MISFIT
Decline and Rise T
he Tenth Commandment in retail goes You can’t win an argument with a customer because you may win the argument but you will lose the customer; so when one of them remarked “Of course, we don’t make shoes in this country any more,” as she pulled out her card to pay for
a pair of Hotters, i didn’t waste time pointing out she had just bought a pair of English-made shoes and was wearing another. It is true, of course that we don’t make anything like as many shoes in this
country as we used to do, but that doesn’t mean we make none at all. According to the British Footwear Manufacturing Federation the facts are these: in its heyday the British Footwear industry made some two hundred million pairs a year; now we produce five million pairs which not a lot but it is not none at all.. As it happens a lot of what Misfit Shoes sells are made here, because
years ago we eschewed fashion which we saw as a great big gamble, and we never went in for cheap, reckoning we couldn’t beat the big boys at their own game, plus you have to sell an awful lot of shoes under £10 (yes they still exist) to pay the rent. Why work hard when you don’t have to? So we ended up selling comfort and quality, which is precisely where British manufacturing is now positioned, as the marketing men would put it. Why is it that a few factories have survived and are doing
nicely? Why are makers like Loake, Trickers, Van-Dal and Hotter cheerfully doing their thing when others have gone to the wall? Could it be that they have looked carefully at their markets and made the effort to cater for them? That they looked after their customers? Asked what those awkward characters wanted and make sure they got it? Not rocket science – it is called marketing. The other thing they did was to keep up with the latest
developments in technology. They grabbed at any innovation that allowed them to make shoes better, quicker or cheaper with both hands. I remember some of the others. The firm who delivered
different nations do have different shaped feet. I don’t know why, but they do. Another thing: local manufacturers are closer to their market. They can react to new trends much quicker. As Stewart Houlgrave of Hotter points out, if he wants to try out a new idea he doesn’t have to order a container load and wait months for the shoes to arrive. He can do a short production run and put the style straight into his own shops to see if the punters bite. Which brings me to another development: most manufacturers now have
their own outlets. They are not at the mercy of the big multiples any more. We no longer have some 22 percent of the market controlled by one company. Likewise, the independent retailer sector is not dominated by one manufacturer to anything like the extent it used to be. A lot of people here don’t realise that British men’s shoes are appreciated
all over the world. They are comfortable, hard-wearing and, most important, they breathe quality. Northampton is still a byword for good shoes and it isn’t just Northampton. New factories are opening up. Small, specialist, they may be, but that is how all the established brands started. Thanks to institutions like the Cordwainers we still have the technology and the design expertise. What we have lost is the infrastructure. The multitude of firms
Funnily enough, cheap and easy transport is one of the things that brought the British shoe industry to its knees and it may well prove what helps it rise again. With the internet styles can be merchandised across the globe. After all if we can sell Range Rovers to China, which is the world’s biggest market for quality goods, why not shoes?
an order with one size missing and then went on holiday, leaving the wholesaler I was working for with the extra expense of sending out the missing size in small parcels when they deigned to send in the balance. Another who made pointed-toe courts, every pair split at the toe and crudely touched up. They were quite indignant when we sent them back, told us we had asked the impossible. We offered to send someone to show them how to do it, but they would have none of it. A few years later I found myself at their bankruptcy auction and saw the antiquated machinery they were using. The near collapse of the UK shoe industry was not entirely caused by cheap imports. There is a glimmer of hope, though; a chink of light at the end of the
tunnel. There are signs that the tide is turning. It isn’t all going the Far East’s way. Their costs are slowly increasing and the labour content in making a pair of shoes is decreasing year by year thanks to technical advances, which makes the gap between their costs and ours smaller every day. The British manufacturer has a lot going for him/her. For one thing, British shoes fit British feet. I know that is heresy, but in my experience
8 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • AUGUST 2012
that a factory could call upon to supply components have either themselves gone out of business or lost interest in the shoe trade. Which isn’t to say that they have disappeared all together. We still have
one last maker left, and the firms that make adhesives and finishing materials are basically chemical manufacturers. If the demand is there they will supply it. If components are not available then they can be imported. These days nowhere in the world is far away. The same goes for leathers. Most of our leather producers today seem to be making for the auto industry, but there is nothing to stop them making shoe leather if they think the demand is there. Funnily enough, cheap and easy transport is one of the things that
brought the British shoe industry to its knees and it may well prove what helps it rise again. With the internet styles can be merchandised across the globe. After all if we can sell Range Rovers to China, which is the world’s biggest market for quality goods, why not shoes? The answer to that one is – we do.
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