https://www.npr.org/2019/06/19/731268823/why-the-american-shoe-disappeared-and-why-its-so-hard-to-bring-it-back

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Bringing Shoe Manufacturing Back To The United States Poses
Challenges Footwear companies face big costs in potential new tariffs
on more Chinese imports. Almost all shoes sold in the U.S. are made
overseas. Only about 200 factories remain. One man tried to change
that.

Business

Why The American Shoe Disappeared And Why It's So Hard To Bring It
Back

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June 19, 20197:07 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Alina Selyukh 2016

Alina Selyukh

Twitter

Why The American Shoe Disappeared And Why It's So Hard To Bring It
Back

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[gettyimage]
Enlarge this image

Workers makes shoes at a factory in Jinjiang, in southeast China's
Fujian province. Nearly all shoes sold in the U.S. are foreign-made.
China's share has declined, but it's still a major source. AFP/Getty
Images hide caption

toggle caption
AFP/Getty Images

Workers makes shoes at a factory in Jinjiang, in southeast China's
Fujian province. Nearly all shoes sold in the U.S. are foreign-made.
China's share has declined, but it's still a major source.

AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 11:04 a.m. ET

For Douglas Clark, the darkest part of working for Nike in the 1980s
was watching American shoe manufacturing "evaporate" in the Northeast
in a mass exodus to Asia in pursuit of cheaper labor.

"As a true Yankee -- and my father was a Colonial historian -- you
know, it was heartbreaking," he said.

Clark would go on to a long career in footwear, at Converse, Reebok,
Timberland, then his own line of shoes at New England Footwear. And
there, he would devote eight years to one mission: creating a model
to make shoemaking in America profitable again.

This was a tall order. At a time when President Trump speaks of
rebuilding American manufacturing, footwear is a telling example of
how hard it is to turn back time.

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These days, 99% of shoes sold in the U.S. are imported, many of them
from China, Vietnam and Indonesia. China's share has declined in
recent years, but it remains a key source of America's shoes and shoe
parts. That's why some U.S. footwear companies have been loud
opponents of Trump's threat of more tariffs for almost everything
imported from China.

"We'd love to make shoes in the United States," Steve Madden CEO Ed
Rosenfeld told NPR. But "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 the United States."

Loading...

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.

"There's really very little commercial reason for why you would make
footwear in the U.S. today," Jeppesen said. He acknowledges one
exception to that: factories that work to meet constant demand for
American-made shoes by the U.S. military.

Indeed, many of the remaining 200-some U.S. footwear factories serve
the military, said Tom Capps, whose Capps Shoe Co. in Virginia mainly
makes uniform shoes for the government.

Capps said he employs 125 to 175 workers, depending on the factory's
workload. That's on the high end for an industry where most firms
employ fewer than 10 people, according to the Footwear Distributors
and Retailers of America.

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Owners of U.S. factories that make nonmilitary shoes in America said
they found their own reasons to stay. Many cited their love of the
craft and tradition. Capps said he also found a niche by offering a
large selection of sizes. Olivier Marchal, of Sense of Motion
Footwear in Colorado, worried about the environmental impact of
shipping shoes and materials from across the world in Asia.

But U.S. factory owners also listed two major challenges of domestic
footwear manufacturing: finding skilled workers and affordable parts
and materials.

New Balance is known for still making or at least assembling some
sneakers in the U.S. But the company gets "some components for our
domestic manufacturing from China, as well as other countries, due to
a limited U.S. supply chain," executive Monica Gorman told U.S. trade
officials on Monday.

As shoemaking jobs disappeared, so did the support network for the
industry. Suppliers of things like the little metal eyelets and
colorful leather followed the industry overseas. Many shoe factories
turned into warehouses and offices.

[img_0464-4]
Enlarge this image

San Antonio Shoemakers has been making shoes in Texas since the
1970s. SAS recently got a big contract to make sneakers for the U.S.
military. Carson Frame/The American Homefront Project hide caption

toggle caption
Carson Frame/The American Homefront Project

San Antonio Shoemakers has been making shoes in Texas since the
1970s. SAS recently got a big contract to make sneakers for the U.S.
military.

Carson Frame/The American Homefront Project

Dan Heselton runs Maine Mountain Moccasin out of one such factory
that vacated during the exodus.

"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," Heselton said. "That's
tough to hear."

With the higher costs of U.S. labor and materials, the remaining
manufacturers tend to rely on their shoppers choosing to pay more for
the "Made in America" brand.

"We know that we can't make a $19 shoe to be sold at Target or
Walmart. That's just not going to be possible for us," said Nancy
Richardson, CEO of SAS, a midsize company that has been making shoes
in San Antonio since the 1970s. "So we focus on having people feel
like they get an $800 pair of shoes for $150 or $200."

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The mass-market companies, meanwhile, have been turning their U.S.
operations more toward design and marketing, leaving all the cutting,
gluing and stitching to manufacturers overseas.

Clark wanted to change that. On his mission to return mainstream
manufacturing to America, he zeroed in on the cost and complexity of
the labor involved in shoemaking.

U.S. factory owners often say they wish people realized just how many
parts and processes it takes to make a shoe. There are multiple
layers to create the sole alone, including lots of heavy-duty sewing.
Securing the bottom of the shoe takes multiple steps. By the time the
shoe is ready to wear, dozens of people might have worked on it.

Clark knew about this, and about the U.S. manufacturers' struggles
with materials, parts and workers. But he also knew that history was
already starting to repeat itself in China. Wages have been going up
there. Footwear companies have been moving -- yet again -- to other
countries, chasing lower costs.

This could be the opening for America's comeback, Clark thought. But
for it to work, the process had to be simplified -- maybe a dozen
parts instead of 50 -- and more automated. Maybe then, he said, the
manufacturing could be "where the markets are, instead of where the
labor is."

A few years back, he got a contract with a big brand and a grant to
get started. He began with making top parts, or uppers, "that didn't
involve a lot of labor," he said.

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 In The Robot Age, Manufacturers Need The Human Touch

Technology

Even In The Robot Age, Manufacturers Need The Human Touch

Major brands, like Nike and Adidas, have been developing new
technologies, including in the U.S. But they still rely heavily on
factory workers abroad. Because unlike humans, robots aren't nimble --
they can't notice imperfections or quickly switch to a new fashion
style.

"Robots are not forgiving," Clark said.

For Clark, the story had a frustrating end. Developing automation got
very expensive and progressed more slowly than expected. He was
draining his funds and agreed to sell his factory to a technology
company, which knew a lot about robots. The factory is now closed.

Clark had signed a noncompete agreement, so now "I'm essentially
retired unwillingly," he said. He had hoped his legacy would be
reviving American shoe manufacturing. Instead, he is now in real
estate.

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