Passion in a pair of shoes

M. Gautham Machaiah


Purchasing a pair of men’s shoes is not the most exciting of shopping experiences. Or so I thought until I walked into Ruosh, a retail store at Indiranagar, Bangalore.

I had wanted to buy a pair of smart boots for sometime and my search through upscale brands had drawn a blank. That is when the brightly lit Roush showroom caught my eye. Being extremely brand conscious, buying an unknown label was the last thing in mind when I strolled into the store out of plain curiosity.

At the door I was greeted by a young girl not with the standard sales pitch, “What are you looking for sir?, but with a rather unusual request, “Sir, if you have the time can I please tell you about our shoes?”

“Look at her passion,” I murmured to myself. I guess I had spoken a bit too soon. The girl pointed to a panel where the logo of the store was mounted and said, “Our store is called Ruosh, which in Sanskrit means passion. A lot of passion goes into the making of our shoes.”

As she took me through the store excitedly showing off various designs of shoes as if they were personally hand crafted by her, I smelt the distinct whiff of passion in the air. My unintended attempt to puncture her enthusiasm with my remark, “But I have never heard of this brand…” proved futile when the girl and her colleague put up a spirited defense.

“Ruosh is a Bangalore based company which supplies shoes to international brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Louis Phillipe. We have now decided to come out with our own chain of retain stores across the country and serve our customers directly,” they echoed as they went into a zealous speech on the company’s background, future plans and orientation to customers.

“Are you the promoters of the company? For how long have you been running this place?” I asked just to add to the conversation and was surprised to learn they were only the sales representatives. How often do we come across such passion and commitment?

No, this was not just another sales spiel, but an important management lesson worthy of emulation by large corporations usually filled with soulless employees.

This experience transported me back to a book I had read sometime ago, ‘The Art of the Start’ by Guy Kawasaki, which speaks of creating a mantra for the organisation. A mantra is a guideline for the employees as against a tagline which is aimed at the customers.

For instance, Nike’s mantra is “Authentic Athletic Performance,” while its tagline is “Just do it.” Thus, every employee in Nike from the receptionist to the CEO is aware that the purpose of his existence in the company is to create “Authentic Athletic Performance”.

Now, contrast this with the mission statement of Coca-Cola: “The Coco-Cola Company exists to benefit and refresh everyone it touches.” Would this not have been more powerful had the company adopted a simple mantra like “Refresh the world”?

The author gives another example of March of Dimes, whose mission statement is: “March of Dimes researchers, volunteers, educators, outreach workers and advocates work together to give all babies a fighting chance against the threats to their health, prematurity, birth defects and low birth weight.” Compare this with the hypothetical mantra Guy Kawasaki has evolved: “Save babies.” Which of these have a greater impact?

This is exactly what Ruosh did. Knowingly or unknowingly it created a mantra called passion, which then got ingrained in every employee from the topmost to the lowest level. This is why their shoes are not a mere product, but as a work of passion.

In the end of the day, I bought their shoes because I loved them. But I loved their passion more.