Walking the road to success in high heels can be painful. For Tina Aldatz, whose feet were badly burned on hot coals when she was a child, it used to be excruciating.
Did that stop the fashionable Latina from wearing the latest stilettos while pounding the pavement in New York City? Absolutely not. Aldatz was on a mission to succeed.
She didn’t have to look far to find her million-dollar niche, either. It was right in her Jimmy Choos.
As the eldest daughter of a physically abusive Mexican drug dealer and a high-living mom who used the family’s food stamps to buy alcohol, Aldatz learned entrepreneurship – and resilience – early in life. She lived in the gang-dominated Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles, and often had to sell candy to kids at school to feed herself and her two younger siblings.
When her mother started to abuse her physically, she knew she had to escape. She moved into a friend’s home at age 15, before she was old enough to drive. To pay the rent, she quit school and walked every day to the local supermarket to box groceries for minimum wage.
Yes, she walked. Aldatz wasn’t one to wallow, and building her reputation was important to her. Her strong work ethic brought her up the ladder through various retail positions until she landed her dream job: selling at Victoria’s Secret.
As soon as she could, she took in each of her younger siblings and step-siblings, one by one, to provide them with a stable and loving home. But her innate resourcefulness shone brightest when she seized an opportunity to get a job transfer to New York.
That’s when her feet really started to hurt.
Aldatz eased her foot pain by inserting cut pieces of insoles into her high-heeled shoes. It wasn’t long before she realized other women would pay for the same solution – and the now-multimillion-dollar Foot Petals company was born. A few years later, she sold the company for a cool $14 million.
Today, along with her best friend Margarita Floris, Aldatz runs Savvy Travelers, a new company based on yet another previously undiscovered niche: designer beauty wipes. She has authored a book about her experience, From Stilettos To The Stock Exchange, and she served as an executive producer for Frontera, a 2014 feature film about the plight of Mexican immigrants starring Eva Longoria and Ed Harris.
Aldatz has received numerous awards and recognition from the likes of Entrepreneur Magazine, the Huffington Post, the LA Times, CNN, Forbes Magazine, Comerica Bank’s Women’s Business Awards, the National Latina Business Women Association (NLBWA), the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation (MAOF), and the National Hispanic Business Women Association (NHBWA).
Aldatz clearly believes in giving back to the communities and organizations that helped her on her way to the top. In 2011, Foot Petals created an endowment through the Two Ten Foundation, focusing solely on scholarships for Women in the Footwear Industry (WIFI). Aldatz serves as Chairwoman of the Hispanic 100 Mentor Program and devotes a good deal of her philanthropy to many other causes dear to her heart, including Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Orange County, Girls Inc., the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Miracle Flights For Kids.
We talked with Tina Aldatz recently. With her movie star looks, you’d never know she had such a heart-rending rags-to-riches story.
Monica: You’re a successful entrepreneur who has also inspired many people. But you grew up in a volatile home. Would you mind talking about that and how you survived that period?
Tina: My home life was very non-traditional. My mother was Irish and Danish, living in East LA in the early ‘60s.
She was one of the only skinny, tall, blonde, beautiful girls there. My father was Mexican and lived in East LA as well, a hardcore cholo and drug dealer. He was recently out of prison when they met. They married quickly, but their two cultures didn’t mix well.
Irish women can be very boisterous. They’re often the bosses of the home. My mother was loud, funny, and sarcastic. My father was more of the Mexican traditional style. He wanted his wife in the kitchen preparing meals and raising the children, being quiet and demure.
When alcohol and drugs entered the picture, it was the perfect recipe for an explosion.
There was a lot of domestic violence. After 13 years of marriage, we ended up in a shelter for battered women in the harsh Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. I was the eldest of the three children, and we had to live in seclusion for one year.
In 1979, we were able to get out for one weekend and visit with family. I had looked forward to it so much, but something crazy happened. We had a barbecue on the beach. Everyone was dancing, laughing, and playing. Somebody had buried hot coals in the sand, and I ran through them. Both of my feet were severely burned with third and fourth-degree burns.
