SP114956.ADS (Page 1)

www.bellevillenewsdemocrat.com
Friday, October 8, 2004
Serving Southwestern Illinois
Belleville Shoe marks 100 extraordinary years
When William Weidmann and
four partners opened the
Belleville Shoe Company in
1904 with 50 workers making 50
to 75 pairs of shoes a day, they
surely did not envision that it
would one day employ 1300 people using cutting-edge robotics
and revolutionary synthetic
materials to churn out 8000 pairs
of high-tech military boots daily.
This firm’s transformation
from one of hundreds of small
shoe manufactories in the United
States to the nation’s largest producer of military footwear is a
remarkable story of entrepreneurial zeal, a nimble adaptability in tumultuous market conditions, and corporate perseverance in the face of globalization’s intense challenges.
“We have been,” current
President Eric Weidmann acknowledges, “a durable, fortunate survivor in a drastically
redefined U.S. footwear supply
environment.” Eric Weidmann is
the fourth generation in his family to lead the company.
Belleville Shoe has made a
remarkable range of shoes and
boots. Its men’s and boys’ dress
shoes sold all over the country
for 60 years. Its athletic shoes
ran the bases with virtually every
professional baseball player in
the 1950s and ‘60s. Backpackers
wore the company’s hiking boots;
factory workers protected their
feet with Belleville’s steel-toed
workboot. And for 87 years, the
firm has provided military
footwear to the nation’s armed forces.
The story begins with five
Belleville entrepreneurs. They
included, along with William
Weidmann, Adolph Knobeloch,
H. E. Leunig, J. B. Reis and
James Rentchler. None had any
experience with making shoes.
The five men decided to go
into shoemaking after a visiting
Massachusetts businessman convinced them that the market had
ample room for new players. On
Nov. 3, 1904, they filed articles
of incorporation in Delaware,
taking advantage of its businessfriendly laws, which expedited
stock offerings and thus made
capitalization easier. (St. Clair
County records indicate that the
company actually began operations Oct. 21, 1904.)
The
Belleville
Shoe
Manufac-turing
Company
opened for business in leased
space at the former Rentchler
In April 1986 Belleville Shoe left its 77-year-old building on Main Street downtown and moved to its present quarters in the Belle Valley Industrial Park (above). The plant was
enlarged in 2002 and now occupies 160,000 square feet. (More photos on page 4.)
Machine Shops on East B and
Delmar
streets.
Walter
Weidmann, William’s son, began
distribution beyond St. Louis,
selling the company’s shoes in
Chicago as early as 1905. Soon
Belleville Shoe had a sales force
of about 10 men, traveling across
the country and selling directly
to stores.
Another shoe manufacturer,
the Jordan Shoe Company, had
started up in 1903 at the corner
of East Main and Walnut streets,
adjacent to the landmark Belleville firm Crown Milling. But on
Aug. 23, 1908, Jordan Shoe and
the Crown elevator burned to the
ground in a devastating fire that
left hundreds jobless and totaled
$150,000 in damages. Jordan
never reopened.
Growing fast
In June 1909, Belleville Shoe
purchased the property and
announced plans to “erect a
modern shoe factory at once,”
according to the city’s Daily
Advocate. The news story
explained that the Rentchler
building had become too small
for Belleville Shoe’s “rapidly
growing business.” Architect
Otto Rubach designed the new
factory with three floors. The
heaviest equipment—sole-cutting machines as much as nine
feet wide—occupied the basement. Sewing machine operators
stitched uppers, the top of the
shoe minus the sole, on the second floor. Bottoming and packing
manufacturing operations and
offices were on the main floor.
Business was indeed brisk. In
April 1913 the Advocate reported that the company had purchased land just north of its
Main Street plant for an addition
to the factory. “The business of
the company has increased so
rapidly … that it was found necessary to expand,” the paper
reported.
Another important change
took place in 1913. Two hundred
of the company’s employees took
steps to form a union, joining the
United Shoe Workers of
America. On July 14, 135 union
members walked off the job
when a supervisor discharged
two men in the lasting room,
where uppers are shaped and
readied for attachment to the
soles. Troubles continued as
competing unions vied for control. The International Boot and
Shoe Workers’ Union, affiliated
with the American Federation of
Labor, claimed jurisdiction, and
because the United Shoe
Workers Union was not part of
the AFL the company would not
recognize it.
“The shoe factory management was willing to recognize a
union,” the Advocate reported,
“but found themselves up against
the serious problem of two
unions, each clamoring for who ordered police to disperse
recognition.” The company any crowds gathering in the
appealed to the Illinois Board of streets. They got the attention of
Arbitration to mediate.
the Advocate’s editor, who
Still the dispute continued. demanded that the parties find a
Striking workers gathered at the way to end the strike. And they
factory at noon and 6 p.m. each got the attention of the state
day,
approaching
Board
of
company employees
Arbitration,
“We have been whose secretary,
and urging them to
join the United Shoe a durable, fortu- H. O. Hohnquist,
Workers. The trouble
arrived
in
nate survivor in Belleville four
spread to the factory
of the International
days later.
a drastically
Shoe Company on
Still, negotiatredefined U.S. ing an end to the
South Spring Street,
where
employees
strike took two
walked off the job footwear supply and half months,
Nov. 13.
but by Jan. 31,
environment.”
