THE FLORSHEIM SHOE STORY
Delivered to
March 29, 2004
Just two years ago, in March, 2002, Florsheim Shoe Company announced its filing for bankruptcy. Simultaneously, Milwaukee-based Weyco Group, headed by Thomas W. Florsheim, grandson of the founder Milton Florsheim, moved to acquire its assets. Weyco did so and now markets Florsheim shoes. This is the story of the shoe company that dominated men's shoes, becoming a brand name that ranks with Bigelow on the floor, Frigidaire on the fridge, and Cadillac on the auto, to name a few exemplars.
Buyers in large part were in small towns, each with three or four general stores which branded what they sold. National brand names meant little. The retailer's name went on the product. The wholesaler went along. It was how things were done.
The salesman arrived by train, rented a buggy, and made the rounds. His goal was to sell all three or four general stores. His product with no name would become Jones's or Brown's shoes.
What's more, Jones and he would haggle over price. If Jones bought more, he expected to pay less per item. This was worth it to the shoemaker, whose salesman offered volume discounts and threw branding into the bargain! The same shoe would be branded three ways for sale to three retailers in the same town.
Milton Florsheim recoiled instinctively against such a reactive position. This was no way to run a business, he decided. You didn't just sit there and wait for people to decide how much you would receive for your product. It wasn't the principle; it was the money. Neither did you squander the benefits of making a superior product; if people didn't know it was your product, you lost out.
He decided there would be no more store names on his shoes. On pullstrap and sole would be his name, Florsheim. Let the retailer take pride where he willed, Florsheim would take pride in its product. The Florsheim name would announce quality.
At the same time, he began to force the issue by advertising. One ad told the reader: "There is a Florsheim dealer ready to serve you. If you are unable to locate him, write us." The ad whetted the appetite for shoe: it also prodded the customer to keep the company informed of untouched market territory.
The retailer rebelling against the Florsheim policy might see the ad when a customer showed it to him, seeking this shoe that would feel so good. "See? It says right here," the customer might say. "As soon as you put them on!" The retailer wasn't used to being sold by his customer who had been sold through advertising. Or short-circuiting the process, the retailer saw the ads and anticipated the customer's request. Either way, Florsheim sold its shoes.
Sixty years later, marketing people called it forced distribution, but the rose smelled sweet whatever the name. It paid to advertise.
THE STORE OF THE DAY, where this exchange might have taken place, resembled one offering "boots, shoes, and notions" in Kewanee, Illinois, described years later by the son of its proprietor -- 30 feet wide by 125 feet deep, with a metal ceiling 15 feet high or more, covered with three-foot steel squares. From the center of every sixth square or so hung a long, green cord with a light socket and bulb at its end.
Out front were ceiling-high display windows 30 feet each way for the corner store, each up to three feet deep. The windows were trimmed (decorated) by a store owner's family member of supposed artistic abilities. Shoes were racked for display on "iron maidens," or display racks.
In
the rear of the store itself, boots and shoes rose "everywhere (in) boxes
in white tiers." Ladders were pushed here and there by clerks.
In the center were easy chairs for customers and stools for fitters. Into
such a store walked the Florsheim salesman. The owner was used to selling
shoes with his label on them. He was used to "no holding of
price," as Harold Florsheim,
The dealers did not like it at first, and production slipped from that 150 pairs a day. There were probably some white-knuckle months, while the advertising took hold.
But it did take hold, and in 1900 the company built a factory at Adams and Clinton. This Florsheim factory was one of 16,000 shoe factories in the country. Its philosophy was settled: make and brand quality men's shoes, sell at a fixed price, and advertise. In a few years, it added a fourth item: if necessary to get distribution, open your own store.
The first company-owned store in Chicago, following openings in Dallas, Louisville, Salt Lake City, and Indianapolis, opened in 1904 at 18 West Jackson, just east of the Majestic hotel, beyond which lay the Great Northern Hotel, the Post Office, and the U.S. court house. Across the street and also to the west were the Monadnock building and the Union League Club. A top-flight location indeed.