We were rushed to a burn center in Orange County. I was a patient there for a long time because it took extensive treatments to treat the burns. So we moved there, living on government funding, welfare, food stamps, and HUD housing.
It was chaotic. My mom really didn’t want to be a mom. It was the first time in her life that she was out from under the thumb of a very controlling husband. She made a deal with the owner of the convenience store down the street to use our food stamps for beer, alcohol, and cigarettes.
We were basically left to fend for ourselves, and my first entrepreneurial experience was going into that convenience store. My sister and I asked the owner, “Can you stop selling my mom beer and cigarettes with our food stamps? We need to eat.”
He said, “Get out of here,” so we decided to start our own business. I dropped a Slurpee on the floor, my brother and sister scooped up the candy, and we sold it at school. They say necessity is the mother of invention.
My dad was always a hustler, a jack-of-all-trades who went around fixing anything. My mom was a hairdresser and beautician.
It formed a chaotic environment. My mother started drinking more and physically abusing me. It got so bad that at the age of 15, I emancipated myself with the help of a friend from high school.
My friend’s parents let me rent a room in their house for $150 a month. I realized that the $150 was nothing more than a lesson on being responsible. I have worked full-time ever since. I walked to Albertson’s grocery store every day and boxed groceries until I could afford to buy a rusted, beat-up first car for $500.
At this point, my parents were divorced, and my mother was still living a life of drugs and alcohol. Partying was her priority, so my younger brother and sister needed somewhere to stay.
I was working full-time. When I finally got my feet on the ground, my younger sister came to live with me when I was 18, and she was 16. By the time I was 21, my younger brother was living with me at 15. We just kept going forward, and I became the one stable thing for them.
Monica: The fact that you didn’t forget your siblings and that you were able to pull them away from that situation is amazing.
Tina: My goal was to get everybody out of there so we could stick together. My father had three more children with another woman, but eventually they also broke up because of the drugs, the alcohol abuse, and the domestic violence. He died in a terrible fight in the street, and I convinced
their mother to give me their children. We stuck together; the three elders taking on the younger three.
I’m proud to say that my youngest brother, whom I consider my son, graduated from UCLA with a degree in Business Economics and now works as a consultant in New York City for Accenture. He is the first man in our family to graduate from high school and attend a university.
My vision was to change the legacy and the notorious reputation of the Aldatz family name. I didn’t want it recognized by police officers; I wanted it recognized for something good. That was my ultimate goal.
I wanted to break the chains, end the cycle, and change the direction of gang life, drugs, prison, and domestic violence. That’s really my long-term vision.
Monica: You were consistent in working to improve your circumstances. You weren’t deterred by the fact that things didn’t happen right away. What words of encouragement or advice can you offer someone living in similar conditions who doesn’t believe there is any hope?
Tina: I made a little mantra called the Three R’s. It’s what I base my core values on, helps me make decisions, and is also a reminder of where I came from.
The first R is your number one asset: your reputation. No matter how rich or poor you are, nobody can take your reputation away, not even the IRS.
I’ve banked on my reputation many times. If I shake someone’s hand, look them in the eye, and say I’m going to do something, I do it. If I owe you a dollar, you’ll get it with a thank-you note in the mail.
A solid reputation is very valuable. It’s your choice to destroy it or not. You can rebuild it, but it’s better to protect it as a main asset.
The second R is resourcefulness. There are so many resources available to us. As women, we now have more opportunities than ever before.
So if you don’t know what to do, ask for help. God says, “Ask me.” I truly believe in that. Look for opportunity.
I believe that resources are here to help propel us to the next level, not to use as a crutch or a lifestyle. There are job assistance training programs. Many of these programs are privately funded, and I believe many have a higher success rate than government-funded programs.
Monica: Why do you think that is?
Tina: Because it’s very easy to become complacent. When organizations and non-profits are privately funded, you get true believers in the initiative; people who are enthusiastic to move the needle forward and reach measurable results. They can’t exist without a track record of success.
I served on the Board of Directors for Girls Incorporated of Orange County, one of the largest non-profit organizations serving girls ages 5 to 18. It’s incredible. If only I had known about that when I was a little kid.
