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 World War II by Walter Hoy, a British immigrant from Norwich. Hoy used leather scraps 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, still stands on a shelf in the hallway of the factory.
Stitching is the backbone of the business, says Ric Gebel, grandson of Walter Hoy (Hoy's descendants still own and run the company he founded in 1944). "We're still doing what my grandfather did. We are lucky."
Family relationships dominate the workshop and front office. Michael James' brother, Steven, scans silver sandals to be shipped in two weeks. The foreman, Rick Sumpter, eats a sandwich at a desk across from his sister, Phyllis Davis, 62, who assembles each pair of Hoy shoes to be packed in St. Louis. Rick's wife, Cheryl, works the punching machines that cut out leather straps; their daughter, April, helps sort inventory.
British fans have Rachael Laine, a former marketing executive, to thank for introducing the brand to the UK after she stumbled across the sandals on a Brooklyn blog in August 2009. "I was on my second maternity leave, bored as you are with a tiny baby, scrolling through blogs and thinking: oh my god, I need to see what's going on in the big wide world," she recalls.
Two days later, Rachael saw her stylish neighbor with a couple a friend had brought back from New York and felt she had to persuade the US Sandalist to help her launch in Europe. "I thought if I didn't do it, someone else would. This was at the height of Croc-mania, when you couldn't get such a concise aesthetic here. I loved the Swallows and Amazons vibe of the Salties."
Laine's persistence paid off, and by 2011 she was lugging a suitcase of samples around UK boutiques. What she had envisioned as a marketing job became a full-blown distribution business.
Phyllis, who has worked for the company since 1975, handles around 15 pairs of Salt-Water sandals a 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 afloat.
The solution was a compromise: move some production to China and keep some in St. Louis. "Thank God we did it, because suddenly our sales took off; once we had the shoes, we sold the shoes," Ric says.
Now the St. Louis team handles "special makeups." Mixed colors, vintage styles and distressed runs, in sold-out colors. Ric notes 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 from mid-February.
Text: www.theguardian.com / Translation: Roberta Zingg