Advertising was key. The magazine advertising medium of choice was The Saturday Evening Post, which carried Florsheim ads from its first issue in 1907 to its last as a weekly in 1969. In 1909 The Post announced a $12 shoe made with the "ped-pli" manufacturing process, in 1911 a $6 shoe, in 1913 shoes from $5 to $7 in 200 styles. "Look for the Florsheim sign," said the ad. "You'll find a live dealer ready to show you correct styles to fit your feet."
Ah yes, the sign. The Florsheim sign was to become the Schlitz or Budweiser of the shoe industry -- announcing quality, the top of the line in its class.
Florsheim salesmen fanned out. By 1916 fourteen covered the entire
Samples were crucial, but by 1917 the salesman also had a "styles"
booklet showing "a few of the 250 lasts and leathers from our
made-to-order line." For ready-made and made-to-order, "the
same standard quality" was guaranteed. Prices were up -- to a range
of $5.10 to $6.25 wholesale -- because of the war in
The Florsheim shoe took dozens of shapes and colors. There was the all-nut-brown "Russia calf(skin) Imperial quality bal" with a "Gothic" last, perforated tip, blind eyelets to the top (laced), a "plump" single sole, and pegged heels retailing for $6.25. "Imperial is the best quality," the dealers were told, if they didn't already believe it.
There were pointed-toe shoes, of mahogany
And (revolution!) there were rounded toes with inch and a quarter heels, and high toes which gave lots of room to move that big toe around. "You can sell Florsheim high toes when you cannot sell others," the dealer was assured.
Florsheim offered a "scientifically constructed" golf shoe with tan uppers, overweight single outer sole, and caulked sole and heel, "pronounced the best shoe of its kind by expert players."
"National advertising has created . . . the remarkable demand for Florsheims," dealers were told. "It is influencing the trade in your own community, educating more men to wear better shoes, the men you want to sell."
THE ROAR OF THE TWENTIES
When
the Florsheim brothers returned from naval duty in 1918, they found styles
changing, away from high shoes and pointed toes to a more comfortable wide toe
such as soldiers had worn.
The city had recently hosted a national shoe exposition. There was talk, never realized, of a footwear building along lines of the merchandise or furniture marts, where shoe, leather, and footwear firms might have offices and showrooms.
It
was a heady time. Florsheim built a second factory, at
Construction of the Harding factory, opened in 1926, won an award for being
built according to the Landis principles, after
Florsheim shoes were retailing at $10. Harold ran advertising; his older
brother Irving ran manufacturing. Their father
Magazines remained the prime national advertising medium. But there also was radio. Florsheim sponsored a half-hour program featuring Guy Lombardo and other top bands.
Company-owned stores got special attention. Harold and his father made a
New York trip in 1922 to look over a location on 42nd Street near Broadway, all
of 10 feet, six inches wide and 30 feet deep -- not big enough to handle the
inventory, which they put elsewhere in the building. They opened another
on Broadway, then one on Wall Street. Competition was "severe,"
but the stores did well. More were opened, in Brooklyn,
Good times were rolling. From 1923 to 1929, profits never dropped below $2.2 million and reached as high as $2.6 million, 1923 to 1929.
Style will out, however, and also in 1926, Florsheim sold the nation's first square-toed shoe. "Most of our big business was in our square toes," Harold said later.
In
1928 the company went public with 35% of its stock, listing on the New York
Stock Exchange. The company had grown to its present size "entirely
through the reinvestment of earnings,"
It
had more than 50 company-owned stores in "principal"
In
addition, Florsheim had "substantial export trade" with Central and
Prosperity shone in the wake of the public offering. In September, 1928,
So, unhappily, were a lot of people.
The second biggest news in the fall of 1929 for Florsheim Shoes was its announcement of entry into manufacture of women's shoes -- a startling departure. A month almost to the day before the Crash, the company leased a four-story building at Lincoln and Bloomingdale on Chicago's North Side for making women's shoes.
Women's shoes were a big success, reaching its peak in 1970 but in two years were referred to by an analyst as "only recently" a major factor for Florsheim. By the mid-70s the company was out of women's shoe manufacturing. The imports had done it. Cost pressures on manufacturing were too great. The company stayed with retailing women's shoes.