Then on Nov. 14
1914, the parties
the trouble escalated
had reached an
Eric Weidmann,
dramatically. After Belleville Shoe Company agreement, and
daily encounters with
both sides exPresident
unionists for a week,
pressed satisfacthree
non-union
tion with the
workers armed themdeal. During the
selves that Friday
strike the compaafternoon and, when assaulted ny had completed its building
with clubs, turned on their ex-pansion, and it was ready to
attackers with pistols and knives, put 400 people to work. The
seriously wounding two and 1913 walkout was one of only
inflicting minor injuries on two two strikes in the company’s
more. Pedestrians near the 100-year history; the other
Jackson and B street intersection occurred in 1994 and lasted one
where the attacks took place fled week.
in panic. Soon afterward, ambuThree years later, Belleville
lances flying down the city’s Shoe received its first military
streets drew a large crowd on boot order, thus beginning an
Main Street.
enterprise that has not only susThese startling developments tained the company ever since
got the attention of the mayor, but has revolutionized it from a
small operation making uncomplicated shoes to today’s large,
technology-driven business developing and producing breakthrough footwear for the nation’s
armed forces.
By 1920 the shoe factory was
back to civilian production, turning out more than 25 styles of
shoes for men and “little gents.”
The same year, the company
became the first in Belleville to
offer workers’ incentives for regular attendance, and life and
health insurance for its employees. The incentive plan paid
workers a percentage bonus of
their weekly pay; the insurance,
provided at no expense to
employees, offered both death
and disability benefits. Homer
Weidmann, William’s grandson,
said the company understood it
must be generous with its workforce to retain employees in a
highly competitive local labor
market, where many firms produced not only shoes and boots
but pants, shirts, dresses and
other sewn goods. The Advocate
was impressed with the insurance plan: “In thus assisting its
employees and their dependants
to make some provision against
the uncertainties of the future,”
the paper said, “the Belleville
Shoe Company has established a
worthy precedent for other concerns to follow. The citizens of
Belleville, Illinois are to be congratulated on having in their
midst such a progressive concern.”
Selling coast to coast
The company prospered during the Roaring ‘20s. It sold its
shoes from the Eastern Seaboard
to California. In 1925 it posted
sales of $549,000; by 1928 sales
had grown to $775,000. The
Belleville Hosiery Company
next door closed in 1926;
Belleville Shoe acquired its
property for expansion. The
News-Democrat, in a feature
story for the firm’s 25th anniversary, described its “wonderful
progress” and added: “The company ranks as one of the leading
manufacturers of shoes in the
middlewest… The products of
the
Belleville
Shoe
Manufacturing Company are
known for their quality and
wearing ability from Portland,
Me., to Portland, Ore., and from the
Please see 100 YEARS, p. 3
Reverses town’s ‘huge blow’
Arkansas plant doubles company’s workforce
When the Munro Corporation closed its — four times the $3 million Munro payroll. The
DeWitt plant in December 2001, the news devas- plant’s employees turn out 3600 boots each day,
tated this small Delta town in the heart of and every pair goes out with a proud pledge —
“We’re
with
Arkansas rice country.
you every step
“It was a huge blow,”
of the way” —
said Barbara Meins,
“We started as a cut-and-fit operation
the troops
the plant’s human
with 80 employees. Then we went to full pro- to
who will wear
resources director.
them.
But within four
duction and ballooned to 600
The pace of
months
Belleville
— within 14 months.”
growth under
Shoe Manufacturing
Belleville Shoe
Company had leased
Johnnie Carr, Belleville Shoe’s assistant secretary-treasurer
ownership has
and reopened the plant
amazed both
(the negotiations with
Munro were wrapped up in an astonishing four DeWitt and headquarters managers. “We started
days) and Meins had resumed her HR responsi- as a cut-and-fit operation with 80 employees,”
bilities under the new management. Since then it recalled Johnnie Carr, Belleville Shoe’s assistant
has expanded by about 15 percent each month, secretary-treasurer and the man in administrative
and today it employs 650 people, pumping $12 charge in DeWitt. A month later the company
million in wages into the local economy annually hatched expansion plans. “Then we went to full
production and ballooned to 600 — within 14
months,” said Carr, a 30-year Munro veteran.
Belleville Shoe is the fourth owner of the
DeWitt shoe factory. The first was the Northern
Shoe Company in Pulaski, Wisconsin, west of
Green Bay. Northern sold out to Briarwood Shoe
Corporation and Briarwood, in 1978, to Munro.
Briarwood made women’s and children’s shoes
there; Munro converted the plant to men’s and
boys’ casual shoe production. Munro sold its
shoes to J. C. Penney, Sears and Dillard’s and produced up to 5,000 pairs a day, but the construction was uncomplicated and involved none of the
demanding specifications of military footwear.
Now the plant produces a Gore-Tex desert
boot, a Gore-Tex black infantry combat boot and
a Gore-Tex intermediate cold wet boot from start
to finish for the Army. It also cuts and sews
uppers (the boot minus the sole) for a jungle
desert boot and a black and desert steel-toe hot
weather boot for all services. Of the 300 cases
they make each day (12 pairs per case), 50 are
uppers that go back to Belleville for completion.
The rest are finished goods, which either ship
directly to the military or route through Belleville
for delivery.
Company President Eric Weidmann is excited
about Belleville South. The company invested
more than $3 million in the plant, a risk he said
has paid off handsomely. Contrasting it to the
nearby riverboat casinos, where one party always
loses, he told his Arkansas employees: “This risk
is different. If Belleville Shoe wins, you win. If
Belleville Shoe loses, you lose. Right now we’re
both winning.”
Good communication with the Belleville
office is key to the plant’s success, Carr said. The
Please see ARKANSAS PLANT, p. 4
“E” for Excellence
World War II’s global conflict brought full-bore military
production to Belleville Shoe.
