HANDMADE TALE

Selwyn van Aarde runs the Bolton Footwear plant in Elsie’s River in Cape Town, and knows shoe manufacturing from the ground up. The threat of Chinese imports is always there because of the sustained cheap labour and poor union system, but he believes many of the company’s retail problems come from brand positioning and pricing. Van Aarde started out as a floor sweeper at the Barker Footwear factory in nearby Epping, and now oversees operations after Bolton took over the old Jordan factory.

‘I started at Barker 39 years ago. Things have changed, but there is still demand for formal shoes,’ says Van Aarde. ‘If you look at the number of leather-sole shoes going into retail, we only take about three per cent of the market, and I’m convinced there is a gap there for us. Welted construction is unique. There are only two companies in South Africa that can do it.’

The Goodyear welt is a mechanised version of a hand-stitched welt. Shoes are stitched and cemented to the outsoles, creating an exceptionally strong bond. Although there is an entire production line of specialised machinery to achieve this bond, each shoe is handled individually through each process and therefore can still be classified as fully handmade.

‘ The emphasis should be on the features of the shoe, how long it keeps and the overall quality. This used to be called the “banker’s shoe”,’ he says, grabbing a pair of exquisitely crafted Barkers. ‘I still don’t think our marketing is where it should be.’

With Bronx, Barker and Crockett & Jones all being manufactured under the same roof, marketing lines were blurred in the past and Van Aarde attributes that to the decline of Bronx in the retail space. ‘Barker and Crockett are still up there when it comes to the South African market. In the townships, these get handed down from generation to generation. With Bronx, the quality isn’t as high, but the price jumped quite considerably because of the economic climate. The consumers didn’t respond well to this,’ he explains. ‘I believe that each brand has a signature and that got lost over time. Barker and Crockett, for instance are identical in construction and materials, but Barker has a plastic heel and then sits just below Crockett.’

Van Aarde is working with all the relevant parties to correct the pricing structure and create separation among the different brands again. Besides for import trade, he also laments the decline of leather production in South Africa.

It’s now a 99 per cent import market for skins, and the shoe manufacturers don’t have the same buying power as the automotive market, which takes the lion’s share. Shoe manufacturers are then left with so- called small skins, which makes production planning more difficult. You ideally want to fashion a pair out of the same skin so that you get consistent characteristics. Treating small skins is also a specialised process and requires intensive training and skills development.

Walking the floor of a shoe factory is like taking a step back in time. You start to realise how many once-proud trades have fallen by the wayside because of lack of investment. Bolton runs a training programme for future managers and recruits from local tertiary institutions for that.

Each prospective candidate starts in the factory, spending time working on each station. When they eventually ascend to the higher company structures, they have a full understanding of the process they are in charge of. There’s also the opportunity to get to know the workers while working side by side.

While Bolton Footwear seems quite secure in the market, with over 100 years of history to reference from, the shoe-manufacturing industry in South Africa is currently in a state of turmoil. Just two weeks after our visit to the Elsie’s River factory, there were tense demonstrations and tyre burning because of a union wage dispute. Workers around the country had been on strike for not receiving a 9,5 per cent increase. The industry is instead sticking to their proposed increase of just seven per cent.

Unnamed striking workers believe Bolton Footwear to be the main holdout in the dispute, and that the company is preventing the rest of the industry from playing ball with union representatives.

These labour disputes come on the back of declining revenues and increasing cost of living owing to a spike in the fuel price and a poor-performing rand. These factors are further aggravated by disruption in public transport due to recurring train-, taxi- and bus-worker strikes. It seems like the world is conspiring against the factory workers right now.