If
entering women's shoes was important for Florsheim in 1930, so was hiring
Joseph B. Stancliffe in September of that year to establish and head a retail
division and in the process deliver a style of his own to Florsheim
retailing. Stancliffe, 33, came from Regal Shoe Company, in
If
credit is to be given, however, the founder Milton Florsheim stood tallest in
these years. It was "generally conceded" that the company's
success stemmed from "the dominant and aggressive influence" of
The
company still had its "substantial surplus."
He
was doing his civic duty at the time, serving several terms as president of the
South State Street Improvement Association, which busied itself with widening
Congress and Polk streets and making one station out of the city's three --
Grand Central,
It
was a good sign, he told The Tribune, that the federal government was
putting up a 120-foot arcade through the new post office building "astride
Meanwhile, profits were down. A special reserve was established, apparently to shore up and even buy out dealers who couldn't make it. Florsheim had the wherewithal to do that. By mid-decade, it owned some 85 stores, compared to 50 stores 11 years earlier.
"No one (but farmers) should be allowed to work more than 40 hours in any
one week . . . for three years." Prices "might advance a
little,"
Then he was even more effectively reminded of the difficulty of the situation by Florsheim's performance in fiscal 1932 -- a net loss of $40,529, the first loss year in the company's history.
Advertising went with the times, proclaiming "the day of the careful dollar!" and advising that there was "no extravagance in quality footwear."
A 1933 Saturday Evening Post ad shared space with an aptly named F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, "I Got Shoes."
In
1936 the Florsheim golf shoe was "the pick of the pros," designed
with the help of the American Ryder Cup team. The 1937 golf shoe was
"endorsed by the PGA" while remaining "the choice of
Florsheim was on the radio too, sponsoring a 1931 show on NBC, "The Florsheim Shoe Frolic." But through it all, Harold Florsheim was never satisfied. "We never advertise enough," he said years later.
Meanwhile, a separate retail division was started, with Stancliffe the "showman" at its head. He bought up the most successful dealerships. He made the all-important sign bigger than the store itself if possible, at the busiest corner, where no one could miss it. The sign did most to publicize the name, according to some Florsheim veterans. And the window stopped traffic with its dramatic displays.
In at least one window, in 1938, Florsheim installed a man putting finishing touches on a pair of shoes. As he worked, crowds gathered. It was a natural.
Some windows told stories, like the "just arrived" window with new products dropping by parachute to the window floor.
Florsheim windows sent a message to those who weren't, showing dealers what a Florsheim store should look like.
Florsheim opened a women's store in Chicago's Pittsfield Building in August,
1934 -- air-conditioned, if you please -- part of the deal was that it would
keep its windows lit at night, in an effort to "brighten up" Wabash
Street, "at present one of the dark spots in the Loop at night,"
according to The Tribune. A recent survey had shown that every
store but one on Wabash and
In
charge of it all was the head retailer Stancliffe, who prevailed on the
Florsheims to let him move out of the
The two worked closely together. Harold approved of this separated-retail approach. Stancliffe, he said, was right about the separation, because each had a different point of view. "If you let the factory merchandise the store, they would sell shoes that were best for them to make," he said. Instead, manufacturing should listen to retailers, as closer to the customer.
Milton Florsheim stayed with the economic problem. He called for a freeze on wages as well as hours. This would cause prices to recede and real wages to advance, he said in a Tribune guest column. He opposed "price-fixing and production control," however, except for oil and other natural resources. Recovery was "well underway," he wrote, and would continue its "slow upward climb" if President Roosevelt "and his advisers" would refrain from "stepping on the gas" to speed things up. The answer, he said, lay in two or three years of his proposed wage and hour "stabilization."
1935 was a near-$600,000 year for Florsheim. The company was distributing a quarter of its output through its 85 company-owned outlets, the rest through some 6,000 dealers. Its production capacity was 7,500 to 8,000 pairs of men's shoes a day and 2,000 of women's. Orders and retail sales were running "well ahead of a year ago" and showed "very much better consumer demand for our product," said Irving Florsheim in his annual letter.
The
company was doing very well. So was the industry. By mid-1936,
But
the end was near for Milton Florsheim. He had a heart attack in
Sam
Goodman was named board chairman.