With American men and
women deployed across Europe
and the Pacific, the War
Department’s need for all sorts
of equipment meant the conversion of virtually every kind of
civilian plant to military purposes. Belleville Shoe threw
itself into the war effort with
commitment and high purpose.
It began war production in
October 1940, fulfilled 36 contracts and produced 1.5 million
pairs of boots.
Just as importantly, the company never delivered a single
pair of combats boots even one
day late. For this singular
achievement the War Department gave the company its
Army-Navy “E” Award in a fes-
tive celebration Saturday, June
23, 1945. Ranking Quartermaster Corps officers stood outside the factory in brilliant sunshine, praised the Belle-ville
shoemakers,
and
handed
founders William Weidmann
and J.B. Reis the prized “E”
flag. Belleville Shoe’s 300
employees all received “E” pins.
“As you are fully aware, the
coveted Army-Navy ‘E’ Award
is not bestowed lightly,” Col.
Bernard J. Finan, commanding
officer of the Boston Quartermaster Depot, told the crowd of
employees, city officials and
friends. “It is the highest commendation that the Army can
pay for praiseworthy, unceasing
efforts on behalf of war production. I know that you people
Please see E AWARD, p. 2
A huge crowd of employees and friends of the company gathered June 23, 1945, when the U.S. War Department conferred its Army-Navy “E” Award on Belleville Shoe for
its wartime production, citing the exceptional quality of Belleville’s military boots and its unfailing on-time delivery.
Friday, October 8, 2004
A2 BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Centennial Edition
Company brings prestigious “E” Award to Belleville |
have worked tirelessly and
Walter Weidman also spoke,
well.”
accepting the award with gratiThough Germany and Italy tude and conviction. “We of
had fallen, the war
Belleville Shoe have a
raged on in the
privilege today rooted
Pacific. Referring to “I want you not in this moment but
the firm’s workers as
rather in five years of
to think of continuous united
“soldiers in mufti,”
Finan continued: “I
yourselves effort — that same
suppose it is difficult
brand of effort which
as soldiers has devastated two of
for you men and
women
of
the
in mufti.” our enemies and which
Belleville
Shoe
is bringing total defeat
Manufacturing
to the third,” he said.
Quartermaster
Company to visual- Corps Col. Bernard “Our labors were weldize yourselves as
ed into our particular
J. Finan to
part of the Army
task in 1940 and
Belleville Shoe
team that is annihirewelded each succesemployees
lating the Japanese at Saturday, June 23, sive month since that
Okinawa and thus
time. … Our energies
1945
opening the eventual
were and continue to
road to Tokyo.
be directed toward the
Nevertheless… in a
production of the finest
very real sense you
boots and shoes in the
are part of that team. … Our greatest possible numbers.”
boys in Okinawa could not do
Speaking to his employees,
the fine job they are doing there he added: “All of you can take
without your help.
justifiable pride in your contri“There is no easy road to bution to the war effort. There’s
Tokyo,” he concluded. “It will a little bit of every one of you
be hard and bloody, and nothing that has marched and is still
but our best and most untiring marching over the far-flung soils
efforts can materially shorten of battle. There’s a little bit of
the war.” With that, the flag each of your families who have
ascended the flagstaff to rousing backed you up on your jobs day
band music.
after day in the long road to vic-
tory.”
Lt. Commander L. J. Kanitz,
inspector of ordinance at
Amertorp Corp., St. Louis, presented the “E” pins. “The
Armed Forces salute you men
and women of the Belleville
Shoe Manufacturing Company
for the determination you have
shown in bringing America’s
enemies to the bar of justice,” he
said.
Herbert Fischer, president of
the Boot and Shoe Workers
Union, Local 143, added a
heartfelt note. “You can rest
assured,” he told Kanitz, “that
each of us will wear the ‘E’
emblem with pride; each of us
will regard it, not as evidence
that we have done a good job,
but rather as a reminder that the
boys in uniform on the battle
fronts cannot win this war alone
and that we at home, in the
mines, fields and factories, have
an important part to play in
bringing victory.”
Homer Weidmann, then a
captain himself in the Quartermaster Corps, attended the ceremony and remembers it as an
inspirational event. “The building was bedecked with flags,” he
recalled. “The mayor was there.
Customers from as far away as
Continued from Page 1
Lt. Commander L. J. Kanitz, inspector of ordinance, presented “E” pins to all Belleville Shoe’s employees.
Boston attended. There were
parties for employees, managers
and visitors. There was a size-
able military contingent.”
Flowers bloomed around the
flagpole where his mother had
planted them for the occasion.
“More than 90 manufacturers produced military foot-
wear,” he noted. “Fewer than a
half dozen won ‘E’ Awards.”
Overall, out of some 185,000
U.S. war plants, only 4 percent
won this cherished honor.
The Citation
‘For meritorious and
distinguished service’
“For meritorious and distinguished service to
their country in its time of need, the Army-Navy
Production Award is presented to the men and
women of the Belleville Shoe Manufacturing
Company. By their unflagging spirit of patriotism, by their acceptance of high responsibility,
by the skill, industry and devotion they are
showing on the production front of the greatest
war in history, they are making an enduring
contribution, not only to the preservation of the
United States of America, but to the immortality
of human freedom itself.”
With justifiable pride, the company’s officers, flanked by War Department representatives, display the hard-won “E” Award banner.
Company wins repeated honors for quality and performance
Belleville Shoe has consistently impressed the federal
SBA Officer Robert P. Murphy had high praise for the
government and the Defense Department with the quality firm. “Belleville Shoe’s success extends well beyond the
of its products and its unfailing on-time delivery. In 1993, statistical,” he said in conferring the award. “This is a firm
President Eric Weidmann traveled to Washington for a which is a definite asset to its community and its people.”
