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.
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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.
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