Shoe prices fluctuated during 1937. Shoe makers were reported "aghast" at an expected "avalanche" of Czechoslovakian imports. For Florsheim, it was a good year, with a net of $928,000. Florsheim was the fourth-largest shoe manufacturer, according to the Securities Exchange Commission, with $9.4 million in assets. International Shoe, which was to buy Florsheim in 1952, was the largest, with $83.6 million assets, Endicott Johnson was next with $44.5 million, Brown Shoe Company was third with $16.9 million.
The
industry had shaken down further. there were 1,080 non-rubber shoemaking
establishments in the
Then came 1938, what Irving Florsheim called "an exceedingly difficult" year, reflecting "the general business rescession" [sic] and declining prices, ending, however in a 60-day upturn when Florsheim factories operated at near capacity.
Matters improved in 1939. A $998,000 net profit reflected "improvement in general business conditions." Plants were at capacity. And for what it was worth, nylon stockings debuted this year worldwide.
As
the year ended, a Life Magazine ad proclaimed, "Your Florsheim
dealer has the right gift for a Merry Christmas and a Happy Shoe
Year." Florsheim had survived, but its shoemaking capacity had grown
almost not at all in 10 years. It was 10,000 pairs a day, by no means a
ranking position among
The company's profit topped a million in 1940, as it did only once in those ten years. Business was "very active," plants operated at capacity. In 1941, Harold Florsheim went to Washington as a "dollar a year man" (executive volunteer), heading the shoe and leather section of the Office of Production Management, one of many wartime offices established to help meet the deepening emergency. While there, he had "put a ceiling on" leather prices. He came back in November, 1941. It was time to tend the store again.
Then
he was off to the quartermaster corps, but not before passing on to his fellow
shoe men some of the wisdom he had acquired in
Why
not? Because the government would step in with controls. Materials
were not a problem. "Ample basic material" was there to handle
expansion, as for military and "lend-lease" uses (to aid
It happened. A few months later, the government tightened up on shoe production, setting aside 80% of top-grade leather soles for military use as part of a "soldiers first" policy. Price controls were enforced to keep civilian demand from creating a runaway market. The quartermaster corps experimented with plastic shoe soles.
Months later, in August, about the time of the battle of
Harold Florsheim was off doing just that, in Europe as assistant to the chief
quartermaster, helping to clear shipping logjams for two years in
Meanwhile, Florsheim made shoes for the
Labor shortage was another major problem. About 1,000 Florsheim employees were in military service, many of them "highly trained over many years." It became "impossible . . . to maintain our previous level of production, notwithstanding large expenditures for overtime."
Shoe rationing began during 1943, followed by rationing of meat, cheese, fats, and canned foods. Ration stamps, as we pronounced it, were the consumer's ticket to buying. The money was around, maybe more than ever and certainly more than in the previous 10 years. Finding shoes to buy was the problem.
When
rumors flew around Christmas, 1944, that ration stamps would be cancelled,
there was a run that depleted the national civilian inventory by 10 million
pairs in a week. The government had printed stamps for 39 million more
pairs than were available. Men's shoes were in shortest supply.
Even the army was lowering its requirements for grades of leather in view of
the "prolonged and muddier" warfare which was raging in
The president of the National Shoe Manufacturers Assn. proposed making more shoes from substitute materials. The industry had produced twice as many nonleather outdoor shoes in 1944 than in 1943. Even then, civilian needs collided with those of the Navy and jungle and Arctic troops.
Leather shoe production dropped 35% for civilians between 1941 and 1944, but
total civilian production dropped only 15%. Fabric and slipper-type shoes
had filled the gap. What had been a summer seasonal specialty was now
one-third of
Florsheim the shoemaker stayed with its last, you might say, making as many of its leather quality men's shoes as possible for civilian use, in addition to filling government contracts. When 1945 ended, so did the contracts. Florsheim made its final shipment for the military on Oct. 1, 1945, and in the nick of time, such was the pent-up civilian demand.
Florsheim needed a new factory. On Oct. 31, 1949, the new plant opened at Clinton and Adams, kitty-corner from its old one. It was a statement of faith in the city, said The Tribune. The company could have moved to the outskirts, but that would have placed it beyond daily reach of its employees. The Florsheims did not want to "disturb (their) home arrangements" by requiring them to move.
