Stepping on Toes : Rockport Trips Up Flea Market Seller, Saying Swap Meet Violates Its ‘Image’

The first pairs of Rockport shoes that Karta Khalsa stocked in the middle 1970s went unsold for weeks. Running shoes were the rage back then, not some clunky kind that no one had ever heard of.

“People thought it was a salad dressing,” Khalsa recalled.

But a pair of Rockports finally sold, then another. The thick soles and traditional, stylish looks made it a favorite among yuppies with weak knees and thicker middles who had hung up their running shoes.

He moved his Healthy Happy Shoes store from San Pedro to the swap meet held on weekends at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.

“I discovered a gold mine,” he said. At the swap meet, Khalsa’s customers “were affluent. They came to buy, not to browse.”

His shoe sales grew over eight years to a point where he had projected that he would sell $350,000 worth of the Rockport line alone this year. Khalsa was happy until October, when Rockport mysteriously refused to fill his holiday order. Karta wrote to the shoemaker based in Marlboro, Mass., and found that he had been cut off.

“The distribution of our shoes in a flea-market setting does not project the image we have developed for our shoes or the kind of sales support that we want for our products,” Lou Zambello, a Rockport senior vice president, wrote in a letter to Khalsa.

Khalsa was aghast. He was one of the pioneer sellers of the brand. Rockport officials had personally inspected his operation a couple of years before and approved.

“They just don’t” care, Khalsa said of Rockport. “They took the pioneers and just ambushed us.”

For sure, Khalsa does not look like most shoe store owners. He wears a turban, white gown and Birkenstock sandals as a practicing Sikh--an outfit that seems a perfect match for his long, flowing beard. Pictures of spiritual masters grace the walls of his sparsely furnished tract home. Below one is a plastic placard inscribed with lyrics by Justin Hayward of the old rock band, the Moody Blues. Khalsa grabs a handful of yellow flowers from a bush in his front yard and places them gently on the dashboard of his visitor’s car, explaining that he is a child of the 1960s who still believes in flower power.

As a businessman, Khalsa appears successful. He said he sells 75 pairs of Rockports on a typical summer day at the swap meet, more than most stores with the brand would move in a week. Rockport representatives have told him his sales were “worth 10 shoe stores” to the brand, he said.

His weekend swap meet location helps cut his overhead costs and holds down prices.

He produces letters from lawyers and bankers that declare him to be trustworthy and reliable. While those qualities certainly help, low price is the reason he can sell so many shoes.

Khalsa said he typically sells his Rockports at deep discounts, sometimes half the original retail price. The Rockport officials who visited and approved of his operation decided that he would be best suited to selling leftover merchandise that other stores did not want. As a clearance outlet, his sales zoomed 30%.

Khalsa bought boat shoes from Rockport for $29 and sold them for $49. They retail for $105. He produced an ad for a taupe model that sold for $79 on sale at Bullock’s. Khalsa said his everyday price is $59 for the same shoe. “People were flocking to those shoes,” he said.

They were so popular, in fact, that he suspects that the big department stores were jealous and pressured Rockport to wipe out his dealership.

Michael Aronson, who for 12 years was the Rockport sales representative who served Khalsa but parted with the firm this month after a 14-year association, said he shares the jealousy suspicion and added: “He’s harmless, but he’s making money.”

Rockport declined comment except to say through a spokeswoman that company officials are “evaluating the situation.”

Khalsa said although he can no longer buy merchandise directly from the company, he is not about to give up selling Rockport shoes. He said he will simply obtain merchandise from stores that have Rockport accounts and sell those shoes at the swap meet.