Massachusetts has never exactly been an industrial powerhouse. The Commonwealth has never been a Pennsylvania, an Ohio, a Michigan. But when I was growing up, it was a state where plenty of stuff got made.
Some of it was industrial stuff: Norton made abrasives. GE made aircraft engines. But a lot of our plants were knitting mills. (Every summer, my family made an excursion to a mill in either Ware or Fall River to buy tee-shirts at a mill store.) Or shoe factories.
I spent a summer working in one of them: H.H. Brown, which made work boots, combat boots (including paratrooper boots for the South Vietnamese military), and boots for the workers in nuclear energy plants. (These were chartreuse with red top stitching – so loud that no one would ever wear them outside the plant by accident. This was in the 1960’s, before men began wearing clothing with more flash. By the early 1970’s, chartreuse with red stop stitching would barely have raised an eyebrow.)
But H. H. Brown is long gone, as are a lot of the other Massachusetts shoe factories. A lot of our heavy manufacturing plants are gone, too. And the textile mills and furniture factories fled south, then east, long ago.
We became a state that became known for (and got rich, relative to most other states, on) medicine, education, financial services, high tech.
But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a state that really didn’t make much of anything.
We became, once again, a state known for shoes.
Of course, across the U.S., the vastly vast majority of shoes sold here are imported.
But to some extent, Shoes ‘R’ us.
Most of those shoes are sneakers, and we’ve been “doing” sneakers for quite a while. When it comes to athletic footwear, Massachusetts is something of an ur source.
Saucony (HQ: Waltham, Massachusetts) started out in 1906 as a company making ten-cent slippers out of carpet remnants.
Converse (HQ: Boston) has been around almost as long – since 1910. The Converse All Star was introduced in 1917, before the idea of the NBA existed, let alone the concept of basketball all stars. They became Chucks in the 1930’s. When I was a kid, Chucks came in black and in white. And only boys wore them.
Now they’re co-ed, and come in all sorts of colors, not to mention all sorts of crazy prints. My personal favorites are the pale blue ones with the flamingos on them. Not that I wear Chucks. Not enough support for me. Not to mention that someone who wears a size 11 and is breathing down the age of 70 doesn’t really need to be moseying around in pale blue high tops with flamingos on them.
Still, I love Chucks, the very idea of them.
There are other sneaker companies around here.
Reebok may have started life in England, but their HQ is in Boston.
Puma’s US headquarters is just outside of Boston, as is Clark’s of Wallabees fame.
Having your headquarters here doesn’t, of course, mean that you’re making your shoes in Massachusetts.
But New Balance, which has its headquarters in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, does make some of its sneaks here.
…and Alden Shoes cranks out shiny penny loafers in Middleborough. (Source: Boston Globe)
Ah, penny loafers. When I was in high school, Bass Weejuns were the thing. My first loafers were actually a pair of Old Maine Trotters, which I got because they were the only loafers that came in my size. (Then: 9.5 AAA/10 AAAA) Someone in town started carrying Weejuns in odd sizes, so I was in teen-age heaven.
Never put the pennies in them – that just wasn’t done – but I wore out a few pairs of Bass Weejuns during my high school and college years.
But Bass Weejuns aren’t native to Massachusetts. They’re Mainers. (As were Old Maine Trotters.)
And it’s Massachusetts that’s got the leg up when it comes to shoes.
Tom Carleo is a VP at New Balance:
Carleo says the talent base that has grown up working in the shoe industry in Massachusetts is one reason it has remained rooted here. There are also technologists and entrepreneurs, he says, thinking about how new technologies, like 3-D printing, will change the way shoes are made.
Bring on the 3-D printing! Can’t wait to have a pair of shoes that fit perfectly.
I’m not going to romanticize jobs in shoe factories. Been there, done that, know too much to romanticize the experience. Yet I am happy that there’s actually something tangible, something concrete that’s, if not always manufactured, then at least managed in Massachusetts.
I am someone who benefited greatly from Massachusetts making the transition from manufacturer of tee-shirts and combat boots, to a more abstract, intellectual property kind of economic system. I worked in high tech, and it gave me a lot more challenging and lucrative career than if I’d stuck with polishing and cleaning the glue gunk off of combat boots.
But it sure is easier to wrap your head around something you can wrap your hands around. Like sneakers.
Thank you, shoe business!
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