The
new building was considered a first step toward improving conditions on the
Milton Florsheim's widow cut a ribbon. Mayor Martin H. Kennelly was introduced as "a gentleman who left a profitable business (trucking) to enter public life," one who had tried "to give our city an honest, capable, non-political administration second to none in the country." In a few years he would be out of office, replaced, indeed ousted, by a man whose name was to become synonymous with big-city politics, Richard J. Daley.
The
building was the first new near-Loop factory in 10 years. It was "the
first major
It
was designed by Alfred P. Shaw, till recently of Graham, Anderson, Probst &
White, known for its work on the
The
building was copied a lot, said Jack Dolio, son of the building's mechanical
and electrical engineer and himself an architect, in an interview. His
father, John Dolio, a friend of the Florsheims, took yearly cruises to Europe
with them and did work on the Florsheims' farms in
Meanwhile, the Florsheim salesman got his marching orders based on the needs of the market. And he knew what went into a Florsheim shoe, based on ample instructions on the matter from headquarters.
"In Florsheim shoes, the last comes first!" the salesman read in the booklet "The Raise You Didn't Have to Ask For -- Suggestions from Florsheim on How You Can Increase Your Earnings Through Selling MORE Shoes by Selling Them BETTER!" The last, of course, is what takes the place of the foot in the making of the shoe. A Florsheim 10B was built over a 10B last, one of over 200,000 pairs of lasts Florsheim owned and maintained, of which more than 100 were used in developing a given line of shoes.
There were three basic lasts: the straight for the (rare) "perfectly normal" foot, with the same amount of "wood" on either side of a line drawn from heel to toe; the "inflare," for the (also rare) foot that "toes in," built with three-fifths of the wood on the inside of the heel-toe line; and the "outflare," also known as the "flarewedge," a Florsheim original, with three-fifths of the wood on the outside of that line.
This flarewedge description fit four out of five men, "independent studies" had shown. It provided the "perfect fit and comfort and eliminated pinched and crowded toes and instep corns."
"From heel lift to lace stay, leather is the heart of the shoe," salesmen were told. "Only the choicest of calfskins were used for the "upper leather" part of the shoe.
Florsheim discarded better upper leather than was used "in many grades of cheaper shoes," the booklet said confidently. More than four square feet of calfskin were used to make a pair of size 8F Florsheim shoes (uppers and linings) -- "much more than ordinary shoes" used.
Florsheim was "one of very few" shoe manufacturers who bought whole prime steer hides and cut soles to strict specifications. Florsheim took "only the plump, tightly fibered outsoles cut from the hide's center."
The salesman was warned of three types of customer:
* The "looker," who may or may not buy, with whom the salesman's best chance is to show him something he won't find anywhere else -- a new style or an exclusive comfort
* The "undecided," who can't choose between a Scotch grain wingtip and the plain-toe Cordovan, for instance: "Resolve his doubts by selling him both"!
* The "buyer," who is to be served "as if he was the toughest sale you ever made"!
there were ten tips on dealing with the customer:
1. "Meet him, greet him, seat him," keeping in mind "the old Florsheim policy: "In this store you're a guest before you're a customer."
2. "Size up" a prospect. Is he buyer or looker, style man or comfort man? But don't decide too soon what he will pay for a pair of shoes: "You can't see into a man's billfold through the cut of his coat!"
3. Fit him first, removing both shoes, putting shoe trees in the "take-offs," and measuring both feet. Then ask what he has in mind.
4. Do not impose a "choice of one." If he asks for black, bring a brown too. And bring new shoes with "a story behind them." (And be prepared to tell the story.)
5. Show Florsheim shoes first. Assume he wants Florsheim unless he asks for a cheaper shoe. It's easier to sell quality than trade up price.
6. Go for a "double header." Most men are "one pair" buyers because no one tried to sell them two. Two pairs of Florsheims are always a sound investment.
7. Sell the woman if she is present. The average man is a timid buyer; bring out high-style items to appeal to the woman. The man may insist on his first idea, but he may also walk out with a second pair that caught the woman's fancy.
8. Stamp every sale with your personality.
9. Keep a customer record file. Go over your checks at the end of the day, recording customer's names, addresses, and styles. Follow up with mail and phone calls. The best prospect is a satisfied customer.
