19 ms·

Why the American shoe disappeared and is hard to bring back (2019)

148 points by nonbirithm 5y ago

logifail 5y ago
> "it's very hard to envision a scenario where we'd make the types of products that we make, at the prices that we make them, in $PlaceWhereWeSellThem" Doesn't this sound like "our business model is working just fine, please don't disrupt it"?
- colpabar 5y ago
  another way to say that would be >"it's very hard to envision a scenario where we'd make the types of products that we make, at the effectively slave labor prices we pay people to make them, in a place that would require us to pay them more."
- da_chicken 5y ago
  Sure, but it also sounds like, "Capital is global, labor is local."
- geon 5y ago
  No? Isn’t the problem the high manufacturing cost? How would you “disrupt” that?
  - dd36 5y ago
    Robots. Environmental trade law.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      No one had figured out how to automate the sewing yet, and not for lack of trying.
- deckard1 5y ago
  The business was already disrupted. That's why they are in Asia. How are you going to disrupt that? By lowering the costs even further with... an Uber-meets-X app? Slavery-as-a-Service?
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  It's very hard to disrupt their business model. You can't make shoes cheaper than they are. You could try to attack a different market segment, like more expensive shoes, but that isn't disruption. You could try a marketing gimmick, like "buy these more expensive shoes and we will send you replacements for life." But it wouldn't be sustainable, and the competition could just offer the same thing and there goes your disruption. You could probably get a couple of years of press, just long enough to sell the company and make the founders a mint (if anyone's dumb enough to buy it).
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  If you can make shoes more cheaply, I am sure they are happy to manufacture with you instead. However, making shoes more cheaply almost assuredly means finding a way to get rid of the human labour.
adrianvincent 5y ago
Kanye West is going to bring Yeezy manufacturing back to the US. Here's an interview from 2 years ago that is very insightful: https://youtu.be/ihfG8qlhW04?t=760 https://youtu.be/ihfG8qlhW04?t=760
black_13 5y ago
The hidden cost of maintaining the appearance of a middle class is having one slave class in asia to make products and having a second one to serve.
les_diabolique 5y ago
I went through a phase of buying Made in US and Canada footwear such as Alden and Viberg, and to be honest, I don't think I could ever buy a cheap pair of shoes again. I recognize I'm paying for the inefficient process, but the construction and quality is amazing. Even when it comes to buying sneakers, I prefer Made IN US New Balance over a pair of Nikes.
- larrywright 5y ago
  Same here. Rancourt is another great one - they make their shoes in Maine and even offer custom shoes. I have a pair and they are amazing. Not as expensive as you’d think, either.
- fmajid 5y ago
  Or Made in France Mephisto and Weston, or Made in UK Church’s.
  - les_diabolique 5y ago
    Church's is very nice. I have a few a pairs of Gaziano and Girling and Edward Greens, and the quality is amazing on them.
    - fmajid 5y ago
      Yes, many good British brands remain, it's not because French, British or Italian labor is much cheaper than US.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  Made in Australia - RM Williams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ef5pqWLrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ef5pqWLrE
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Even within a brand. The difference of quality and durability between my regular Keens and my made in America Keens is astounding. The Vietnam made ones got returned after failing after 50 or so miles, while my American made ones have only lost a pair of laces in 500 miles. Honestly, the higher quality pair is now significantly cheaper per use than the cheaper ones (if we disregard REIs return policy at least).
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
All industry has been outsourced to Asia. The hilarious thing is that in the Victorian age English factories made clothes for the Empire. That's how European countries made their money: force their colonies to buy European products. Trade at gunpoint.
- robocat 5y ago
  The Indian Salt Hedge was a customs barrier built by the British across India to prevent Indian people from smuggling salt from coastal regions, in order to avoid the substantial salt tax. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line
- echelon 5y ago
  From the article, > Footwear manufacturing has long included machines — cutting or gluing soles. But higher-level innovation? Ironically, factory owners said that's happening where the industry is — overseas. Even the automation is happening in Asia. If we don't use this as our opportunity to re-onshore, we're going to fall far behind. Perhaps permanently so. We should be providing every tax incentive under the sun to domestic companies working on automating manufacturing.
hguant 5y ago
I think the key take away from the article is this line: >...higher-level innovation? Ironically, factory owners said that's happening where the industry is — overseas. I don't think there's anything ironic about this. Innovation happens close to the product, where you can get a true understanding of what you're doing and what the process is. We see this in projects gone awry all the time - until you're sitting at your desk working on the project, you don't know what the problem space actually is. In addition to all the obvious problems with the dismantling of America's manufacturing capacity, I think this is one of the real, critical, and silent issues - for a country that keeps touting innovation, not a lot of that happens here... apart from industries where there still is a strong manufacturing core in the country. The mercantilist rhetoric about buy American is stupid, but so is the blind faith that global capitalism won't destroy the ground it's built on.
- jollybean 5y ago
  This is not electronics though. Nike et. al. are fundamentally and intimately aware and involved with all technical aspects of the design. The factories in Vietnam are not hiring long distance runners and putting up tracks, hiring PhDs to measure gate, develop new materials. More obviously, Vietnamese factories cannot afford to hire Michael Jordan et. al. and the world's top Ad Agencies who actually drive sales. Of all of the sectors that we should be concerned about, this one is not it. 1) Shoes are odd and there's no way we're going to make robots anytime soon to do all these nimble things that require hands. 2) Overseas makers don't have any technical leverage - and definitely not brand power - so it's unlikely they'll usurp the system. 3) It's not a strategic sector. I don't think there's much we can do here. I'd be more interested in high end robots to make cars and electronics cheaper. Electronics is one area that we could endeavour to 'bring jobs back'. Shoes, not so much.
