If you go online and poke around the myriad shoe sales sites like Zappos etc. you’ll see there are hundreds and hundreds of shoe companies with thousands and thousands of styles. I would imagine huge manufacturers like Nike etc. have their own dedicated facilities, but for the smaller companies (and there a lot of them) do they also have their own factories, or is there some giant Chinese factory chugging out multiple lines from various manufacturers like the notebook PC industry?
Anyone know how this works in the business of shoe?
There are at least two of us on this board that worked at Stride-Rite headquarters which also includes other brands like Keds, Sperry, and others. It is a lot like the notebook PC industry. U.S. shoe companies have their own designers and lots of other types of staff but very few of them make their own shoes. Those are outsourced to large shoe making factories all over the world that compete against one another for certain lines.
Those factories make shoes for almost all of the big shoe companies. I don’t think even Nike has factories dedicated to it. That is too risky for the factory and Nike. Instead, the factory will make athletic shoes for all of the major brands. It is the same for other types of shoes as well. The shoe companies are sensitive to labor issues in the factories and have some control over them. They send representatives to the factories to make sure the contract is being followed but we all know that certain things can be easily hidden given advance warning.
Interesting. I see various companies like “Inov8” and others touting fairly specific and intricate technologies in crafting their shoes and it would be interesting to see how these factories accommodate so many different manufacturing needs.
Nike hasn’t made shoes since the 80’s, I believe. Just about all the shoes you can purchase are made in sweatshops of sub-contractors in the ‘Free Trade Zones’ of Guatemala, China, Singapore, etc.
I work for a large shoe company, and previously worked for a retailer that sold over 400 different brands of shoes. What others have said about the larger factories making most shoes for every shoe brand is correct.
In the case of the company I work for, most of the shoes are made by dozens of different factories that we contract to make different types of shoes. Most of these are in China, but some are in Vietnam, Brazil, Taiwan, and even some in Italy. Usually the more expensive shoes are made in Italy.
From what I understand, there are massive factory complexes in China that make most of the world’s consumer goods, and many of these are dedicated to making most of the world’s footwear. This is not to say they are sub-par quality, most of these factories do excellent work. It’s just that they have the personnel and the facilities in place to handle this sort of volume, so they make the shoes.
Interestingly enough, there is a lot of cross-brand manufacture of the exact same shoes. Many shoes, women’s shoes especially (because the shoe forms, or lasts, are not too different from brand to brand) are made in the same factories, just with slightly different designs and details in the finishing stages.
There are still some American shoe factories operating; one is Cove Shoe Company in Martinsburg, PA. They manufacture several different brands, mostly military boots and specialized stuff for miners, police, hiking boots, etc.
According to the website, they will manufacture your design with a minimum order of 120 pairs. They can also arrange for overseas production.