10. Be proud of your job. The future belongs to those who build for it.
What a charter for the shoe salesman! What a constitution, bill of rights, set of marching orders, instructions to the Nth degree for the gung-ho! No wonder Florsheim did so well!
The Florsheim window was characterized by artistic restraint. Other stores may load theirs with shoes. But with Florsheim there was a discipline. Stores had more impact that way. The message was unified, as it had been in the '30s. The window display was selective, and not always of the shoes you expected to sell that day, rather of shoes and other items which caught the attention of the passerby.
At the time of the new building, Florsheim was all over the Loop, as it was in almost every major downtown in the country. It had or would have "leased departments" in major men's clothing stores, where Florsheim shoes were available for the buyer of, say, Baskin's suits and ties. It was the heyday of downtown retailing.
The shoe store manager in many cities was a pillar of the community, head of the local chamber of commerce and the like. Florsheim recognized this by often "selling" equity in a company-owned store to its manager, who used the store's profits to buy his share -- up to 15% of a company store. The store might even have his name on it, as if he were an independent dealer. The process encouraged entrepreneurship.
In these downtown stores, owned by the company and presumably setting the pace for independent dealers as well, the club environment prevailed. The customer was guest before customer, remember, as the salesman was advised. The atmosphere was discriminating, even to the point where some hesitated to enter.
Not many, however. It was a welcoming atmosphere too. Its large vestibule with U-shaped or L-shaped window beckoned. If this was a club, it was open to any man with the money to buy and the taste to match it. And after 1958 or so, something new was there to complete the process: the shoes were out of the back room, on open display.
This was the "style displayer," which for the first time gave the buyer of quality shoes the chance to look the selection over and take his pick. Before the late '50s in a Florsheim store, customers in quality stores everywhere walked in, sat down, asked for what they wanted, and were shown it in their size. (Recall the Florsheim salesman's being urged to show more than what was asked for.)
The salesman would pull from a stack of shoe boxes to find what the customer wanted. The salesman, conscientious as he might be, was doing the selecting. Florsheim's new approach to shoe retailing put the browsing, the examination, the selection in the hands of the customer for the first time in quality shoe retailing history.
Instead of walls of boxes -- standard shoe store decor, you might say -- there were real shoes, in living black and brown and white etc., for the choosing. Now in addition to the Florsheim store's living room, den, or library look -- variations on the club effect, with its dark woodwork and soft leather chairs -- among the antique tables with hand-carved details and elaborate inlays, were the style displayers.
There along the walls in massive bays of recessed illuminated shelves, maybe flanked with traditional brass coachlights, were entire collections of Florsheim shoes, neatly lined in military array. Here were displays to match those shoes!
But Irving was not well. Harold did not care to carry on alone. No younger Florsheims were ready to take over. Harold feared "sudden estate liquidation," he told The Tribune. The "continuity and security of the company" were at stake. They went shopping for a buyer. They found one in St. Louis -- the International Shoe Company.
International Shoe was making a million pairs of footwear a week, including slippers -- between 10 and 11% of U.S. shoe production. Florsheim's six factories, including its new, state-of-the-art Canal Street plant, was making enough shoes to do no more than boost that over the 11% mark. One was tempted to say "gulp" at the prospect, so much did it appear a swallowing process.
But volume wasn't the half of it, of course. International Shoe's production was 50 million pairs a year in 55 factories; Florsheim's was about 2.5 million in six factories. But International's annual net income was just under $8.3 million, and Florsheim's was $1.2 million or so. More to the point of how well the two fit together was that one was mid-range priced, the other high-range: the top of the International line, $17.95, met the bottom of Florsheim's, whose price range went to $26. International's assets came to $116 million, Florsheim's to $18.5 million. The price was $21 million cash. It was a deal.
Harold, 53, would remain as president, Irving, 59, as chairman. Florsheim's stock shot up at news of the agreement, from $7 to $27. International's rose too, from $38 to $40.
It was big news to the shoe trade, which had known Florsheim was looking for a buyer but had discounted International, which was considered committed to its medium range. "Suddenly," said Business Week, International wanted "to upgrade its line by adding a higher-priced shoe."
Harold Florsheim described his newly acquired company to the International Shoe people in September, 1953, six months after the purchase was completed. He recounted the early decision by his father to stamp his name on every pair, to offer it at one price to all, and to advertise. "We believe," he said cautiously, that advertising "has made the public conscious of the fact that we try to make a good shoe, well styled, at a fair price."