White House Rose Garden ceremony, where Belleville
Two years earlier, in January 1991, the company won
Shoe received the National Small Business Prime the Defense Department’s prestigious Defense Quality
Contractor of the Year Award from the U.S. Small Business Excellence Award in appreciation for its performance in
Administration (SBA).
meeting an urgent, accelerated deadline. The company
The company competed first regionally and then nation- delivered 120,000 pairs of desert boots on or ahead of the
ally for the award, which recogrevised schedule. The Defense
nizes outstanding small busiLogistics Agency, which conferred
“This is a firm which is a
nesses that supply the federal
award, noted that of 656,000
definite asset to its community the
government. Belleville Shoe
boots Belleville produced in the year
and its people.”
eclipsed 147 other nominated
from Aug. 18, 1989 to Aug. 17,
companies to take the prize.
1990, not a single boot failed to meet
Robert P. Murphy,
These 147 nominees came from
government quality requirements.
the ranks of 75,000 small busiThe award, a rare honor among
U. S. Small Business Administration Officer
nesses performing federal condefense contractors, was presented
tract work.
in a May 29 ceremony at the
“I think the people at Belleville Shoe are darn good at Belleville plant. The company was one of only three conwhat they do,” Weidmann told the News-Democrat at the tractors to receive this distinction in 1991 — out of about
time, “and I’m happy to see them recognized with this 30,000 companies that supplied the Defense Logistics
award.”
Agency.
The Defense Logistics Agency, main buying agent for the U.S. Defense Department, conferred a rare honor on Belleville Shoe when it named the company the winner of the prestigious Defense Quality Excellence
Award in a May 29, 1991 ceremony at the Belle Valley plant (left). In 1993 Robert J. Moffett of the U.S.
Small Business Administration visited Belleville (above) to announce that the company had won the SBA’s
National Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year Award, chosen from 75,000 small businesses performing federal contract work. Company President Eric Weidmann formally received the award in a Rose
Garden ceremony in Washington.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2004
BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT A3
Centennial Edition
Belleville Shoe marks 100 extraordinary years |
Great Lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico.”
Leaner times were on the way,
however. With the Great
Depression came sharply falling
sales, which dropped to less than
$540,000 in 1931. Officers
reduced their salaries. The company stayed afloat, thanks to the
belt-tightening and an enterprising sales effort that made the
most of hard times. Walter
Weidmann, well aware that
Chicago social service agencies
were providing footwear to
impoverished children, won contracts to supply the agencies with
boys’ shoes. “The factory
remained in production throughout the ‘30s,” Homer Weidmann
said. The company also made
hiking boots under the name
“High Sierra,” an expansion of
the boys’ high-cut boot line, and
sold its products to Sears
Roebuck and Montgomery Ward
for their mail-order catalogue
businesses.
The capacity developed and
sustained through the 1930s
proved providential for the company and for the nation’s soldiers, Homer Weidmann noted,
enabling the company to get into
military boot production in
World War II. In October 1940
the firm received an order for
45,000 pairs of boots. Additional
orders flowed in; by 1945 fully
92 percent of its production was
for the military. Sales for 1945
reached $2 million, and the company earned the War Department’s coveted “E” Award for the
quality of its boots and the
dependability of its service: it
never delivered a single pair even
one day late (see separate story).
Out of 93 companies producing
military footwear during the war,
only five received the E Award.
Business slumped briefly during the late 1940s as the company returned to peacetime production, but by 1951 sales had
climbed past $2 million.
Belleville was again making military boots for the Army, Navy
and Marines, now engaged in
Korea. Additionally, sales of its
engineer and logger boots doubled in 1952, and the company
began to make cowboy boots,
both for horseback riders and for
the growing throngs of viewers
enthralled by Roy Rogers, the
Lone Ranger and all the other
westerns on television and the
big screen.
Into sports shoes
In 1953 the company branched out in another new direction
that would carry it through the
The Belleville Shoe Manufacturing Company first began operations at the former Rentchler Machine Shops at East B and Delmar streets (above). In 1909, after a devastating fire destroyed the Jordan Shoe Company building and the Crown Milling elevator at East Main and Walnut streets, Belleville Shoe bought the property and built a
new factory (below). The company produced boots there until April 1986.
A 1961 News-Democrat article reported that Belleville Shoe
“pumps about one million dollars into the local economy each
year in wages, taxes and purchases.” But foreign imports
were already threatening U.S.
shoe manufacturing. “The
import problem that has
scourged the industry started in
the late 1950s,” Homer Weidmann recalled. It was a topic of
deep concern, he said, at the
1958 meeting of the National
Shoe
Manufacturers
Association, which represented
the nation’s 1600 shoe factories.
The trend accelerated in the early
1960s. The athletic shoe business that had promised to carry
the company forward just a few
years before suffered a serious
blow in 1961 when Rawlings
began off-shore production with
Anasco Shoe Company in Puerto
Rico. For two years the company
struggled with falling sales. The
board again reduced executive
salaries.
But in 1963 the company
went on the offensive. On Sept. 1
To combat offshore athletic shoe production, Belleville Shoe established “Belleville
Sport Shoes” as a wholly-owned subsidiary in 1961 and hired William A. Bird
(above) from the Rawlings Sporting Goods Co. to spearhead the enterprise. It operated for two years, until Belleville Shoe recaptured Rawlings’ athletic shoe business.
next two decades. The Rawlings
Sporting Goods Company
approached the firm, proposing
that Belleville make athletic
shoes exclusively for the Rawlings lines. Soon Belleville products would become the shoe of
choice among professional athletes and grace the feet of stars
including Mickey Mantle and
Stan Musial (see separate story).