throwaway7542io 5y ago
throwaway... but I just wanted to mention Thorogood shoes. I've owned two pairs of their (quite reasonably priced) American learher shoes. The first one lasted 6yrs and I'm still wearing the second pair. I tried their foreign made "waterproof" and they are alright, but kind of stink literally after a long day
icegreentea2 5y ago
> And that cost quadruples after wholesale and retail markups, he said, ballooning into a $50 price difference between a pair made in the U.S. versus in China. This is the part that the child part of my brain always has trouble dealing with. This always seems ridiculous in my brain. I can intellectually understand why businesses want to scale their margins with costs, but it just seems so self-destructive (from a systemic standpoint) for something like shoes. I don't know how this could really be different, but I hate it.
- deycallmeajay 5y ago
  I actually would appreciate if someone could explain what this is.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  The cost of inventory is a gamble that you'll be able to sell it. If that cost grows but the upside doesn't, you literally cannot afford to take the risk of buying inventory that you hope to sell.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    JIT supply lines, sales tracking and inventory software integration, and the sophisticated sales forecasting that enables, change the risk calculation. But parasitic margins seem just as bad now as ever. I'm not convinced by this argument.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > But parasitic margins seem just as bad now as ever. What parasitic margins? Retail operations have 2% to 4% profit margins, and even Nike has around 10%, maybe 12% some years.
      - Clubber 5y ago
        Isn't most of that outside cost to manufacture though?
intricatedetail 5y ago
So people wanted employment rights etc, but didn't want to pay for it and as a result most goods where it is too costly are made were those rights don't apply. Monumental hypocrisy and a nuke in the foot...
Aloha 5y ago
Virtually all of my shoes are American made, but they're all cowboy boots.
seneca 5y ago
The more I look at the effects of globalization, the more I think free trade is akin to Reagonomics. Basically a huge scam for everyone in a developed country, except the owners of megacorporations. It destroys our ability to manufacture, destroys our middle class, makes us dependent on a geopolitical enemy, destroys any chance of local competition, and in return we get cheap garbage goods. In reality, what is happening is arbitrage of environmental and labor protections. More and more I think developed nations need to maintain an index that rates every country on these grounds, and strictly enforced tariffs based on that index. I'm all for other countries being able to specialize and out compete, but slave-like working conditions and destroying the environment shouldn't be competitive advantages on a global market.
- knubie 5y ago
  There is an upside to integrating global economies which is far less conflicts are taking place between counties now.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  > we get cheap garbage goods ... along with many of the most high-quality, low-tolerance manufactured parts and products ever made.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Yeah, China today makes world class products. I started buying Chinese smartphones, they work great, doesn't come with much crapware and are super cheap per performance. I don't see the point in paying extra for a western company to take basically the same phone, put a brand on it and crap in it.
- cycrutchfield 5y ago
  Sorry, why are the only beneficiaries “owners of megacorporations”? What about the average family who can buy a TV for $500 instead of for $1000? Do they not benefit from the cost of goods being lower due to global trade?
dwohnitmok 5y ago
I'm a little bit more mystified why there aren't more niche shoes being made in the U.S. where buyers are both willing to pay more and where buyers are much more discerning about small differences. For example weightlifting shoes are absolutely dominated by made in China shoes, and these are not at a low price point. The only made in US weightlifting shoes I know of (Position) are apparently quite poor quality and absolutely blown out of the water by the others (on the other hand, outside of shoes, there is a lot of made in the US weightlifting equipment which is very high quality and apparently enjoys healthy sales as a result). Maybe I'm missing certain niches? But my uninformed impression is that this is also true for shoes in other sports such as running, and other industries such as construction.
- ativzzz 5y ago
  Probably because the people capable of building that necessary expertise choose to go into more profitable and easy to access ventures, like software as a service, and I don't mean software developers.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  There are plenty of high end leather shoes made in the US, UK, or Europe that will set you back anywhere from $250 to $1k+. Back when massdrop used to feature a wide selection of items, shoes used to feature quite regularly.
- cycrutchfield 5y ago
  One such niche is dress shoes. Companies like Alden make all their shoes in the US and maintain a very high level of quality even at their price point.
aazaa 5y ago
> "We'll post jobs," he said, "and it's very seldom that someone under the age of 40 is coming in the door to apply." Among the workers who remain, arthritis is a common struggle. > "A lot of the people have said multiple times that they definitely don't want their son or daughter doing this [making shoes]," Heselton [of Maine Mountain Moccasin] said. "That's tough to hear." The sense of loss implied in the title makes sense. But ultimately, were these good jobs to begin with? The article doesn't even mention the environmental problems associated with curing leather, or making other components. All of those costs have been shipped overseas, along with the jobs. The problem, of course, is that this practice of having China, Inc. make everything used in this US is increasing reliance on an increasingly problematic country.
