Boat Shoes Walk in Where Others Fear to Tread--Italy
It’s difficult to imagine the leather boat shoe, long considered a trademark of New England prep school casual attire, as a hot international fashion item.
Compared to the glove leather, wafer-thin soled shoes favored by Milanese designers, the clunky boat shoe with its brass eyelets and rawhide laces looks like the footwear family’s bumpkin cousin.
Equally unlikely is that the boat shoe could protect a domestic manufacturer against rising import levels by hitting the competition on its own turf.
But it’s true, even though the men behind the footwear counterattack are still somewhat surprised by their success.
Last year, the Timberland Co. reported $70 million in sales with one-quarter of that abroad and the bulk of it in European markets. President Reagan recently gave company owners Herman and Sidney Swartz an “E” Certificate for that export achievement.
Fashion in Reverse
The men said a lot of their success has to do with luck and a current fashion maxim: Anything that doesn’t look European sells well in Europe and anything that doesn’t look American sells well in America.
The principle has worked with blue jeans, but the brothers never figured it would work with boat shoes, especially in footwear fashion-conscious Italy.
Last year, however, Italian boutique browsers bought hundreds of thousands of Timberland leather boat shoes, paying up to $120 per pair.
“We’ve actually created a whole backlash in Italian shoes,” said Sidney Swartz.
“They’re copying us stitch for stitch,” added Herman Swartz.
Herman Swartz said he has heard of Italians coming to America and “loading up” on Timberlands at the lower domestic price of about $70. And recently the company hit a dubious milestone in the name-apparel trade when West Coast customs officials stopped a shipment of bogus Timberlands.
Important Logo
While the brothers said other domestic producers have scored modestly abroad, they attribute their unexpected success to timing, upscale marketing and their all-important logo.
The encircled bare tree logo, emblazoned on the side of Timberland products, has given the company what a smiling crocodile gave to a certain French sportswear manufacturer--status.
It was designed in the 1970s when the company changed course. Herman and Sidney Swartz had taken over the Abington Shoe Co. from their father, who had produced footwear for discount and retail stores that sold them under their own labels.
Although they were in the black, the Swartzes said, rising footwear imports threatened their future. They decided to launch their own brand. A neighbor in the advertising business created the logo, and Timberland was born.
Unlike their work with Abington, where manufacturing was done with an eye on economy, Sidney Swartz said they decided to “throw everything but the kitchen sink” into Timberland products.
Quality First
“We said, ‘Let’s build the finest product we can possibly build and worry about the pricing afterward,’ ” he recalled.
They sought swank New York department stores to sell their products. Prices were raised $5 a pair to pay for an advertising campaign in the New Yorker and other magazines read by affluent consumers.
Timberland entered the European market in the early 1980s. Things began to click when the company signed an Italian distributor who dropped Timberland’s name in fashion magazines and fitted Ferrari pit crews with the shoes.
Foreign and American expansion has raised Timberland’s sales from $16 million in 1979 to last year’s $70 million and a projected $100 million for 1986.
To mark that success, an appropriate object lies between the Swartzes desks in their shared office: a bronzed boat shoe.