The third and most important R is resilience. Think of a basketball. Every time you slam it against the concrete, it bounces back. If you can bounce back after taking a blow, it differentiates you as a determined, successful person.
Monica: Speaking of being determined and resilient, when you burned your feet accidentally, you turned that circumstance into a million-dollar business when you created Foot Petals.
Tina: Who would have known my destiny at that moment? It was so crushing to me, to my mother, and to my siblings. Back then, apartments didn’t have to have wheelchair-accessible handicap features. I was in a wheelchair for a long time because I couldn’t walk, so my poor 120-pound mother was carrying me back and forth. I was 10 years old, crawling around the house.
I would never have known my destiny then. I did, however, know that I had a passion for fashion.
Over the years, I worked my way up through retail. Eventually, I landed the best job I ever had: working at Victoria’s Secret. I worked my way up to assistant manager. At the time, the company was introducing lotions and body gel products. I took part in the product testing at the store and the construction of the shop.
When I found out they were going to roll it out nationwide, I said, “Can I be transferred to New York City?” I knew that if I was going to make it in fashion, I had to get to New York. I’d always dreamt of being a businesswoman, carrying a briefcase in New York City.
Well, I got to New York City.
I met my best friend, Margarita, while working there. I learned retail and merchandising. There’s an art to it. Selling designer clothing is like selling a gallon of milk: every day that it doesn’t sell, you’re losing money. It has to be marked down repeatedly until it’s a clearance item. Many fashion companies go out of business because of that.
I walked around that city, determined to wear my high heels, but I was in pain. I would get ugly insoles, cut them up, tape them into the shoe, and color the edges to blend in.
A few years later, during the dot-com bubble phase, I moved back to California. I had quit my job to work for a young lady, an MBA who had raised a couple of million dollars to start an online fashion business. She had no life experience, but she had an MBA, so I thought she must know everything. But the dot-com bubble burst, and we had to close.
I had a couple of thousand dollars in the bank, and I didn’t know what to do.
Then my a-ha moment happened. I thought, “People have paid me for years to sell their products. Why don’t I make a product of my own and sell it using everything I know?” I started prototyping and developing this cushion for high heels. I shopped it around, found a factory, and found the material. I was so energized.
A lot of people just laughed, “Oh, you’re going to have to sell millions of those things.”
I thought, “That’s right. That’s what I’m going to do.”
I wanted to take it to a venture capitalist, but I knew I needed a great business plan. The father of a friend of mine was an angel investor. I took him and his wife out to lunch to get his advice on my presentation so that when I took it to venture capitalists, I’d have a stronger pitch. I showed them everything. I walked them through my whole plan.
At the end of lunch, he looked at his wife; she nodded. They took out their checkbook and handed me a $10,000 check. He said, “You don’t need to go anywhere. You have a partner right here.”
I cried tears of joy all the way home! That angel investor taught me the golden rule of The Three Ms: money, marketing, and management.
The first M, money, asks the questions, “How much money do I need? When do I need it? When am I going to see a return on my investment? When will I break even?” Once I started answering these questions, bingo! There was my business plan.
The second M stands for marketing. It forces you to answer more questions, like, “How am I going to market my products? Who am I marketing them to? How much does the product cost?” Then you ask yourself the same money questions again: “How much money do I need to advertise? How long is it going to take? When am I going to see a return on the marketing investment? Who’s going to do all of that?”
The third and most important M is management. These are important details, like “Who’s going to manage the money? Who’s going to manage the accounting, the taxes, the payroll, accounts receivable, and accounts payable?”
There is more, too: “Who’s going to manage the marketing? Who’s going to write the ad campaigns? Who’s going to do the artwork? Who’s going to create the call to action? What’s going to make your customer come back and take action?”
Number one, though, is, “Who is going to manage the sales? Who’s going to manage the wholesale, direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, and retail stores? Who’s going to manage the teams if I hire agencies? Who’s going to write the purchase orders? How are those purchase orders going to be received?” It’s complicated. It’s not as easy as having a yard sale.
Monica: Are Foot Petals still being sold in stores?
Tina: Yes. I started in 2001. We sold to all the department stores, and we were excited. We were in business! But right before we started to ship, 9/11 happened.