- ativzzz 5y ago
  > The problem, of course, is that this practice of having China, Inc. make everything used in this US is increasing reliance on an increasingly problematic country. The article mentions factories moving to other Asian countries as it's cheaper there.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  150 years ago in New England, it was a common winter occupation for many families to make shoes by hand in one of the back rooms.
js2 5y ago
See also, The Last American Baseball Glove Factory: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706295355/the-last-american-baseball-glove-factory https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706295355/the-last-american-b... https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704503206/a-small-town-in-texas-is-home-to-one-of-the-last-baseball-glove-factories-in-the https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704503206/a-small-town-in-tex... (It's Nocona, in Nocona, TX.)
cjohansson 5y ago
'Made by America' could be a marketing thing to try in the US. Sweden does it with Volvo cars and most people still believe Volvo cars are made in Sweden, the text is so similar you hardly notice the difference
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > most people still believe Volvo cars are made in Sweden But they are made in Sweden? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_p...
- yuppie_scum 5y ago
  Many companies absolutely lean into Made in America.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  "Designed in the US" is the usual marketing ploy which is marginally more honest.
  - C19is20 5y ago
    Also "Designed in European Country, [ah, but] made in Asian sweatshop", is very common 'over here'. Just seems so....cheap, exploitative and somewhat embarrassing to me. I try to avoid them.
lazyjones 5y ago
Forcing merchants to clearly display country of origin and having filters for it would quickly improve the situation. But there are worse product categories in this regard - try children's toys...
tfehring 5y ago
> For a shoe-factory job paying $12 an hour, the actual cost of shoemaking — when adding benefits — grows to $16 an hour, compared with about $3 an hour in China, said Mike Jeppesen, head of global operations at Wolverine Worldwide, which owns brands like Merrell, Sperry and Keds. And that cost quadruples after wholesale and retail markups, he said, ballooning into a $50 price difference between a pair made in the U.S. versus in China. This strikes me as a naive way to think about pricing (though it's probably consistent with the way finance people think about it). The only reason to charge that same ~4x markup on the additional labor cost is to keep gross margins (as a percentage) unchanged, but that would actually increase profit (as a dollar amount). If you just want to keep the same profit you'd get from offshoring, you can probably increase the price by much less - $13 if demand were perfectly inelastic, somewhat more in practice. Also, that sentence shifts from cost per hour to cost per pair without an explanation. Is 1 pair/worker/hour a realistic estimate? That seems way lower than I'd expect. Surprisingly I couldn't find a good answer to this in 30 seconds of searching. After learning how many manufacturers essentially use slave labor for their products, I've stopped buying clothes manufactured outside the US and EU. I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but that's the simplest reliable one - even e.g. Patagonia, which seems to be trying its best to maintain an ethical supply chain in developing countries, has had its share of issues. The price difference hurts a little bit when I actually make a purchase, but clothes are cheap enough to begin with that the difference ends up being a pretty negligible piece of my overall spending, probably something like $100/year on average.
- coliveira 5y ago
  The issue with manufacturing has nothing to do with labor prices as they try to say in the media. For example, Germany has higher labor costs than the US, and it continues to produce way more than other nations. The true reason has to do with use of capital. The US has perfected a system where capital is highly rewarded for pure financial operations: stock market, futures speculation, banking, real state lending. Manufacturing requires a lot of capital that US players don't want to tie to a lower reward structure. Germany and Chinese capitalists are completely Ok with employing their capital for manufacturing for political/structural reasons. That's why American economists will make thousands of excuses that really make no sense when it comes to the fact that they want to invest as little as possible in manufacturing.
ncphil 5y ago
Over 30 years ago, when still in my mid-20s, periodic visits to a local shoemaker shop (now long ago gone into retirement) for re-soling were part of my young urban professional routine. When one pair was finally too far gone for repair, they hand crafted me a new pair (proudly showing me to the back of the shop to see them make the finishing touches). Best shoes I ever owned. They cost about $50 in 1980s dollars, so not cheap, but also not as expensive as some department store brands. The US didn't just lose manufacturing enterprise in the decades since then, we also lost our small crafts shops.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  People often talk about millennials not repairing anything, but where could we go to do it? There is nowhere you can go to get shoes repaired in a way that doesn't look terrible--and even if you could, shoes aren't built to be repaired. No extra material to sew anything back up after a tear, hollow soles that are glued on with the cheapest possible glue, fake leather, synthetic fibers that tear easily... What are we to do?
  - jolux 5y ago
    You can still buy quality footwear made of quality materials, it just costs more. And I’m not sure athletic footwear has ever been easily repairable, for one thing. Optimizing for weight cancels out many of the affordances you mention.
    - TillE 5y ago
      It's hard to even find well-made stuff. There are tons of things I'd gladly pay a 2x markup for if it were built to last, but in the vast majority of cases it's buried under a mountain of cheap garbage and nearly impossible to discover. Most old reliable brands are now churning out the same type of garbage. Doc Martens is a notable exception in that they do still make and prominently offer Made in England boots.
      - quickthrowman 5y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
