I had the opportunity to go to New Balance's Shoe School at their factory in Skowhegan, Maine. I thought that I knew everything about sneakers. Turns out I knew very little. In fact, this one day course would forever change my perspective about business, people and why Made in the USA is so important.

 

Class started at 7am which I thought cruel and unusual punishment until I learned that the factory workers who would be my teachers had already started their shift at 6am with many working past 4pm. Instead of pencil and paper, our equipment for the day consisted of gloves, safety glasses and ear plugs, and our final exam would be the completion of a pair of shoes.

 

The Skowhegan factory is located in a refurbished old mill building that New Balance President, Jim Davis, bought for just a few hundred dollars in the 1970's with the promise that he would bring back domestic manufacturing and jobs to Skowhegan. Davis lived up to his promise and today, the factory employs almost 300 people and is the reason the town of Skowhegan thrives today. Even the local coffee shop in town noted that without New Balance, they wouldn't exist. Proof that local businesses are the heartbeat of their communities which it is so important that we keep jobs in the USA and shop local whenever possible.

 

I was assigned to the purple value stream - one of five assembly lines at the factory. Each line produces a specific shoe from start to finish - over 40 stations beginning with cutting the various pieces needed from large pieces of leather and ending with wrapping the shoes in tissue and putting them into the box. Each station is staffed by a real person who helps to bring the shoe to life, bit by bit.  Today, purple was creating the 997 in a beautiful burgundy color.

 

The 997 is one of New Balance's lifestyle shoes that sell more for its style than its performance on the run. The shoes are super popular in China and Japan where the "Made in the USA" label is coveted because it is synonymous with quality. Ironically, Americans tend to value price which drove shoe manufacturing out of New England to those overseas factories causing a loss of so many manufacturing jobs in America. 

 

I had butterflies as I approached the start of the line, but Oscar, a 10 year veteran of the factory, reassured me that they wouldn't let me screw up too badly!  With his help, I stamped out the pieces of leather for the shoe's upper using a cookie-cutter made of steel and a hydraulic press, being careful to avoid any blemishes in the leather and to cut the pieces as closely as possible so as not to waste leather. It took me about 5 minutes to cut out my pieces. It took Oscar less than a minute.

 

Throughout the day, I was impressed by the efficiencies of the line, a combination of special machines and expert hands, that sped up production time and limited waste. I had the honor of meeting Raye Wentworth, the GM of the factory who has been with New Balance for over 30 years, having worked her way up the ranks from the factory floor. She was instrumental in reducing the time it took to make a case of shoes from 8 days to less than one hour. Today, her factory hand makes over 1,200 pairs of shoes a day - half a million pairs a year!

 

In all, it took me about 3 hours to craft my shoe. The easiest parts were gluing the size tag on the underside of the tongue, building the "N" logo that goes on the sides of the shoes and the piecing the upper together since it was mostly automated. The most stressful step was sewing the upper together because it had to be done completely by hand.

 

The sewers made it look so easy as they lined up nearly imperceptible notches in the leather and made the sewing machines sing as they effortlessly zipped the uppers under the needle, creating a beautiful bootie. I must have been using a bad machine because it kept jerking as if I was driving a stick shift car for the first time which caused runaway stitches and gaps that needed some TLC by Tina to salvage my bootie so it could be glued to the sole.   

 

As I went through each of those 43 stations, I was humbled by the pride and respect each of those 43 workers had for their job, their colleagues and the shoes they were creating. Even when I caused the line to fall behind schedule, they still treated me with warmth and patience. They even cared about the shoe I was making. As one worker told me, if they don't give their 100% best effort, then they disrespect the work that everyone before them did.  

I left Skowhegan with a warm place in my heart for New Balance and its people, a wonderful example of how to treat my staff and customers, a renewed commitment to shop local and a pair of men's size 10 burgundy 997's that received a "B" grade from Quality Control...but an "A" from my dad who wears them with pride just as he did the leather belt I made him in high school shop class!