Every buyer called and canceled their orders. I had a warehouse full of product, and we had to switch gears. Luckily, a little show called Sex and the City popped up. The show made high heels a massive trend. In fact, one of our first buyers was Patricia Field, the show’s costume designer.
That catapulted Foot Petals, and ten years later, we were selling $10 million a year. We sold the company for $14 million in cash to a publicly traded company, so I actually got to watch it trade on the NASDAQ Stock Market.
It’s still thriving. My big goal was to make something that was beyond the Tina and Margarita show. To walk into Nordstrom today and see Foot Petals right by the register gives me a great sense of satisfaction and pride. I feel so happy, and think, “Wow, that idea really did stick.”
After we sold the company, I took two years off and did a lot of community work. That’s when I started saying to myself, “Orange County raised me. I’m going to give back to this county and do what I can to help young entrepreneurs who are in the same situation.”
So I started visiting foster homes and shelters. I worked with victims of domestic violence. I served on the board of Girls Incorporated of Orange County for two years. I’m a Legacy Council member. I helped start the Hispanic 100 Mentor Program. I also wrote a book, and I co-produced two films during this time.
I just started my second company, again with Margarita. We started Savvy Travelers. Savvy Travelers is another one of those products that you don’t know you need. We’ve created an entire collection of individually wrapped wipes for women: facial cleansers, antiperspirants, intimate wipes, and mouth and teeth wipes.
Monica: You are also a strong advocate for immigration policy reform in the United States. What are your views on immigration, and what would you like to see changed?
Tina: I don’t like government-run programs. I think that the most successful programs are privately run. I’m half Mexican. My grandmother emigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico, in the 1920’s for better opportunities. I believe you can choose to be a victim or an opportunist of your circumstances.
I do not feel that most Mexicans who cross the border are seeking amnesty.
Ronald Reagan launched an amnesty program when he was in office, and less than 30 percent of Mexicans took advantage of it. Amnesty isn’t necessarily what everyone’s seeking, and I think that’s where the disconnect happens.
Mexican people love their country. They want to come here and work, but they want to be able to go back and forth. We’re an integral part of our communities and the economy.
Monica: What do you say to people who say, “Mexicans are taking our jobs.”
Tina: I disagree. I don’t think anyone’s taking any jobs. We’re contributing to the economy. Just because people aren’t legally documented doesn’t mean they’re not still producing work and stimulating our economy.
People are looking at it from the wrong perspective. All the money that Mexicans make here is actually being spent here. If we take them out of the equation, the U.S. economy would be hurt. It’s a shame we’re not able to create a worker program that collects taxes, makes it fair, and makes it easy for people to come and work, pay their fair share, and be legal.
Monica: What drives you to be more and to achieve more?
Tina: If you want to change a child’s mind, change their environment. Being part of a community, caring about other people, and helping people get their careers off the ground are all so important. I want to create a pathway to success, not only for myself, but for others. I have the greatest sense of accomplishment when I see others excelling and discovering their true passion.
Monica: Can you talk briefly about your book, From Stilettos to the Stock Exchange?
Tina: In the book, I talk about starting Foot Petals, how my feet were burned, how we had to live in shelters, the fighting, getting my car repossessed when I was 21, and how it all felt. I talk about not knowing the ropes and what I went through to get where I am.
What I really hope to do is inspire others to not sit back in complacency, and instead, do something they’re proud of – something that will change their life, and the lives of others.
Monica: Did you ever get your GED?
Tina: Yes. I got special permission at age 16 to take it, and I passed. Later on, I also became a certified pedorthist, which means I’m an expert in shoe fitting and modifications. I could essentially make a limb for someone who lost a foot. I know the anatomy. I still take classes, and I’m an avid reader.
I also work with people who I feel are experts. I think it’s important to let experts do their jobs. It’s crucial to know what you’re good at, but you also have to accept what you’re not good at.
Monica: You recognize your weaknesses, and you find someone to help you in those areas.
Tina: Absolutely.
Monica: Would you mind closing the interview with your last word?
Tina: You determine how much someone else will believe in your dream. People will invest in you when they see that you’re willing to invest in yourself.