of a hotel, the train station platform or the airport concourse. Shoe shine is small business with big ideas, and the beauty is that big business tends to share bigger ideas.

Or so Kate Kay has found. Kate has recently started the business Shine shoe shine in Melbourne and is attracting the town’s top end business doyens whilst learning a great deal about running a business from them.

The clientele she saw queue up to have their shoes shined around London where she lived for two years, inspired Kate to start her own business. However it took some time for the idea to become reality.

First a move back to Australia was in order. She had studied linguistics, found a job as an interpreter, then had two children and it seemed the inspiration was starting to pass her by. However, Kate had wanted to own her own business since childhood and one night she decided to follow her dreams.

“I was studying to be an interpreter but I had had a baby. So I put that on hold. Then essentially in the middle of the night last year, I thought that’s it, I want to start my own business,” says Kate.

Kate awoke the next morning, invented a business name and registered the business. She then made contact with shoe care companies for supply and struck a hand-shake deal with Waproo. It was then she decided to base herself at the Rialto Towers. “I wanted to work at the Rialto and target the market there, despite people saying to me I should start somewhere smaller. But I didn’t think that was the case and I knew someone who worked for St Martins Properties, who owns half the Rialto Towers building. I had a meeting with the owners and John Apps, the boss of St Martins, gave me some good advice when hetold me it was all about looking after the tenants. Now he’s one of my biggest supporters.”

Kate funded the business herself which hurt, but she says she couldn’t deny herself. “I just didn’t want to live life by accident. I couldn’t understand why this huge business – because it’s huge overseas – hadn’t been brought here.” Originally the business was just going to be in-house. “I wasn’t going to be in a fixed location, but I had the opportunity to be in the Rialto, so that’s when I decided to turn it into a three-tiered business.” Meaning Kate was supplying three services after just two weeks: in-house service, pick up and delivery and the walk-in.

“I had an immediate clientele and the most common remark I heard was ‘I get my shoes shined overseas all the time, but I just don’t do it here because there is no one here that does it.”

The idea to start a three-tier business model was inspired by the time-poor people who just couldn’t leave their offices. “People don’t have the chance to sit in a chair, seven minutes is a long time, so I started the pick up and delivery straight away.”