The louboutin shoes flew out the door

Riding the momentum of his hugely successful women's footwear business, Michael Kors stepped into kids' for spring '06 with a focused, six-style sandal collection for girls that is being carried by more than 150 independents, as well as majors such as Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. Schwartz & Benjamin, which holds the master footwear license for the Michael Kors brand, has sublicensed the kids' line to Synclaire Brands, an affiliate of Hicksville, N.Y.-based BCNY, a company with more than 15 years of experience in the children's market.

"We created Synclaire [in 2010] because we identified an opportunity to do kids' footwear at a branded level that's just not being done," said Evan Cagner, CEO of Synclaire. "There's a big pond out there in women's with a lot of big Christian Louboutin designer names. But you don't really see those names in kids'."

Marcy Vissell, owner of Minneapolis-based children's boutique Shoe Zoo, said the buzz generated by the success of Michael Kors' women's christian louboutin shoeshas given the kids' line a big boost. "The moms are wearing Kors themselves, so they're familiar with it when they walk in," she said.

The Kors label, Cagner added, fills the void between the non-designer kids' brands and the ultra-luxe designer labels like Prada, Louis Vuitton and Hogan, which offer just a handful of children's louboutin shoes. "There's nothing in the middle," Cagner said. "I think the retailers were really thirsty for this." In its first season at retail this spring, the Kors kids' line performed extremely well, and fall '06 bookings have been equally strong, prompting Synclaire to expand the size and breadth of the collection. "The louboutin shoes flew out the door," Tip Top Kids' Schwartz affirmed. "The sell-throughs have been fabulous." In addition, Kors added toddler sizes to the mix for fall '06.