That is too bad, but it ain't just shoes. For what it's worth, these are the shoes I like to wear[0], but they ain't cheap. They are very comfortable. [0] https://sasnola.com/collections/all-mens/products/jv-mesh-blue https://sasnola.com/collections/all-mens/products/jv-mesh-bl...
- zekrioca 5y ago
  A little ugly I have to say.. But if you are looking for comfort, yes :)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    Yeah. They are definitely not for style. I get sick of shoes that look comfortable, but aren't (I'm looking at you, Sketchers). I'm on my feet, all day (standing desk). Comfortable shoes are a must.
    - zekrioca 5y ago
      I agree! I’m actually thankful for your hint, since I am in need!
  - Igelau 5y ago
    For $185 you can look like a senior citizen
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      One of the nice things about being old, is you really don't give a damn what people think of the way you look. That's why we like socks and sandals so much. Since the young whippersnappers in the tech industry have already written people like me off, just for being over 40, there's not much to be gained by worrying about whether or not they think I'm stylish. I might as well be comfortable.
      - mmmpop 5y ago
lvl100 5y ago
Quoddy’s of Maine. One of the best shoes made right here in America.
- cycrutchfield 5y ago
  Quoddy, Rancourt, et al. Great quality materials and construction.
Igelau 5y ago
What really pisses me off is tariff engineering. I love minimal, flat, sneakers. I used to routinely buy Converse Chuck Taylors. Canvas, rubber, and eyelets at a reasonable price. After they shipped production overseas, they started embedding soft, slippery felt in the soles, while the price krept up like everything else. Yeah, great, now they can dodge paying a tariff by claiming it's actually a "slipper", but the shoes are garbage now. Thankfully Vans hasn't done this yet.
- enaaem 5y ago
  Also check le coq sportif. They have made in France canvas shoes for 105 euros. Very reasonably priced and they look great.
  - Igelau 5y ago
    That's an awful lot of money for canvas, rubber, and eyelets.
autoliteInline 5y ago
It's funny that leather boots are probably the easiest US-made thing to find (or Mexican-made). Maybe it's the lack of pieces that you find in a modern silly looking athletic shoe. It would be interesting to quantify the impact of labor cost vs. the impact of close-by suppliers and infrastructure. Once the aglet factory is right next door and run by your brother-in-law, there's not much reason to leave a place.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
Tesla and Spacex are not perfect corollaries but they have shown that it is possible to produce things in the US at a lower cost so long as some level of quality is an important aspect of the product. It requires a level of competence that these thin marketing shells of companies like Nike etc cannot achieve though. The underlying problem is that they have lost any know how about how shoes are made, their only remaining competency is how to push slop down the marketing chute.
honksillet 5y ago
I try hard to look for made in America option for multiple products and often find nothing. Why do I look? 1) worker wages 2) worker safety 3) environmental protection 4) shipping from asian to usa produces unnecessary fosel fuel polution
bdowling 5y ago
Literally every shoe that I have bought in the past 10 years has been made in the USA: Allen Edmonds dress shoes, Red Wing (Heritage series) work boots, New Balance (USA 990 series) running shoes, Rainbow (USA series) flip-flops. These are all high quality, well made, durable products that cover all my needs and are a better value for me than cheap imported products.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  Indeed. I've been wearing a pair of Keen trail boots from their "American Built" line since ~2015, and they're still going strong.
- acabal 5y ago
  FYI Allen Edmonds no longer makes all of their shoes in the US; since 2006 parts of the shoe, and sometimes the whole shoe, are made in the Dominican Republic. They were also recently bought by a larger shoe conglomerate so IMHO the writing's on the wall for their MiUSA approach.
- pkaye 5y ago
  I really like the New Balance 990. I have the same opinion as you. It costs a bit more but it is well made and lasts much longer. I hope they continue to make it.
  - Aloha 5y ago
    You might look at the shoes from SAS. They're also US made.
- wyager 5y ago
  There’s also a decent market for European-made shoes - I just picked up some leather/suede Spanish imports from J Fitzpatrick in NY at the per-pair price of a “high-end” Nike sneaker made of plastic in China. Solovair makes boots in the UK in the old doc martens facilities (doc martens are in Vietnam now IIRC).
  - 5y ago
cmclaughlin 5y ago
> "There's really very little commercial reason for why you would make footwear in the U.S. today," Wolverine Shoe company dumped toxic waste from leather tanning operations into the ground water everywhere around their headquarters in Rockford, MI. Not surprisingly, there have been extremely high rates of cancer and various illnesses in the community. It’s hard for me to read a quote about them making shoes anywhere else knowing what they’ve done in the US.
anovikov 5y ago
What's the point of trying to return mind-numbing, truly and unfixably shitty jobs, to the U.S.?
enaaem 5y ago
New Balance still makes shoes in the US. Check for their made in the US line. They are round 180 USD per pair. Not cheap, but I think it is a fair price.
BugWatch 5y ago
For those interested in the topics of shoes, their repaiand cobblery, I'd recommend this fine channel by this fine British lad: https://youtube.com/c/Tringshoerepairkeyshop https://youtube.com/c/Tringshoerepairkeyshop
mvirani 5y ago
If you're interested in ethical shoe manufacturing and how the process works I'd recommend checking out https://italianshoefactory.com/ https://italianshoefactory.com/. Industry guides can be found on the blog https://italianshoefactory.com/blog/ https://italianshoefactory.com/blog/. Offering small batch manufacturing and custom footwear with manufacturing facilities in Dubai and Italy. [disc: I'm one of the directors here and happy to answer any questions].
dude4you 5y ago
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/09/29/adidas-brings-jobs-back-home-but-not-for-people/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmar... Just fyi. This project may have even gotten canceled. But it shows the future and china is very afraid of it. I also know German companies trying to bring asian footwear production back right now.

