The following article appeared on September 29, 2005 in The Austin American Statesman, the local newspaper in Austin, Texas.

Kay Colvin went to San Miguel de Allende with a mission: to buy shoes. When she came home and couldn't find more of them on the internet, she imported them.

SOLE SEARCHING

An Austin Woman's Quest to find those oh-so-comfortable dress sandals from Mexico turned into a business.

By Denise Gamino
Austin American Statesman Staff

Kay Colvin didn't know she was bringing home a legend when she bought a pair of shoes for her mother in Mexico.

"I need you to get me another pair of San Miguel Shoes," her mother requested before Colvin took a vacation to San Miguel de Allende in 2003. "I've got the black and I need the tan color."

Colvin and a friend walked the mile-high city's fabled cobblestone streets until they found a little shop the locals called Zapateria Martha. Inside, dizzying stacks of white shoe boxes threatened to fall. Amid the ivory towers sat a petite woman wearing a lime green sleeveless sheath and matching summer hat, a la Audrey Hepburn. She was Martha, wife of San Miguel shoe cobbler Santiago Gallardo Muñiz, and she urged Colvin to shop away.

In the middle of the maze, plastic drinking cups propped up display shoes - the San Miguel Shoes the cobbler calls "combat/cocktail" sandals. The rugged sole on some models is inspired by military boots. Colorful elastic straps add enough style for a cocktail party.

Colvin bought a pair for her mother. And she returned the next day to buy a black pair to wear that night with a François Girbaud dress at a dinner party. The platformed Pradas she had packed were no match for the town's streets, which give visitors a feeling of walking on river rocks.

"They looked just fine with the dress and it was like slipping on a pair of tennies," she said. "They were really comfortable. I didn't have to think about walking."

Suddenly, she was a foot soldier in the corps of women who embrace San Miguel Shoes. For years, women have quietly made their way to the small central Mexico town (or given money to someone going there) to buy some of the most comfortable - yet attractive - shoes around.

One Austin woman owns 28 pairs. "It's like a weird cult following," Colvin said. The shoe appeals to women who like the quality of comfort footwear offered by Birkenstock, Dansko, Merrell or Mephisto, but want something more feminine and fashionable. The San Miguel Shoe is cheaper, more colorful and comes in a variety of styles.

Colvin never dreamed she would give up a lucrative career in the movie industry to further the legend of the San Miguel Shoes. Last year, Colvin's best friend was looking for sturdy dress shoes to wear to a backyard wedding. Colvin recommended the San Miguel Shoes, then jumped on the internet to shop for them.

"I just thought surely you could just go 'click,' but no," she said.

That started Colvin thinking. She was working as a sound technician on big-name movie sets, earning $90,000 a year but missing her husband and two young daughters when putting in 12-hour days out of town. She had spent 20 years in the movie industry. The lowest point might have been working on Kevin Costner's "The Postman" when her eldest daughter, Grace, was only 18 months old. She saw Grace only 10 days in five months, and only because her husband, drummer and booking agent Davis McLarty, flew to Tucson; Bend, Ore.; and rural Washington state to meet her.

Colvin, who holds a degree in radio-television-film from the University of Texas, had begun only accepting jobs on films shot in or near the Austin area: "Miss Congeniality," "Michael," "Spy Kids," "The Alamo" and others. But she still wished she could be home when the girls returned from school and could spend more time with family.

The more she trolled the internet in a fruitless search for San Miguel Shoes, the more she wondered if she should fill the void.

Shoes were her weakness. Her movie income allowed her to buy a new pair of shoes every weekend and she had a closet full. Western boots from the expensive Falconhead leather goods store in Brentwood, Calif., was a favorite purchase when she lived in Los Angeles.

Last summer, she jumped. She took savings from her movie jobs and opened an internet store for San Miguel Shoes. The shoes sell for $59.95 and are available in about a dozen styles.

Colvin didn't know much Spanish beyond "hola." But, she called the store in San Miguel de Allende with the help of a bilingual friend. "Hola," she said. "We want to sell your shoes on the internet."

So the shop sent her 20 samples. And a bill. There was no turning back.

