From the last to the finished pair.
Nine stages, all of them in our own plants.
Last to finished pair.
The last
Everything starts here, because the last is the foot. We pick one from our library, change one, or cut a new one from a shoe you already sell.
Pattern
The upper is built on the last, taken apart into a flat pattern, and sized across the run from one master.
Materials
Leather, textiles, foams and hardware. The compounds for the soles are mixed in our own workshop.
Sampling
A pair built on the real last with the real materials, photographed and sent to you before anything else happens.
Cutting
Automated on volume work; by hand on leather, where the cutter's judgement about the hide decides how the shoe wears.
Stitching
The upper put together — skiving, folding, lining, eyelets. The most skilled job on the floor and where most of the training goes.
Lasting
The upper pulled over the last and fixed down, then heat-set so the shape holds.
Soling
Cemented, stitched, vulcanised or injected straight on, depending on how the shoe is built.
Finishing
Cleaning, dressing, edges, socks and laces — then checked, boxed and packed.
Lines sized to the order, not one line forced to fit every job.
Where a machine beats a person.
Automated cutting
Cutting tables with nesting software for textile and synthetic uppers, so we get more out of every metre.
Lasting lines
Sized to the order rather than one line forced to fit every job, with heat setting in line so the shape is fixed before the shoe moves on.
Our own tool room
Moulds and lasts cut and corrected on site. Sent out to a third party, a correction takes weeks and usually a season.
Traceability
Every pair carries a code from cutting to packing, so we can tell you which line and which day made any shoe in the shipment.
We break our own shoes first.
A shoe rarely fails in the sample review. It fails after a season of wear. So we flex them, abrade them, pull the soles off them and put development pairs on real feet before we sell anything.
Pairs are checked at the cutting bench, on the line, and again before they are boxed.
Come and see it.
Buyers are welcome to walk either plant before there is an order. Most do.