Both Walter and Homer
Weidmann took several trips
each year, introducing the firm’s
new styles at regional shoe
shows. They carried bulky, 12by-6-by-48-inch sample cases,
each holding as many as 30
shoes. The company also continued to make combat boots,
though a late-‘50s recession took
its toll: in 1958 it recorded its
twelfth consecutive unsuccessful
bid for military work. Still, the
company posted sales of
$2,235,000 for 1958, $2,327,00 in
1959.
The year 1959 brought another innovation for the company’s
workforce. In response to a
union request, Belleville Shoe
inaugurated a pension plan for
all factory employees. For each
employee, the company agreed
to fund an age-65 benefit of 90
cents a month for each year of
qualified service. Thus began a
pension program that for nearly
half a century has helped the
firm’s workers provide for their
retirement years.
it established “Belleville Sport
Shoes” as a separate division to
sell athletic shoes direct to sporting goods dealers. It also hired
Rawlings’ own William A. Bird
to head up sales. The move
involved extensive investment in
equipment, advertising and marketing, but in less than two years
Rawlings capitulated, offering to
shut down the Puerto Rican
operations if Belleville Shoe
would close its sport shoe division. Belleville’s renewed business with Rawlings, along with
new military contracts, reversed
the performance trends, and
sales again began to climb.
These years also saw disciplined efforts to improve productivity. Supervisors pitched efficiencies, exhorting the workforce to increase production to
1,400 pairs a day in all departments. The company made concerted efforts to reduce inventory. Sales climbed modestly
through the decade.
Vulcanizing soles
More changes were on the
way. The Defense Department
discontinued its Goodyear Welt
combat boot, shifting instead to a
direct-mold system for attaching
soles to boots. Homer Weidmann
traveled to North Carolina and
Georgia in February 1967 to
investigate Rosearch’s vulcanization process for fusing soles
to uppers. Making the change
would require a $180,000 equipment investment. The company’s
initial reaction was negative, but
Rosearch’s offer to loan
Belleville the needed presses,
heating elements and compressor for combat boot production
changed the equation, and the
company began using the new
vulcanizing method. Military
contracts increased, and by 1968
the company had a large backlog
of work. By August 1968 the
company was operating 12 vulcanizing presses and planned to
expand production to three shifts
as quickly as possible.
As military production grew
during the Vietnam conflict, the
athletic shoe business showed
signs of winding down. In 1969
Rawlings gave its football shoe
business to a competitor, though
it left baseball shoe production
in Belleville. In 1970 Belleville
Shoe began making sport shoes
for Wilson Sporting Goods
Company in Milwaukee, but
within a year that trade faltered.
Meanwhile, the armed forces
were ordering more combat
boots, and the company decided
to postpone sport shoe work so it
could expand combat boot production. It won new contracts for
combat boots with increasing
frequency; in 1973 alone, it bid
successfully on three contracts
for a total of 177,000 pairs. Sales
climbed again, and in 1975
broke the $3 million mark to
reach $3,236,000.
Homer Weidmann’s son Eric
joined the management team in
September 1975. It was a challenging time to enter the shoe
business. The December 1975
board meeting minutes record a
frank discussion of the problems
the company faced. The American “shoe industry contraction is
now 15 years old,” the minutes
noted. Additionally, the directors
acknowledged, Belleville Shoe’s
“aging three-story building will
require modernization.”
Undaunted, the company
pressed ahead. Eight new vulcanizing presses came on line in
April 1976. The company could
now produce up to 1500 pairs of
combat boots a day, up from
1200, with good expectations of
further expansion. Sales continued to rise, reaching $4.5 million
in 1978, and in 1979 the company expanded its physical plant
for the first time since 1926 with
the leasing of 35,000 square feet
in an abandoned store building
on Carlyle Avenue, Belleville.
Cutting and fitting operations
moved there, freeing more space
for lasting, bottoming and packing at the East Main Street plant.
The company bought new equipment, hired new workers and
expanded daily production to
2,800 pairs. Sales for 1979
topped $7 million.
Walter Weidmann, who had
served the company since its
beginning 76 years before, was
hospitalized in July 1980 and
died in September. He had been
the driving force behind the
company’s early nationwide
sales and other innovative marketing efforts, and his death
marked the end of the founding
generation’s era.
The company, now experiencing dramatic growth, required
additional upper-level management. In 1980, Eric Weidmann
persuaded David Herr, a friend
from his Stanford Business
School days and the husband of
his cousin, to join the Belleville
Shoe team. Herr’s responsibilities came to include quality systems, purchasing, research and
development, product diversification and information technology. He also became, Eric
Weidmann said, “the major link
to our contract business customers,” who represent 80 percent of the firm’s business.
Signs of expansion abounded.
In July 1980 the firm leased an
additional 30,000 square feet in
the Carlyle Avenue building and
moved the lasting operations
there. Employment exceeded
300, and sales for the year nearly
doubled, reaching $13.5 million.
For 1981 they were $17.4 million.
A global recession in 1982 hit
all of American manufacturing
hard, including Belleville Shoe.
Eric Weidmann reported to the
board that bidding for military
contracts was the most competitive in memory. All successful
bids, he added, were at losing
prices, with companies selling
boots below cost. Sales for 1982
fell back to $13.8 million, and in
1983, as the recession persisted,
the company halted work for six
weeks during the summer. It won
a major contract — for 286,000
boots — in August, and in
October instituted additional
cost-saving measures, including
tighter manufacturing process
control, better use of materials
and improved machine efficiencies, but though the firm benefited by a $1-per-pair cost reduction from these measures, still
sales dropped again for 1983, to
$11.5 million. Another six-week
layoff followed in 1984.
