As a former college basketball star, Lavetta Willis, 35, knew she could compete with the tall timber on the court. But now she’s also managed to elbow her DaDa Footwear into the game with the “big guys” of the multi-billion-dollar athletic-shoe industry – and she’s camped in the lane!
The 1998 start-up, with 2004 revenues reaching between 30 and 40 million dollars, is quite a success story for anyone, let alone a young, black, single mom. As an electrical-engineering and law-school graduate, Lavetta was already a triple career threat. But from the moment she began selling a line of hats to fellow students at Loyola Law School , entrepreneurship compelled her even more. She even designed her own lines of apparel. In the mid-‘90s, Lavetta and two partners established DaDa hats and t-shirts to target the urban market. Their DaDa Supreme line did well but required something else, she felt, to legitimize itself as an “athletic performance” brand.
So Lavetta established another company, with an additional partner, just to work the DaDa Footwear angle. But she didn’t have a road map. “There were no urban brands at the time that had done footwear – we were the first,” she says. Hard work was Lavetta’s currency. She and her partners massaged their connections to find a capable factory that would handle manufacturing. They conducted street-level marketing campaigns. Lavetta outhustled later competition from other established urban brands, such as Fubu and outlasted shoe-chain buyers until they bought her wares.
Within a couple of years, Los Angeles based DaDa reached the tipping point. NBA stars and rap artists alike now wear and show off the brand. DaDa has become a multi-million-dollar company. And it’s no joke to mention DaDa in the same breath with “Nike” and “Reebok.” “We’re the No. 1 shoe brand in East Bay stores in the basketball segment right now,” Lavetta boasts. “Nike can’t say that.”
It’s also helped create word-of-mouth when consumers see DaDa shoes on the likes of NBA stars such as Latrell Sprewell and the now-retired Karl Malone, rappers including Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre, and actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and David Arquette. DaDa has even been shooting some national TV commercials lately. But Lavetta doesn’t plan to forsake grassroots marketing. “At the end of the day,” she says, “the stuff that we started the company with still works.”
It’s also helped create word-of-mouth when consumers see DaDa shoes on the likes of NBA stars such as Latrell Sprewell and the now-retired Karl Malone, rappers including Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre, and actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and David Arquette. DaDa has even been shooting some national TV commercials lately. But Lavetta doesn’t plan to forsake grassroots marketing. “At the end of the day,” she says, “the stuff that we started the company with still works.”