Florsheim shoes were distributed in "almost every town of 1,000 or more" population in the U.S. through its network of some 4,000 independent dealers and to a lesser extent (20 to 22%) through its own stores and leased shoe departments in men's clothing stores. There were 89 company-owned outlets, all in cities of 100,000 or more, established where Florsheim did not have "proper representation," never in competition with its dealer customers.
They were dealt with by the company-as-wholesaler on the same basis as independent dealers. They were made "as attractive as possible," so as to "serve as a pattern for dealer operations in other communities." (Here, clearly stated, was the concept of Florsheim store as model for others.) Florsheim's retail organization functioned independently of manufacturing and wholesale, "following certain well-defined policies."
The new owner left Florsheim alone, to be itself. A good thing too. But the '50s ended on a sad note. Irving Florsheim died in October, 1959, at 65. Born when the company was 11 months old, he had grown up at 35th Street and South Park Avenue on the South Side -- an elegant neighborhood -- never dreaming of being anything but "a shoe man, like my dad." His father, Milton, had "talked business" with him all the time, as if he were an adult. "It was very flattering, and highly educational," the 61-year-old Irving told Elgar Brown of the Chicago American in 1954.
As production head he would roam the plant greeting and being greeted by old-timers who knew his father. He was a tall, slender man with thinning brown hair, "a genius full of nervous energy," Elgar Brown wrote. "Just like his dad," commented a factory worker.
When Irving died, Harold took over production in addition to sales. John K. Reidy became president. The rest continued as before.
The suburban shopping malls beckoned. Florsheim opened its first shopping-center store near Indianapolis in 1958. The first shopping center had been opened in 1935 near Kansas City, the second in 1950 in Seattle, the third in 1956 near Minneapolis. Florsheim was one of the first men's shoe companies to move to a mall. It was considered risky because men bought their shoes downtown, where they worked, not in their neighborhoods. They bought on their lunch hour or on their way home.
The first stores, with large vestibules and U-shaped or L-shaped windows, were simply downtown stores moved to the suburbs, with the downtown store's wide front, big open vestibule, and huge amount of window space. Mall stores soon had something else, the "lobby table" laden with shoes for the passerby to look at and touch, getting the feel of the merchandise. Lobby tables brought merchandise "to the lease line," as old-timers put it. Like store windows, they usually carried "promotional" shoes, maybe not the top sellers but shoes that would make the pedestrian stop, look, and feel.
In the fall shoes were placed on a tilted wagon wheel, including the Florsheim Rambler, "the new moccasin for men on the go." Next to the wheel was a hitching post. The Worthmore (lower-priced) moccasin at $13.95 was paired with a small totem pole and native American headdress.
suburban mall customers were different. The downtown store served men shopping for themselves. The malls served women during the day or men and women in pairs at night or on weekends, the women helping the man decide what to buy.
Indeed, the whole family showed up sometimes, with a variety of needs. in fact, the malls were full of women and children. This was not just like downtown. The busiest times were nights and Saturdays, when men came with their wives and children.
Harold Florsheim retired in 1969. He was succeeded as president by John K. Reidy. But Reidy moved up to president of the parent company, now called Interco, the following year and was followed at Florsheim by Richard P. Hamilton.
This was "the year the shoe fell out of step," according to Business Week magazine, referring to the new style requirement that shoes match the suit. "Not long ago a fairly well dressed businessman might wear black shoes with a brown suit," Business Week observed. "You probably won't see that today." American men were becoming more style-conscious. Shoes had to match the rest of one's outfit.
This was making explicit what was clear enough from Florsheim's ads and window displays, which promoted the cutting edge while staying with the tried and true. You might say Florsheim sought to be not the first by whom the new is tried nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
One element of the tried and true was lost in 1969, however, when The Saturday Evening Post suspended publication. Florsheim had advertised in it for more than sixty years, but with the rest of the world would have to do without Norman Rockwell-like covers. This was the year also when the women's pantsuit became acceptable for everyday wear.
Prices still began at $19.95, but now they went as high as $90, for"premium calfskin," made with "more days on the last," and outsoled with "special, long-wearing" material.
