New to Hoads: Place Footwear

We always strive to offer the best selection of styles, fittings and fashions at Hoad Shoes and that includes footwear for those of you that have to wear orthotics or need extra support in your shoes. Recently we came across a brand on the market called Place footwear that offer a selection of shoes and sandals either with orthotic support built into the sole unit or with deep removable soles to enable you to fit your own insoles in.

Up until recently Place have been known (for the past 33 years) as the world's leading manufacturer of customer made foot orthotics for the healthcare market. Based on this they put together a footwear collection of functional healthy footwear incorporating their unique Biomechanical Footbed technology.

There are 5 benefits to Place’s Biomechanical footbed:

1. Reduce Muscle Fatigue – Recent studies have shown Place Footwear improves muscle activity whilst walking and enhances your efficiency with every step you take meaning more energy for the things you enjoy most!

2. Minimise Knee Stress – Faulty foot mechanics can lead to problems at the knee, especially around the kneecap. Clinical studies show the contoured footbed can help because they guide your foot while walking and prevent some of the injury producing loads associated with unsupportive footwear.

3. Reduce Foot Pain – Place footwear provides support others do not. When it comes to issues like metatarsalgia, heel pain and pain around the ankle; maintaining the foot in its natural position makes a big difference.

4. Reduce Impact Forces – The unique footbed of place footwear allows the foot to contour seamlessly with the footbed and helps redistribute pressure more evenly across the foot – less stress means less strain in vulnerable areas like the ball of the foot and heel.

5. Tissue Stress Hurts – every tissue in the body: muscle, tendon, ligament and bone; functions within an optimum zone of stress – exceed that zone and problems occur. Place footwear takes a new approach and helps keep you “in the zone” while enjoying your activity in comfort.

This season we have decided to stock two of the women's summer styles as a trial:

Capri £55

"This luxurious upper is built around our unique contoured sole unit with BFT Technology– carefully crafted to provide gentle biomechanical correction and exceptional pronation control. This advanced foot support, is perfect for everyday wear and incorporates features to minimise foot fatigue all while improving posture, balance and body alignment". - See more at: http://placefootwear.com/place-capri-red#sthash.KhSbkUOu.dpuf

Antigua £59.99

"This luxurious soft leather lined upper is built around our unique foot-bed, which embeds a high quality deep removable cushioned insole, designed to disperse pressure".  - See more at: http://placefootwear.com/place-antigua-marshmallow#sthash.CVOHgMy4.dpuf

We think these sandals are fantastic - the option of fitting your own orthotic into a sandal or wearing a flipflop style that has all the support built in provides people that need extra support with more option when thinking of summer footwear.

Pop in and try a pair; we're sure you'll love them as much as we do!

A Day Trip to Barkers

Last week James and I had the pleasure of being invited for a factory tour in Earls Barton, Northamptonshire to see the production of one of our top selling mens brands, Barker. Established in 1880 by Arthur Barker who believed in making shoes to the highest of qualities the business has flourished and now sells to over 50 countries. 

Barker's mantra is that "Barker will, through a combination of design, quality materials, and craftsmanship developed in a century of shoe making offer shoes which empitomise style, superb fit, comfort and excellent value"; this mantra speaks for itself once you put on your first pair.

Arriving early morning we were met by our tour guide and current agent Mike Thomas who proceeded to lead us to the conference room -  a beautiful large glass room - with every style to date on display. We were then joined by the Sales Director Adrian Gell and lead through the styles, given ample information on fit, colour options and prices and proceeded to put together our next seasons buy. 

Here's what we chose:

In the top left hand corner we chose a simple, classic black lace up for work (something we are missing in our Barker's collection, in the top right hand corner we have a small selection from the 'premium' collection taking on the country theme and at the bottom we have a beautiful selection of our true loves, brogues! 

Once we had put our selection together a refueled with tea and lunch we went for our factory tour, que a stream of pictures and complicated descriptions!

Skins for the products come in from all over the world, predominantly from France and Spain because they tend to be the best quality; each piece is then checked by hand and eye for marks or impurities in the leather. If any marks are found the leather it is either returned immediately or the skins are cut by hand in order to avoid in the imperfections. 

This machine has been with the Barker factory since they began and it is the most accurate way to measure the dimensions of the leather. The leather is fed through the machine by the row of pins you can see at the top and the exact circumference of the leather comes up on the dial.

Once the leather is checked it is sent to the cutting and clicking room...(named so because of the sound of the stanley knife once removed from cutting a piece of leather)

James having a go at cutting the leather by hand; some of the pieces are cut like this and some are cut using a press.

And the result:

Next step is to mark where the stitches need to be made on the leather and any stiffening to the tongue is added. If the shoe is then needed to be punched by hand it happens at this point too, the lady we met at the Barker's factory that does this job is one of four in the whole country that can punch leather by hand. A shoe is hand punched for bespoke and one off pairs. 

The soles are then made - all punched out of a thicker section of leather and injected with a cement made out of cork, a shank is also added either made out of metal or poplar wood. At this point the underlay of the heels is also added.  

The shoe is then stretched over the last using a heat process to shrink the leather to perfectly fit. The shoes are hand checked for any blemishes or faults and then 650 pounds of pressure per inch is used to secure the welt and the sole onto the last. The shoes are then put through a machine and 300 pounds of pressure is used to ensure the soles are all even and level. 

And finally the shoes are sent to the finishing room where they are polished with wax and any edges or roughness on the heels or the welts is smoothed out. The heels are then added using 10 metal tacks that go from the sole into the heel; (it used to be the other way around but due to quality issued this had to be reversed) as the shoes go from a size 3 - 17 the heel width and height changes to meet the requirements of each sized shoe. The heels are rubbed down again around the edge to ensure they are completely smooth and then they are inked to ensure an even layer of colour. The upper is then hand polished again and sealed to make the shoes as waterproof as leather possible can be. The soles are then stained and then they are 'bunked' (or stamped to you and me) with the Barkers emblem. The shoes are then hand laced by two lovely ladies; the shoes are then hand check one last time and approved for packaging. 

Finally the shoes are boxed (by hand, naturally) along with spare laces, a shoe horn, polishing cloth and care guide ready for shipping and selling.

The stock is held in the warehouse (where 55,000 are currently held) until it is ready to be shipped to its destination. 

A few years ago Barker celebrated their 130th anniversary with a visit from Princess Anne, in the same year they won a UK Fashion and Textile Industry award and a Gold Award for export excellence. 

It was so fascinating to see the entire process of making the shoes from the leather at the beginning (still almost animal like) to a pair of hand crafted, contemporary styled shoes. A massive thank you to everyone at the Barker factory for our wonderful tour.