Outersoul.com was born. It is the only full-service website for San Miguel Shoes, offering customers an opportunity to browse, order and pay for shoes on-line.

The shoe's rubber-like sole is topped by a cushion of foam covered with a suede foot bed. The wide, colorful elastic straps don't pinch or bind, but hold the foot securely in place. Each pair sports a distinctive label in the heel of the foot bed that shows San Miguel's famous cathedral, La Parroquia.

"One of the beloved things is it gives a little when you step, so it doesn't cause foot fatigue," Colvin said. "It's shock-absorbing for the foot."

Karen Sires, a senior manager at the regional IRS office in Austin, might have more San Miguel Shoes than any woman in Austin besides Colvin - 28 pairs.

"I'm telling you, they are just awesome," said Sires, who goes to Santa Fe every August to attend a series of Indian antique art shows.

"I walk miles when I'm there, and I always ended up with blisters and sore feet," she said. But after finding San Miguel Shoes, "I could walk all day, up and down hills, over rocks, everything in these shoes and never got tired and never got sore feet. I said 'These are the greatest things since sliced bread.'".

"I've worn Birkenstocks, I've done the whole (comfort) thing," she said. "What I like about them is it looks like you've got on a high heel so it's dressy looking, but you're really not elevated that much. It gives you a bit of elegance."

Gallardo Múñiz has produced the hand-made shoes for 12 years. Colvin has never seen the factory where he makes the shoes with the help of 48 employees. But she met the shoemaker when she drove to Mexico to pick up her first order of 200 shoes.

Gallardo Muniz has made the shoes by hand for 12 years.

Colvin and a friend drove to San Miguel de Allende, but found the shoe order unfilled. They had to roll up their sleeves, wade into the inventory and pull together 100 pairs. She was lucky to get half her original order.

"How am I ever going to be able to control this situation?" Colvin asked herself. Importing products from a small, homegrown Mexican company can entail unexpected delays, miscommunications and merchandise mix-ups.

"You learn you don't get to control it," Colvin said. "You pass that along to your customers."

As Colvin and her friend checked in at the bridge in Laredo on their return trip, a Border Patrol agent saw the shoes. "What's this?" he asked. When they opened the boxes, he said, "These look like something my wife might be interested in."

That should have been Colvin's clue to the interest her shoes would generate.

Customers from around the world have found Colvin's webbased shoe store, which carries about a dozen styles. The popular cruisediva.com website began recommending her San Miguel Shoes and Austin's Prima Dora gift store on Congress Avenue stocked the shoes on consignment.

"As soon as the customers put them on their feet, they buy them," said Kathy Carr, a buyer for Prima Dora who wears a pair as she stands all day helping customers. "It never fails. We brought them in in November, which was a risk because most people don't wear open-toed shoes in the winter, but we knew there was a following," Carr said. "By February, we had sold most of them."

Then, shopkeepers in Florida, Pennsylvania and four other states contacted Colvin to make wholesale deals for dozens of shoes. By spring, Colvin was selling up to US13,000 worth of shoes a month out of a spare bedroom in her red brick Travis Country home. "I never would have expected that," she said.

In September of this year, Colvin agreed to become the wholesale distributor for San Miguel Shoes. Stores buying in bulk will have to get them from Colvin.

You probably won't see the San Miguel Shoes on the feet of Colvin's sister, Grammy-award winner Shawn Colvin. She buys high-end designer shoes for public appearances and knocks around in clogs when she's not working.

"I don't dislike the (San Miguel) shoes," she said, "but I do have basically two shoe modes Danskos and extremely upscale. They're super popular with older women, like our mom, who travel. They're very comfortable and have an appeal as a shoe you can walk in a lot and still look fashionable."

But she lends moral support to her sister's shoe venture. "I'm just very proud of her for bucking a lifestyle that wasn't really working for her and keeping her eyes open for something (else)," she said.

Back at home, the woman who now sells more San Miguel Shoes than probably anyone outside Mexico keeps shoes in tall stacks reminiscent of the original shoe ship in Mexico. Although Colvin, an avid tennis player, is surrounded by San Miguel Shoes, she wears white Adidas sneakers.

But when the other shoe drops in this house - into a box for shipping - it's always a San Miguel.