By the mid-70s, U.S. shoe manufacturing was in trouble, however -- "depressed," according to the Interco annual report, in part because of European competition. retailing was not depressed, however. Indeed, the mid-1970s were "the golden years of retail."
In any case, more change lay ahead -- new markets, new merchandising, new customers, new products, new channels of distribution. Already changed greatly, if not radically, by its suburban shopping center experience, Florsheim was about to enter a third phase in its then 80-plus-year-old history.
For one thing, athletic shoes made big competition for Florsheim's traditional younger buyer, the young man who would work up to Florsheim through the lower-priced Worthmore brand, following in his father's footsteps, you might say. What was good for Dad was good for me, the spirit once was. Things were freer flowing now, and Florsheim, which had not got where it was by ignoring such matters, to some extent went with the flow.
The company still made its traditional pitch to business men: "Men who work their way to the top rarely settle for second best," an ad said. "If you're the kind of man who always strives for the top, you know you can't afford anything less."
But the leisure class also beckoned. On the cover of the Spring, 1980, catalog, was a splendid beach and ocean scene. The focus was clearly leisure.
Ads showed that the early 80s were distinctly "fashion" years for Florsheim. Later in the '80s, fashion was to subside and there would be a return to "basic items," maybe because of the recessions of the mid- and late '80s. But a sea change was occurring, to "less formal, more comfortable living" which called for "lighter weight, more flexible" shoe construction.
There were other signs. Esquire magazine devoted an article to "The Loafer." Smithsonian spoke of "sneaker chic." A few years later, Esquire offered advice to "the well-heeled man" which included what to look for in Italian shoes -- lower heels, shorter vamps, softer leathers, a lighter look.
Italian shoes were not precisely leisure wear and in fact had been an important part of the American shoe scene for a decade or more. But it was all mixed together in a sort of style revolution. Part of it was "the race for walking shoes," as Newsweek called it, a shift from the running-shoe fever of the '70s and early '80s.
Harold Florsheim died in 1987, at the age of 87. There was change in the stores. More Florsheim Shops were remodeled in 1986, 41, than were opened, 39. Stores with the men's club look went casual. Shoe prices ranged from $50 to a tidy $200. But even Florsheim customers were letting more of it hang out, to borrow a going phrase.
Light and casual was the word, and not only for reasons of style: new, more stringent building codes called for using all fire-rated Class A materials, which meant no more of that wood paneling which had characterized the Florsheim shop.
By the early '90s, as malls got more crowded, the leased shoe department (within a clothing store, for instance) became the norm for new outlets. By the close of 1992, the company owned 360 units, contrasted with more than 506 in the spring of 1991.
As an example of the new, brighter and more airy Florsheim Shop of the mid-90s, none served better than the new Monroe and Clark street store in Chicago's Loop. Its light woodwork could be seen through glass double doors which stood wide open on a Friday night in mid-June at a few minutes before five, as people rushed by after work.
Like mall windows, the glass doors served to "bring the inside of the store out," as one executive put it. It was part of the tactic of laying everything out for the consumer to see. It was also part of being seen, which is also part of shopping. To be seen in a Florsheim store? A good thing.
"It costs nothing to come in," joshed the salesman to the visitor who said he came "just to look around."
"But it costs something to leave," he said with a grin. (It didn't.) As for the new look and the absence of dark woodwork, the salesman had a reason: "It makes people more comfortable."
What does make people more comfortable? In a September, 1992, gathering, store designers worked up recipes. home values ranked high, with home seen as a comfort zone, an escape valve from office and other work pressures. the "outdoors" and "lodge" look would be important. The work place would be more casual and intimate, hours would be more flexible as time was viewed as more important than money.
Nostalgia would rank high, with a strong trend towards the "old West." Pride in America and the "American style" in dress would be there, with a trend to individualism: finding and becoming oneself. A "social and cultural restructuring" would emphasize women's responsibilities in the professions, with their accompaniment -- the "involved" father.
It all got mixed together in a stew or broth of individualism and style, not 100% logical or consistent but something designers keep in mind when they go for the sales jugular.
And so goes the shoe business, Florsheim-style, a triumph of market sensitivity, hard work, and concentration on what's needed to succeed.
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