New factory planned
Undeterred, the company laid
plans to build a new factory
where it could consolidate its
operations and approached the
City of Belleville about moving
to the Belle Valley Industrial
Park east of town. The sales
slump reversed itself in 1984,
and by April 1985 the company
reported the best quarter in its
80-year history. In July the city
issued $2 million in economic
development revenue bonds and
sold industrial park acreage to
Belleville Shoe for the construc-
tion of a 113,000-square-foot
plant, expected to cost $2.8 million. The groundbreaking was
July 22, 1985, and the building
was up and running by April
1986.
Sales were strong and
improving consistently. They
topped $23 million in 1986 and
for 1987 exceeded $27 million.
A new quality control program inaugurated in 1986
strengthened the company’s performance dramatically. Herr,
whose responsibilities included
product quality, discovered the
work of quality expert Philip
Crosby in 1985. Crosby had
devised a method for assessing a
cost for quality failures, which
he called the “price of non-conformance” (PONC). Both Herr
and Eric Weidmann attended
Crosby seminars and brought the
program back to Belleville Shoe.
“Crosby put a ‘number’ to the
cost of inspecting and reworking
manufactured goods,” Weidmann explained. “Quality is not
‘goodness.’ Quality is making
the product right the first time.”
Belleville Shoe has tracked these
numbers ever since, identifying
and eliminating the causes of
quality failures. “Zero defects
are a goal but never a reality,”
Weidmann added. “The price of
non-conformance number is a
measure of performance. It tells
you how much better you are this
week than last week.” The company sets PONC goals by department, and the plant manager and
director of quality work with
supervisors to meet those goals.
Incentives, awards and special perks like reserved parking
encourage employees’ active
participation, but, as Herr pointed out, the primary incentive is
their workers’ earnest commitment to top performance.
“Everybody here wants to do the
job right,” he said. “We give
them the training and the tools to
allow them to do the job right.”
One measure of the program’s
success is the company’s ISO
9000 certification, a prestigious
recognition of high quality
achievement, which the company received in 2002.
Making steel-toe boots
In 1990, the company under-
Continued from Page 1
took development of a steel-toe
work boot. In March 1991 it
received an order for 10,000
pairs from Hy-Test, Inc., a leading distributor of industrial work
shoes. Belleville Shoe began
production on 10 different styles
in black and brown leather. The
contract came at a time when the
Gulf War was ending and
Defense Department contracts
were falling off. Though the
company stopped work-boot
production in 1999, Eric
Weidmann said the enterprise
taught them important lessons.
“We were making a number of
different styles of steel-toe
boot,” he explained. “It taught us
different outsole constructions,
different linings, steel-toe construction, and it taught us how to
expand our product line” —
lessons that would bear fruit later
in the proliferating styles of
high-tech military footwear.
Sales ranged between $20
million and $30 million through
the 1990s. With the end of the
work shoe business in 1999, the
company devoted itself almost
exclusively to military footwear,
as the world confronted the
growing dangers of global terrorism. U.S. forces gathered
strength and modernized, a
process that accelerated after
Sept. 11, 2001. Increasingly the
Defense Department looked for
specialized, cutting-edge gear
that would serve in specific conditions — deserts, mountains,
cockpits. They required, variously, waterproofing, chemical
resistance, flame and heat resistance, even barriers to bamboo
spear traps. Whereas in 1981
Belleville Shoe made a single
style of military boot, today the
company produces 24 styles of
military footwear. Most of that
product line expansion has come
in the last five years.
Reinventing boots
Belleville Shoe has also
acquired
numerous
new
advances in boot technology. In
prior decades, the company simply produced boots to the
Defense Department’s specifications, but since the 1990s the
company’s research and development efforts, under Herr’s leadership, have increasingly helped
the armed forces reinvent combat boots and adapt them to new
needs. In 1996, for instance,
Herr invented the tri-layer sole,
adding a polyurethane cushion
midsole between a rubber midsole and a rubber outsole. The
boot offered vastly improved
comfort over the old single-layer
combat boot rubber sole, providing better shock absorption and
reducing leg and foot injuries. It
has since become the sole system of choice for all the services.
Similarly, in 2001 the firm introduced injection molding to
attach a polyurethane cushion
midsole directly to the boot,
applying running shoe technology to military bootmaking. Even
today, only three other U.S. military suppliers use this method.
R&D, Herr added, “is driven
by our perception of what the
customer needs. We’ve been successful in the last eight to ten
years because we have been able
to communicate with our potential customers about their needs
and then develop specific products to meet those needs.”
Open in Arkansas
The sharp increase in military
production has required a corresponding expansion in capacity.
In 2002 the company added a
$1 million, 45,000-square-foot
finished goods distribution center to the Belle Valley plant. The
same year the firm took a historic
Please see 100 YEARS, p. 4
Belleville Shoe has been fortunate in its employees’ loyalty and skill. One long-termer was Rudolph Pfeil (second from right,
above), who began with the company in 1909 and continued for more than 50 years, rising to become plant superintendent. This
picture was taken at a 1959 dinner honoring him and his wife for his half-century of service. President Walter E. Weidmann is
at left and Vice President Homer Weidmann at right.
Friday, October 8, 2004
A4 BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Centennial Edition
Arkansas plant doubles firm’s workforce |
Continued from Page 1
two
locations
constantly
exchange information about
purchasing, production, shipping, billing, quality and all the
other facets of bootmaking.
