The inventor of trainers (arguably) - and made in Cumbria (seriously).
BY Luke Leitch[1] | 23 August 2013
It's all very well chucking liberally zeroed contracts at British sporting stars such as Wayne Rooney (Nike), Jessica Ennis (adidas), or Ian Poulter (Puma). Yet only one big ticket sportswear brand - the world's fourth largest by revenue, to be precise - makes shoes in Britain. Take a bow, New Balance.
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, New Balance turns out the trainers with a tilted 'N', logo. Last year it turned over $2.39 billion. Around 25 per cent of its US sales comprise shoes made by its 1,200 American factory workers. The majority of New Balance shoes are made in Asia, but a notable minority - around 1.2 million pairs a year - are manufactured by the 230-ish Brits employed at its utilitarian-looking factory in beautiful Cumbria. These UK-made shoes are prized by athletes and collectors alike, so some occasionally eccentric variations are made to meet the demand. For example, the latest Flimby-made limited edition collection of New Balance's 576 style (£125 a pair) has been produced in honour of the three most-drunk varieties of tea on the factory's trolley.
There is a kind of symmetry to this US company's UK interests: after all, it was founded by an Englishman. In 1906, William J Riley, a waiter who had emigrated to Boston, started experimenting with the manufacture of arch supports, apparently inspired by the elegant shape of chicken feet as well, perhaps, as the state of his own. These were a great success among waiters, policemen and other vertical professions. In 1925 he made a dedicated running shoe for the Boston Brown Bag Harriers; such was their popularity that he was asked to provide footwear for other sports, including Boston's all-important baseball.
Riley had sold the business by 1960, when new owners Eleanor and Paul Kidd designed the Trackster, a design hailed in that must-read, Athletic Footwear and Orthoses in Sports Medicine, as "the first modern running shoe". Available (as nearly all New Balance shoes are) in multiple widths, it featured an enlarged cushioned heel and a rippled rubber sole. All this happened four years before Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight - the eventual founders of Nike - began working together.
New Balance's Made In England production line, at their factory in Flimby PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Glossing over a great deal of detail in the history of the emerging sports shoe market, by the late 1970s - as a worldwide craze for jogging took hold - New Balance (with its new "N'' logo and market-leading 320 shoe) was perfectly placed to lead it.
That, in a nutshell, is why it opened its first European factory in Ireland in 1978, before eventually moving to Cumbria.
New Balance sometimes implies that it is somehow above celebrity athlete sponsorship deals. That's not strictly true. In 1990 it paid an LA Lakers basketball player $1 million shortly before he ran into in a sex scandal. Less controversially, these days it has a skateboarding team, a newly developed line of cricket gear (star turn, Jonathan Trott) and a long tradition of supporting runners. What it doesn't do, though, is force those athletes under the eye of consumers - or even often give its shoes trumped-up, marketer-invented names.
Instead, in keeping with its no-nonsense medical back-story, each shoe style tends to be assigned a dull number; key classic house designs include the 710 (for hikers) as well as the 574 and 576, which are suede-heavy, very comfortable when fitted correctly, and aesthetically pretty fine. The contemporary running range, meanwhile, is well-reviewed and far more modern looking. If nothing else, it's worth considering New Balance over shoutier brands for that very reason - this an ''apparel'' company that does something, well, and seems content to let people discover it for themselves.
See: NewBalance.co.uk for more information. Endclothing.co.uk has a particularly good selection of the shoes.
References
- ^ Luke Leitch (fashion.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Mencyclopaedia: Patagonia (fashion.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Mencyclopaedia: Slowear (fashion.telegraph.co.uk)
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