The story of the Salt‑Water Sandals

The rise of Salt-Water Sandals to a trendy summer must-have was a slow journey: The first pair was made in St. Louis during the Second World War by Walter Hoy, a British immigrant from Norwich. Hoy used leather left over from cutting out military boots. Hoy made the first pair for his little girl, Margery; an early bronzed pair worn by her brother Bob is still standing on a shelf in the corridor of the factory today.

The seams are the backbone of the company, says Ric Gebel, grandson of Walter Hoy (Hoys descendants own and still run the company he founded in 1944). "We're still doing what my grandfather did. We're lucky."

Family relationships dominate the workshop and the front office. Michael James' brother, Steven, scans silver sandals that are to be shipped in two weeks. The foreman, Rick Sumpter, eats a sandwich at a desk opposite his sister Phyllis Davis, 62, who assembles every pair of Hoy shoes packed in St. Louis. Rick's wife Cheryl works on the punching machines that punch out leather straps; her daughter April helps sort the stock.

British fans have Rachael Laine, a former marketing director, to thank for the launch of the brand in the UK after she stumbled across the sandals in a blog in Brooklyn in August 2009. I was on my second maternity leave, bored like you are with a tiny baby, scrolling through blogs and thinking, "Oh my God, I have to see what's going on in the big wide world," she remembers.

Two days later Rachael saw her stylish neighbor with a couple a friend had brought from New York and felt she had to persuade the US sandalist to help her start in Europe. "I thought if I didn't, someone else would. This was at the height of Croc-mania, when you couldn't get such a concise aesthetic here. I loved the swallow and Amazon vibes of the salties."

Laine's perseverance paid off, and until 2011 she dragged a suitcase of samples through British boutiques. What she had envisioned as a marketing task became a complete distribution business.


Phyllis, who has been working for the company since 1975, works on about 15 pairs of Salt-Water sandals per day. "At one point there were 10 people doing my job," she says. She held on to her position during the lean years of the early 2000s when the company struggled to sell sandals and hire enough staff to keep the St. Louis factory alive.

The solution was a compromise: relocate a part of the production to China and keep a part in St. Louis. "Thank God we did, because suddenly our sales increased; when we had the shoes, we sold the shoes," says Ric.

Now the team from St. Louis is taking care of "Special Makeups": Mixed colours, vintage styles and emergency runs, in sold-out colours. Ric records what actually makes the quality that makes his grandfather's company unique. "Most shoe companies are like car companies: They do something different every year. We don't do that. We have what we call the Hoy Shoe Company Code. We always do the same thing and stick to it."

The Salt-Water Sandals will be available in our shop from mid-February.

Text: www.theguardian.com / Adapted by: Amanda Wildhaber