148 points by nonbirithm 5y ago

> "it's very hard to envision a scenario where we'd make the types of products that we make, at the prices that we make them, in $PlaceWhereWeSellThem" Doesn't this sound like "our business model is working just fine, please don't disrupt it"?

colpabar 5y ago
another way to say that would be >"it's very hard to envision a scenario where we'd make the types of products that we make, at the effectively slave labor prices we pay people to make them, in a place that would require us to pay them more."
da_chicken 5y ago
Sure, but it also sounds like, "Capital is global, labor is local."
geon 5y ago
No? Isn’t the problem the high manufacturing cost? How would you “disrupt” that?
- dd36 5y ago
  Robots. Environmental trade law.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    No one had figured out how to automate the sewing yet, and not for lack of trying.
deckard1 5y ago
The business was already disrupted. That's why they are in Asia. How are you going to disrupt that? By lowering the costs even further with... an Uber-meets-X app? Slavery-as-a-Service?
throwaway984393 5y ago
It's very hard to disrupt their business model. You can't make shoes cheaper than they are. You could try to attack a different market segment, like more expensive shoes, but that isn't disruption. You could try a marketing gimmick, like "buy these more expensive shoes and we will send you replacements for life." But it wouldn't be sustainable, and the competition could just offer the same thing and there goes your disruption. You could probably get a couple of years of press, just long enough to sell the company and make the founders a mint (if anyone's dumb enough to buy it).
MattGaiser 5y ago
If you can make shoes more cheaply, I am sure they are happy to manufacture with you instead. However, making shoes more cheaply almost assuredly means finding a way to get rid of the human labour.

adrianvincent 5y ago

Kanye West is going to bring Yeezy manufacturing back to the US. Here's an interview from 2 years ago that is very insightful: https://youtu.be/ihfG8qlhW04?t=760 https://youtu.be/ihfG8qlhW04?t=760

black_13 5y ago

The hidden cost of maintaining the appearance of a middle class is having one slave class in asia to make products and having a second one to serve.

les_diabolique 5y ago

I went through a phase of buying Made in US and Canada footwear such as Alden and Viberg, and to be honest, I don't think I could ever buy a cheap pair of shoes again. I recognize I'm paying for the inefficient process, but the construction and quality is amazing. Even when it comes to buying sneakers, I prefer Made IN US New Balance over a pair of Nikes.

larrywright 5y ago
Same here. Rancourt is another great one - they make their shoes in Maine and even offer custom shoes. I have a pair and they are amazing. Not as expensive as you’d think, either.
fmajid 5y ago
Or Made in France Mephisto and Weston, or Made in UK Church’s.
- les_diabolique 5y ago
  Church's is very nice. I have a few a pairs of Gaziano and Girling and Edward Greens, and the quality is amazing on them.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    Yes, many good British brands remain, it's not because French, British or Italian labor is much cheaper than US.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
neilpanchal 5y ago
Made in Australia - RM Williams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ef5pqWLrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ef5pqWLrE
ashtonkem 5y ago
Even within a brand. The difference of quality and durability between my regular Keens and my made in America Keens is astounding. The Vietnam made ones got returned after failing after 50 or so miles, while my American made ones have only lost a pair of laces in 500 miles. Honestly, the higher quality pair is now significantly cheaper per use than the cheaper ones (if we disregard REIs return policy at least).

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

All industry has been outsourced to Asia. The hilarious thing is that in the Victorian age English factories made clothes for the Empire. That's how European countries made their money: force their colonies to buy European products. Trade at gunpoint.

robocat 5y ago
The Indian Salt Hedge was a customs barrier built by the British across India to prevent Indian people from smuggling salt from coastal regions, in order to avoid the substantial salt tax. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line
echelon 5y ago
From the article, > Footwear manufacturing has long included machines — cutting or gluing soles. But higher-level innovation? Ironically, factory owners said that's happening where the industry is — overseas. Even the automation is happening in Asia. If we don't use this as our opportunity to re-onshore, we're going to fall far behind. Perhaps permanently so. We should be providing every tax incentive under the sun to domestic companies working on automating manufacturing.

hguant 5y ago

I think the key take away from the article is this line: >...higher-level innovation? Ironically, factory owners said that's happening where the industry is — overseas. I don't think there's anything ironic about this. Innovation happens close to the product, where you can get a true understanding of what you're doing and what the process is. We see this in projects gone awry all the time - until you're sitting at your desk working on the project, you don't know what the problem space actually is. In addition to all the obvious problems with the dismantling of America's manufacturing capacity, I think this is one of the real, critical, and silent issues - for a country that keeps touting innovation, not a lot of that happens here... apart from industries where there still is a strong manufacturing core in the country. The mercantilist rhetoric about buy American is stupid, but so is the blind faith that global capitalism won't destroy the ground it's built on.

jollybean 5y ago
This is not electronics though. Nike et. al. are fundamentally and intimately aware and involved with all technical aspects of the design. The factories in Vietnam are not hiring long distance runners and putting up tracks, hiring PhDs to measure gate, develop new materials. More obviously, Vietnamese factories cannot afford to hire Michael Jordan et. al. and the world's top Ad Agencies who actually drive sales. Of all of the sectors that we should be concerned about, this one is not it. 1) Shoes are odd and there's no way we're going to make robots anytime soon to do all these nimble things that require hands. 2) Overseas makers don't have any technical leverage - and definitely not brand power - so it's unlikely they'll usurp the system. 3) It's not a strategic sector. I don't think there's much we can do here. I'd be more interested in high end robots to make cars and electronics cheaper. Electronics is one area that we could endeavour to 'bring jobs back'. Shoes, not so much.