Powerful new software under
development by the company’s
Belleville IT team will strengthen the communication links
dramatically.
Along with his enthusiasm
for the relationship between the
two locations, Carr also
acknowledges cultural differences between the operations.
“The staff here are very laid
back,” he said, “though the factory is fast-paced. These people
grew up working hard. Most of
them had to work as children.”
Company expectations are
different in some ways, too,
Meins noted. “The demand is
huge,” she said, contrasting it
with the diminishing production
under Munro in its waning
years. In dealing with the
Defense Department, quality
control is much tighter as well,
she added. Employees have had
to learn new equipment and
processes, including vulcanizing soles.
Like their Belleville counterparts, though, they are proud to
make shoes for America’s military men and women. Carr
shares that pride himself. “It
means a lot to me,” he noted. “I
was a Marine.”
Maintenance
Manager
Jimmy Ray echoes Carr’s sentiments. “My son is a captain in
the Army National Guard,” he
said. “He tells me this is the
best boot he’s ever put on. It is
an outstanding product. We’ve
never heard a bad report.”
Belleville Shoe has made a
powerful difference in DeWitt
and its environs. The wages and
especially the benefits it offers
Belleville Shoe President Eric Weidmann brims with enthusiasm about the company’s expansion in DeWitt, Arkansas. The management team there includes (from the left)
Johnnie Carr, assistant secretary-treasurer; Weidmann; Tim Glidewell, plant manager; Barbara Meins, human resources director; and Jimmy Ray, maintenance manager.
exceed the area standard sub- a new roof, new break areas and
stantially. “Many of
our
employees
“My son is a captain in the
never had any benefits before,” Carr Army National Guard. He tells
said. Carr and
me this is the best boot he’s
Meins also appreciate the company’s
ever put on.”
investments
in
equipment and the
Jimmy Ray, Maintenance Manager
work environment.
A huge Munro
warehouse space now hums bathrooms all make the plant
with sole-lay and packing oper- more comfortable for its
ations. Parking lot paving, new employees.
“The company has made
and improved air conditioning,
Branching out
By 1953, the first signs of
impending struggles in the
American footwear industry
began to appear. Locally,
International Shoe closed its
Belleville plant that year.
Belleville Shoe, with imaginative marketing, soldiered on
with a combination of military
footwear, cowboy boots for the
western wear craze, boots for
hikers and engineers and its
men’s and boys’ lines. But
soon stores
would turn
to foreign
suppliers
for shoes.
European
producers,
especially
in Italy and
Germany, were
the first to make
inroads in the American shoe
market, but they were only the
beginning, presaging unprecedented challenges to come later
from Latin America and then
Asia.
In the midst of this gathering
storm, Belleville Shoe made a
fortuitous connection. The
Rawlings Sporting Goods
Company, based in St. Louis,
approached President Walter
Weidmann and proposed a contract whereby Belleville Shoe
would make athletic shoes
exclusively
for
the
Rawlings lines. For its
part, Rawlings would
pay for lasts, patterns
and the installation
and maintenance
of
special
equipment.
Soon the
every effort to improve working
conditions,” Meins said gratefully.
Because production has
grown so quickly, the company
has drained the DeWitt labor
pool and has fanned out across
the area to hire the workers it
needs. “Finding and keeping
skilled employees is hard,”
Meins acknowledged. Many
potential employees do not have
reliable cars, so the office hired
two transportation companies to
operate a first-shift van service.
It now serves four outlying
communities, one 60 miles distant. About 100 employees ride
the vans to work and home again
each day.
“Other companies might
offer transportation,” Weidmann mused, “but I’ve never
heard of it.”
The shuttles have been
essential to increasing production levels. “We wouldn’t have
been able to pull it off if we
hadn’t been willing to offer van
service,” said Tim Glidewell,
plant manager. “We had exhausted the workforce in DeWitt.”
Glidewell, fitting room
supervisor for Munro and the
first person back in the plant for
Belleville Shoe, is still stunned
by the company’s expansion and
success in DeWitt. “It’s just
amazing how far we’ve come in
such a short time,” said
Glidewell, who laid out the production lines and made the
plant ready for military production. “It took a lot of hard work.
We have really dedicated people. It was a team effort.” A key
element, he added, was the
company’s willingness to
invest. “Belleville Shoe has
given us every tool we need,” he
said.
Ray, the maintenance manager, has worked at the factory
for 37 years, going back to the
Northern Shoe days. His uncle,
Bobby Rowland, helped build
the plant back in 1959. Its 2001
closing, he said, “was devastating to DeWitt and [neighboring]
Clarendon.” Like Glide-well,
Ray is amazed at the transformation. Going to full production with 600-plus employees
from an 80-person cut-and-sew
operation was a remarkable and
unexpected change; and he was
impressed as well when the production floor grew from 40,000
to 104,000 square feet with the
incorporation of the warehouse
space. “It has been a rapid
ramp-up,” he said with some
understatement.
For her part, Meins was convinced that the plant’s days were
over when Munro announced
the closing. “I would have
sworn that the building would
just deteriorate,” she said. “This
has been very big news for
DeWitt.”
Added Carr: “The Chamber
of Commerce is thrilled to
death.”
Running the bases with Mickey and Stan
company was producing
baseball, football, soccer,
golf, bowling and track
shoes. Accord-ing to the
News-Demo-crat,
the
majority of Olympic track
stars and almost all major
league baseball players
wore shoes made at
Belleville. And the company had won the loyalty
of some celebrity sports stars,
including Mickey Mantle and
Stan Musial.
