|
Over the years we have found that big brands sell better, even if they are expensive and the it isn't clear what they mean. Maybe the brand is better advertised, or people like the conformity and sense of belonging that comes with a Levi®, Nike®, Doc Martens®, Birkenstock®, GAP® and the rest. Those who buy off an amateurish site like veganline.com might want the quality control which comes with a brand: the sense that they know what they are getting so they don't need to trust the shop that they are getting it from. By accident, one brand used to count for counter-culture: it was a brand that any UK shoe factory could sell, and any working-class person could buy cheaply or get for free. Employers of manual labour can buy safety boots from cheap catalogues, just as offices buy stationary. There is no sales tax on safety boots and some employers - builders, factories, warehouses - could get sued if an employee got a crushed foot and wasn't wearing them. The DM brand itself belonged to the descendants of a German
doctor who let it be used by a marketing company and any Goodyear-welting
safety shoe factory under licence. The marketing company wrote
"Airwear" on the boots but most people called them
DMs or Doc Martens. Yellow sewing-string was used to emphasise
strength of construction; and there was a yellow pull-tag to
show the site foreman that you were wearing proper safety boots
to work. Another accident of history is that the UK was an early
industrial country and developed a network of smallish shoe suppliers
who tended to sell wholesale rather than building-up stock, brands
or sales teams of their own. The factories, too, tended to be
owned by family trusts and were very experienced in keeping costs
low. During the war they had been forced to make standardised
state-organised designs to keep costs even lower. So the brand
was like cheddar cheese, army boots or MA1 jackets - a In 1979 a new government economic
policy of high
exchange rates to reduce inflation made DM boots, like any
British-made products, a tiny, niche part of the market compared
to cheaper imported competition. This caused the rapidest possible
lay-offs, factory closures, and a long-term reduction in tooling,
advertising and any non-essential cost. About the same time and
probably as a result, the brand was bought by one of the largest
factories - Greig - who used it in a less co-operative
way. They preferred to own the places where it was made and to
select the shops where it was sold. Their Northamptonshire neighbours
in other factories and the army surplus shops that had sold so
many boots were abandoned. Better linkage between the cash tills
and the supply chain meant that chain stores could order DMs
a lot more easily and sell them at higher prices. The brand was
still unusual in that the sewing & sole-making was done in
the UK and that only about 6% of turnover was spent on advertising.
They were still seen as trendy although no-one could quite remember
why. Short-runs of specialised shoes were still available to
the firm's preferred vegan In 2003, DMs decided that they would behave like Nike and THE GAP, in cutting their production costs by sourcing in China. This was not to cut costs to customers but to spend the saved money on advertising, obtaining space on the shelves of trendy town-centre shops made scarce by the town and country planning act of decades earlier. "We thought that Dr Martens broke the usual rules of brand marketing", said a spokesman, "but we were wrong." Will this new product sell in America? The question is no longer of interest to firms like Veganline.com who try to avoid Chinese products. Counter-culture is better represented by people who work for local factories than people who buy from China and support an autocratic state. Veganline.com uses one of the factories that broke away from the DM brand. Have your heard of Tredair? No? It is not a money-raking organisation - with the director answering the phone and paying himself no more than a teacher - but we think the product is technically better than other cushion-sole goodyear-welted footwear, using a patent foam-injection technique rather than a bit of felt as the mid sole. The plastic sole is better quality too: bouncier but as flexible as a pair of trainers. The company is still owned by a family trust and based in Northamptonshire, and although they have ceased production they sub-contract it to a local staff co-op. Rather than an imitation, we think Tredair® is the genuine article. back to bouncing shoes section on the veganline.com index page |
| Sizes UK | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| Eur. | 34 | 35.5 | 36.7 | 38 | 39 | 40.5 | 42 | 43 | 44.2 | 45.5 | 47 |
| US male | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| US female | 3½ | 4½ | 5½ | 6½ | 7½ | 8½ | 9½ | 10½ | 11½ | 12½ | 13½ |
| monitor
monthly additions to the sale page in your size or click
a size link for other sale pages. Non-sale categories are at the top of the page. |
|||||||||||
quality-controlled
and well-known label that wasn't expensive to buy. Many of the
factories are the same ones that you see on the internet selling
snobby gentleman's brogues, and there is a cheeky satisfaction
in knowing that the same quality is available free to your local
builder or the garage mechanic.
Company,
now a wholesaler), George Cox®, Tuf® (Brittan
& Co, defence contractors later UK Safety wholesalers) and
Totectors® (later to merge with UK Safety before both
closed) as well as wholesaler's own brands - Gladiator®
(South Son & Whitecombe Ltd, former footwear wholesale company,
once owners to the British Boot Company in Camden) and Getta-Grip®
(Hooton & Co, wholesalers). They never caught-on because
most of us would assume that they were all cheap copies of DMs,
while the truth was that some were 
glued-together,
some were sewn and all were pretty good. Open University students
may know the videos - which were also shown on television - about
The Sexy Shoe Company in which the Provider®
people tried to find a new market, and another one showing DM's
first attempts at big-budget advertising.