throwaway7542io 5y ago

throwaway... but I just wanted to mention Thorogood shoes. I've owned two pairs of their (quite reasonably priced) American learher shoes. The first one lasted 6yrs and I'm still wearing the second pair. I tried their foreign made "waterproof" and they are alright, but kind of stink literally after a long day

icegreentea2 5y ago

> And that cost quadruples after wholesale and retail markups, he said, ballooning into a $50 price difference between a pair made in the U.S. versus in China. This is the part that the child part of my brain always has trouble dealing with. This always seems ridiculous in my brain. I can intellectually understand why businesses want to scale their margins with costs, but it just seems so self-destructive (from a systemic standpoint) for something like shoes. I don't know how this could really be different, but I hate it.

deycallmeajay 5y ago
I actually would appreciate if someone could explain what this is.
randallsquared 5y ago
The cost of inventory is a gamble that you'll be able to sell it. If that cost grows but the upside doesn't, you literally cannot afford to take the risk of buying inventory that you hope to sell.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  JIT supply lines, sales tracking and inventory software integration, and the sophisticated sales forecasting that enables, change the risk calculation. But parasitic margins seem just as bad now as ever. I'm not convinced by this argument.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > But parasitic margins seem just as bad now as ever. What parasitic margins? Retail operations have 2% to 4% profit margins, and even Nike has around 10%, maybe 12% some years.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Isn't most of that outside cost to manufacture though?

intricatedetail 5y ago

So people wanted employment rights etc, but didn't want to pay for it and as a result most goods where it is too costly are made were those rights don't apply. Monumental hypocrisy and a nuke in the foot...

Aloha 5y ago

Virtually all of my shoes are American made, but they're all cowboy boots.

seneca 5y ago

The more I look at the effects of globalization, the more I think free trade is akin to Reagonomics. Basically a huge scam for everyone in a developed country, except the owners of megacorporations. It destroys our ability to manufacture, destroys our middle class, makes us dependent on a geopolitical enemy, destroys any chance of local competition, and in return we get cheap garbage goods. In reality, what is happening is arbitrage of environmental and labor protections. More and more I think developed nations need to maintain an index that rates every country on these grounds, and strictly enforced tariffs based on that index. I'm all for other countries being able to specialize and out compete, but slave-like working conditions and destroying the environment shouldn't be competitive advantages on a global market.

knubie 5y ago
There is an upside to integrating global economies which is far less conflicts are taking place between counties now.
robotresearcher 5y ago
> we get cheap garbage goods ... along with many of the most high-quality, low-tolerance manufactured parts and products ever made.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Yeah, China today makes world class products. I started buying Chinese smartphones, they work great, doesn't come with much crapware and are super cheap per performance. I don't see the point in paying extra for a western company to take basically the same phone, put a brand on it and crap in it.
cycrutchfield 5y ago
Sorry, why are the only beneficiaries “owners of megacorporations”? What about the average family who can buy a TV for $500 instead of for $1000? Do they not benefit from the cost of goods being lower due to global trade?

dwohnitmok 5y ago

I'm a little bit more mystified why there aren't more niche shoes being made in the U.S. where buyers are both willing to pay more and where buyers are much more discerning about small differences. For example weightlifting shoes are absolutely dominated by made in China shoes, and these are not at a low price point. The only made in US weightlifting shoes I know of (Position) are apparently quite poor quality and absolutely blown out of the water by the others (on the other hand, outside of shoes, there is a lot of made in the US weightlifting equipment which is very high quality and apparently enjoys healthy sales as a result). Maybe I'm missing certain niches? But my uninformed impression is that this is also true for shoes in other sports such as running, and other industries such as construction.

ativzzz 5y ago
Probably because the people capable of building that necessary expertise choose to go into more profitable and easy to access ventures, like software as a service, and I don't mean software developers.
bubblethink 5y ago
There are plenty of high end leather shoes made in the US, UK, or Europe that will set you back anywhere from $250 to $1k+. Back when massdrop used to feature a wide selection of items, shoes used to feature quite regularly.
cycrutchfield 5y ago
One such niche is dress shoes. Companies like Alden make all their shoes in the US and maintain a very high level of quality even at their price point.

aazaa 5y ago

> "We'll post jobs," he said, "and it's very seldom that someone under the age of 40 is coming in the door to apply." Among the workers who remain, arthritis is a common struggle. > "A lot of the people have said multiple times that they definitely don't want their son or daughter doing this [making shoes]," Heselton [of Maine Mountain Moccasin] said. "That's tough to hear." The sense of loss implied in the title makes sense. But ultimately, were these good jobs to begin with? The article doesn't even mention the environmental problems associated with curing leather, or making other components. All of those costs have been shipped overseas, along with the jobs. The problem, of course, is that this practice of having China, Inc. make everything used in this US is increasing reliance on an increasingly problematic country.

ativzzz 5y ago
> The problem, of course, is that this practice of having China, Inc. make everything used in this US is increasing reliance on an increasingly problematic country. The article mentions factories moving to other Asian countries as it's cheaper there.
wrycoder 5y ago
150 years ago in New England, it was a common winter occupation for many families to make shoes by hand in one of the back rooms.