“Stan Musial was our best
customer,” recalled Homer
Weidmann, then company vice
president. “He insisted on tight
shoes to help him get to first
base in a hurry. He’d go
through six or seven pairs in a
season. As soon as the shoes
began to stretch he’d get a new
pair.”
“Stan Musial was our best customer. He’d go through six or
seven pairs in a season. As soon as the shoes began to
stretch he’d get a new pair.”
Homer Weidmann
Walter Weidmann (left) and Homer Weidmann (behind him) toured Rawlings executives through the Belleville Shoe factory
as the two firms joined up to make athletic shoes in 1953.
Belleville Shoe produced quality athletic footwear during
the 1950s and
1960s, including
golf shoes (below)
and baseball shoes
favored by Mickey
Mantle and Stan Musial.
Kangaroo tannage from
Australia and New Zealand was
the hide of choice for athletic
shoes because it is lightweight,
yet tough. “Kangaroo hide is
the strongest leather per unit of
thickness,”
Weidmann
explained. One pair of football
shoes required almost all the
hide of one kangaroo.
Belleville made the
shoes
to
Rawlings’
designs, and the trade
grew in time to represent about 50 percent of the
c o m p a n y ’s
business,
Weid-mann
said. Belleville shoes were on
the feet of everyone from the
major leagues to Little League.
Eventually, though, this production began to migrate overseas as well. As early as 1956,
the German firms Adidas and
Puma, through aggressive mar-
100 years |
step and opened Belleville Shoe
South in a shuttered DeWitt,
Arkansas, shoe factory, its first
company-owned operations outside the Metro-East (see separate story). The workforce has
jumped from 300 just three years
ago to 1300 now — 650 in Belleville
and 650 in DeWitt.
Twenty-first-century technology has transformed manufacturing in many ways. Huge computer-driven equipment now
cuts synthetic fabrics, replacing
the old dye-cut methods, and
molds and attaches midsoles and
outsoles. A growing bank of
computer-controlled
sewing
mach-ines compliments the
three long traditional-machine
production lines. To manage the
increasing complexities of multiple styles and a vastly enlarged
warehouse, a unique, sophisticated software system that the
company’s four-person IT team
is developing will ultimately
track production from the first
receipt of an order through
inventory, shipping and delivery
and integrate all the production
functions with billing, disbursements, payroll and even quality
control.
By early next year, Weidmann hopes to have a leathercutting machine on line, an
unprecedented move in the
industry. “It will be revolutionary,” he said. “No shoe company
in America does it.” The installation will borrow technology
from the auto industry, which
uses it for cutting leather seats.
The new equipment reflects a
company commitment to reinvestment, also evident in
improvements to the work environment. In Belleville, the company this year expanded its
keting at the Mexico City
Summer Olympics, gained a
beachhead in the American
sport shoe business. Rawlings
started offshore production in
Puerto Rico in 1961. Though
Belleville Shoe managed to
recapture that trade in 1963 and
continued selling athletic shoes
directly to sporting goods
stores after its relationship with
Rawlings ended about 1970,
the company’s long-term future
was to unfold in military
footwear.
Continued from Page 3
parking lot from 300 to 450
spaces. In DeWitt, a new roof,
parking lot paving, substantial
air conditioning and ventilation
upgrades, new break areas and
bathrooms have improved the
plant.
Beacon of opportunity
Upgrading the work environment in turn expresses the company’s commitment to its workforce. Belleville Shoe is aggressive too in its efforts to hire
minorities. Of 684 employees in
Belleville in June, 46 percent
were minorities — 33 percent
African-American, 8 percent
Asian and 5 percent Hispanic. In
Arkansas, 58 percent of the
plant’s employees were minority, 55 percent African-Americans and the balance Asians and
Hispanics. In Arkansas, 64 percent of the workforce are
women; in Belleville the number
is 48 percent.
“We’ve made an active effort
to reach out to minorities,”
Weidmann noted. Though the
firm is obligated to do so as a
federal contractor, Weidmann
said its efforts rise out of moral
conviction. “We believe in it.
The percentage of minorities we
employ is in some cases twice as
high as their percentage in the
local labor market. We are
known as a beacon of minority
employment.” The Belleville
plant’s employees come from as
far away as Chester, Carlyle,
Highland and Alton. The
Arkansas plant also draws from
a wide area — and the company
runs shuttles to transport more
than 100 workers from distant
communities every day.
Belleville Shoe’s history has
been a remarkable story of
entrepreneurship, adaptability
and stunning growth. In the last
five years in particular, the firm
has claimed an increasing proportion of the U.S. military’s
business. “We have made an
aggressive effort to gain market
share,”
Weidmann
said,
“through a combination of product development and diversification, pricing, quality, delivery
performance and marketing. The
market today is two and a half to
three times what it was five
years ago — and we may have as
much as half that expansion.”
Belle-ville Shoe competes with
nine other manufacturers for the
government’s business.
“We’ve produced military
footwear every year for the last
64 years,” he reflected. “But up
until 1997 no military boot manufacturer was allowed to put its
company name on its boots. The
Marine Corps started to change
that with its first purchase of a
Gore-Tex-lined infantry boot in
1997, and 100 percent of that
contract was awarded to
Belleville Shoe, beating out
eight other companies in a fierce
bidding competition. So the first
name ever to appear on bootcamp issued boots in any service
was ‘Belleville.’
“Since then we’ve been able
to develop a recognition of the
BELLEVILLE brand in the military market as representing
lightweight, comfortable yet
very durable boots — the Nike
of our military world.”
And today, U.S. military personnel stationed around the
world refer to their boots as
“Bellevilles.”