The Flop Happy Story
Scott Osiol - Founder
How It All Started
Flop Happy is the brainchild of founder Scott Osiol, an artist and entrepreneur, who saw footwear soles lacking in their full creative potential. For years he has screen printed fun and unique t-shirts and clothing and loves creative self expression. While in high school, Scott realized that some of his shoes had tiny brand logos on their soles. These logos showed up backwards when he stepped in mud. EUREKA. Now all he had to do was cut a design backwards in to a pair of shoes and it would show up forward. After trying to create designs on the soles of several of his shoes, Scott realized that cutting, burning, and grinding designs into rubber shoe soles is not easily accomplished. Temporarily discouraged, Scott revisited the idea in college several years later while studying sculpture and pursuing a degree in business administration. With a plethora of sculptural tools at his disposal he perfected a method of producing custom soled flip flops one pair at a time. After graduating he founded Flop Happy in the spring of 2010.
Early Prototype being made by hand
When Scott was unable to successfully customize his shoes in high school, he searched for companies that made custom soled footwear, and, to his surprise, he found them. Companies that produced custom soled sand impression flip flops had been around for years. However all of these companies had their footwear produced in Asia and required minimum orders of at least 100 pairs of the same design or more, with some companies even requiring thousands of pairs. Furthermore, why hadn't Scott, or anyone he knew for that matter, ever heard of these products? These companies had been targeting their flip flops at large companies and organizations as a promotional logoed product, not individuals.
With the founding of Flop Happy in 2010, the very first footwear company to offer custom soled flip flops, and require no minimum order quantity, came into existence. We are well on our way to making custom soled flip flops available and affordable to everyone. Whether part of a large group that wants a branded product, or an individual that simply wants a cool design or a nickname on their flip flops, you will receive the same quality flip flops found nowhere else. Now all that is left to do is make everyone who isn't a fortune 500 company aware of our heroic efforts to make amazing custom flip flops available to them for the first time.
With the founding of Flop Happy in 2010, the very first footwear company to offer custom soled flip flops, and require no minimum order quantity, came into existence. We are well on our way to making custom soled flip flops available and affordable to everyone. Whether part of a large group that wants a branded product, or an individual that simply wants a cool design or a nickname on their flip flops, you will receive the same quality flip flops found nowhere else. Now all that is left to do is make everyone who isn't a fortune 500 company aware of our heroic efforts to make amazing custom flip flops available to them for the first time.
So how do we do what we do? By operating right here in the United States. International shipping is not cheap. And, the cost of shipping small quantities from Asia, let alone producing these small quantities of custom flip flops the traditional way, is not cost effective. While originally founded in Scott's garage, we now operate in Pottstown, Pennsylvania