js2 5y ago

See also, The Last American Baseball Glove Factory: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706295355/the-last-american-baseball-glove-factory https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706295355/the-last-american-b... https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704503206/a-small-town-in-texas-is-home-to-one-of-the-last-baseball-glove-factories-in-the https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704503206/a-small-town-in-tex... (It's Nocona, in Nocona, TX.)

cjohansson 5y ago

'Made by America' could be a marketing thing to try in the US. Sweden does it with Volvo cars and most people still believe Volvo cars are made in Sweden, the text is so similar you hardly notice the difference

deleted 5y ago
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chrisseaton 5y ago
> most people still believe Volvo cars are made in Sweden But they are made in Sweden? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_p...
yuppie_scum 5y ago
Many companies absolutely lean into Made in America.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
"Designed in the US" is the usual marketing ploy which is marginally more honest.
- C19is20 5y ago
  Also "Designed in European Country, [ah, but] made in Asian sweatshop", is very common 'over here'. Just seems so....cheap, exploitative and somewhat embarrassing to me. I try to avoid them.

lazyjones 5y ago

Forcing merchants to clearly display country of origin and having filters for it would quickly improve the situation. But there are worse product categories in this regard - try children's toys...

tfehring 5y ago

> For a shoe-factory job paying $12 an hour, the actual cost of shoemaking — when adding benefits — grows to $16 an hour, compared with about $3 an hour in China, said Mike Jeppesen, head of global operations at Wolverine Worldwide, which owns brands like Merrell, Sperry and Keds. And that cost quadruples after wholesale and retail markups, he said, ballooning into a $50 price difference between a pair made in the U.S. versus in China. This strikes me as a naive way to think about pricing (though it's probably consistent with the way finance people think about it). The only reason to charge that same ~4x markup on the additional labor cost is to keep gross margins (as a percentage) unchanged, but that would actually increase profit (as a dollar amount). If you just want to keep the same profit you'd get from offshoring, you can probably increase the price by much less - $13 if demand were perfectly inelastic, somewhat more in practice. Also, that sentence shifts from cost per hour to cost per pair without an explanation. Is 1 pair/worker/hour a realistic estimate? That seems way lower than I'd expect. Surprisingly I couldn't find a good answer to this in 30 seconds of searching. After learning how many manufacturers essentially use slave labor for their products, I've stopped buying clothes manufactured outside the US and EU. I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but that's the simplest reliable one - even e.g. Patagonia, which seems to be trying its best to maintain an ethical supply chain in developing countries, has had its share of issues. The price difference hurts a little bit when I actually make a purchase, but clothes are cheap enough to begin with that the difference ends up being a pretty negligible piece of my overall spending, probably something like $100/year on average.

coliveira 5y ago
The issue with manufacturing has nothing to do with labor prices as they try to say in the media. For example, Germany has higher labor costs than the US, and it continues to produce way more than other nations. The true reason has to do with use of capital. The US has perfected a system where capital is highly rewarded for pure financial operations: stock market, futures speculation, banking, real state lending. Manufacturing requires a lot of capital that US players don't want to tie to a lower reward structure. Germany and Chinese capitalists are completely Ok with employing their capital for manufacturing for political/structural reasons. That's why American economists will make thousands of excuses that really make no sense when it comes to the fact that they want to invest as little as possible in manufacturing.

ncphil 5y ago

Over 30 years ago, when still in my mid-20s, periodic visits to a local shoemaker shop (now long ago gone into retirement) for re-soling were part of my young urban professional routine. When one pair was finally too far gone for repair, they hand crafted me a new pair (proudly showing me to the back of the shop to see them make the finishing touches). Best shoes I ever owned. They cost about $50 in 1980s dollars, so not cheap, but also not as expensive as some department store brands. The US didn't just lose manufacturing enterprise in the decades since then, we also lost our small crafts shops.

thesuitonym 5y ago
People often talk about millennials not repairing anything, but where could we go to do it? There is nowhere you can go to get shoes repaired in a way that doesn't look terrible--and even if you could, shoes aren't built to be repaired. No extra material to sew anything back up after a tear, hollow soles that are glued on with the cheapest possible glue, fake leather, synthetic fibers that tear easily... What are we to do?
- jolux 5y ago
  You can still buy quality footwear made of quality materials, it just costs more. And I’m not sure athletic footwear has ever been easily repairable, for one thing. Optimizing for weight cancels out many of the affordances you mention.
  - TillE 5y ago
    It's hard to even find well-made stuff. There are tons of things I'd gladly pay a 2x markup for if it were built to last, but in the vast majority of cases it's buried under a mountain of cheap garbage and nearly impossible to discover. Most old reliable brands are now churning out the same type of garbage. Doc Martens is a notable exception in that they do still make and prominently offer Made in England boots.
    - quickthrowman 5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

That is too bad, but it ain't just shoes. For what it's worth, these are the shoes I like to wear[0], but they ain't cheap. They are very comfortable. [0] https://sasnola.com/collections/all-mens/products/jv-mesh-blue https://sasnola.com/collections/all-mens/products/jv-mesh-bl...

zekrioca 5y ago
A little ugly I have to say.. But if you are looking for comfort, yes :)
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Yeah. They are definitely not for style. I get sick of shoes that look comfortable, but aren't (I'm looking at you, Sketchers). I'm on my feet, all day (standing desk). Comfortable shoes are a must.
  - zekrioca 5y ago
    I agree! I’m actually thankful for your hint, since I am in need!
- Igelau 5y ago
  For $185 you can look like a senior citizen
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    One of the nice things about being old, is you really don't give a damn what people think of the way you look. That's why we like socks and sandals so much. Since the young whippersnappers in the tech industry have already written people like me off, just for being over 40, there's not much to be gained by worrying about whether or not they think I'm stylish. I might as well be comfortable.
    - mmmpop 5y ago

lvl100 5y ago

Quoddy’s of Maine. One of the best shoes made right here in America.

cycrutchfield 5y ago
Quoddy, Rancourt, et al. Great quality materials and construction.

Igelau 5y ago

What really pisses me off is tariff engineering. I love minimal, flat, sneakers. I used to routinely buy Converse Chuck Taylors. Canvas, rubber, and eyelets at a reasonable price. After they shipped production overseas, they started embedding soft, slippery felt in the soles, while the price krept up like everything else. Yeah, great, now they can dodge paying a tariff by claiming it's actually a "slipper", but the shoes are garbage now. Thankfully Vans hasn't done this yet.

enaaem 5y ago
Also check le coq sportif. They have made in France canvas shoes for 105 euros. Very reasonably priced and they look great.
- Igelau 5y ago
  That's an awful lot of money for canvas, rubber, and eyelets.

autoliteInline 5y ago

It's funny that leather boots are probably the easiest US-made thing to find (or Mexican-made). Maybe it's the lack of pieces that you find in a modern silly looking athletic shoe. It would be interesting to quantify the impact of labor cost vs. the impact of close-by suppliers and infrastructure. Once the aglet factory is right next door and run by your brother-in-law, there's not much reason to leave a place.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

Tesla and Spacex are not perfect corollaries but they have shown that it is possible to produce things in the US at a lower cost so long as some level of quality is an important aspect of the product. It requires a level of competence that these thin marketing shells of companies like Nike etc cannot achieve though. The underlying problem is that they have lost any know how about how shoes are made, their only remaining competency is how to push slop down the marketing chute.

honksillet 5y ago

I try hard to look for made in America option for multiple products and often find nothing. Why do I look? 1) worker wages 2) worker safety 3) environmental protection 4) shipping from asian to usa produces unnecessary fosel fuel polution

bdowling 5y ago

Literally every shoe that I have bought in the past 10 years has been made in the USA: Allen Edmonds dress shoes, Red Wing (Heritage series) work boots, New Balance (USA 990 series) running shoes, Rainbow (USA series) flip-flops. These are all high quality, well made, durable products that cover all my needs and are a better value for me than cheap imported products.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
Indeed. I've been wearing a pair of Keen trail boots from their "American Built" line since ~2015, and they're still going strong.
acabal 5y ago
FYI Allen Edmonds no longer makes all of their shoes in the US; since 2006 parts of the shoe, and sometimes the whole shoe, are made in the Dominican Republic. They were also recently bought by a larger shoe conglomerate so IMHO the writing's on the wall for their MiUSA approach.
pkaye 5y ago
I really like the New Balance 990. I have the same opinion as you. It costs a bit more but it is well made and lasts much longer. I hope they continue to make it.
- Aloha 5y ago
  You might look at the shoes from SAS. They're also US made.
wyager 5y ago
There’s also a decent market for European-made shoes - I just picked up some leather/suede Spanish imports from J Fitzpatrick in NY at the per-pair price of a “high-end” Nike sneaker made of plastic in China. Solovair makes boots in the UK in the old doc martens facilities (doc martens are in Vietnam now IIRC).
- 5y ago

cmclaughlin 5y ago

> "There's really very little commercial reason for why you would make footwear in the U.S. today," Wolverine Shoe company dumped toxic waste from leather tanning operations into the ground water everywhere around their headquarters in Rockford, MI. Not surprisingly, there have been extremely high rates of cancer and various illnesses in the community. It’s hard for me to read a quote about them making shoes anywhere else knowing what they’ve done in the US.

anovikov 5y ago

What's the point of trying to return mind-numbing, truly and unfixably shitty jobs, to the U.S.?

enaaem 5y ago

New Balance still makes shoes in the US. Check for their made in the US line. They are round 180 USD per pair. Not cheap, but I think it is a fair price.

BugWatch 5y ago

For those interested in the topics of shoes, their repaiand cobblery, I'd recommend this fine channel by this fine British lad: https://youtube.com/c/Tringshoerepairkeyshop https://youtube.com/c/Tringshoerepairkeyshop

mvirani 5y ago

If you're interested in ethical shoe manufacturing and how the process works I'd recommend checking out https://italianshoefactory.com/ https://italianshoefactory.com/. Industry guides can be found on the blog https://italianshoefactory.com/blog/ https://italianshoefactory.com/blog/. Offering small batch manufacturing and custom footwear with manufacturing facilities in Dubai and Italy. [disc: I'm one of the directors here and happy to answer any questions].

dude4you 5y ago

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/09/29/adidas-brings-jobs-back-home-but-not-for-people/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmar... Just fyi. This project may have even gotten canceled. But it shows the future and china is very afraid of it. I also know German companies trying to bring asian footwear production back right now.