Hi everyone! I'm Amara Nicole of Specialtyshoelover.com, and recently I had a
chance to visit Munro & Company's footwear factory, located in the
Clarksville Arkansas. Munro is a family-owned American private label
footwear brand and their chief financial officer Molly Munro was my tour guide
for this visit. Hey! Hi! How'ya doing? Mollie Munro. Amara.
The first stop on the tour was in the production and
development department the engineers in this area translate designer sketches
into technical packages which are later used for the footwear craftsmen to
actually create the shoes. Next up is the Cutting Department where all the fun
begins.
So, these are the cutting machines.
And skiving reduces the thickness the material where it's going to be sewn together.
Almost every single piece of the material: leather, fabric, doubler has to be skived.
Now, she is just doing material, but you can see now that
this edge right here because this is going to be sewn and this is going to be
sewn. And this is now been reduced.
Usually, we try to do it by thirty second to a sixteenth of an inch.
and reducing the amount of material
but again every single part... So, let's say you have 10
parts in your shoe, you're probably going to have to have 20
the skives because you're going to have usually on three, some parts might be stitched on four edges all the way around.
this is much easier. Okay, so here's a part. This is going to be the toe of a shoe.
This is what we call a vamp.
And this vamp is going to be sewn here, here, and here. So, you can see now, we have now reduced
the material. We thinned it.
So when this piece
is sewn to the piece that's going to go here, there's not a bulky seam.
It should be the same thickness as this material as this right here to avoid
seams that will rub and hurt the foot.
She's pounding all those seams to make sure it's nice and flat and smooth.
So, our shoes have a tremendous amount of tape...like I said reinforcers...things like that.
All of this is hand work.
It's really not..There really isn't a machine that can you can develop to be able to do this in as many different styles.That's what it all comes down to.
We only made one shoe. We made, you know, a thousand pair a day.
Wow!
She's sewing that teeny little piece of material
You almost can't see. It's so small.
Very exact work.
On the back part of the shoe, that's a real stress point, right? The back seam of a shoe is a
very high stress point there's a lot of load that's going to be put on that. To
keep it strong, we put tape on this back seam.
You can go ahead.
So, this machine is as you can see is pulling the tape down and is applying the tape to
that back. So it's also pounding that seam down a little bit to help flatten it, so it's not as so (unintelligible) .
This is another tough job. This is called hanging linings.
So, she is stitching the lining to the outside okay and that's going to be
reversed and turned inside out we go to last it. Again, I want you to notice on her machine
that there's no gauge on that machine. Okay, so she has to do that
by just hand-eye coordination s perception and depth perception
And she's got to be able to do that perfectly because this...
Remember, Clyde talking about look how close that has to me you see how precise she
has to be with her Stoke with her sewing she's got to do it all the way around
the shoe.
All the way around.
This nick matches this nick. That tells her that she's on on point. Then, what
we're going to do is we're going to turn this inside out...turn it inside out.
And the shoes is going to get made like that and that gives you this nice rounded edge
here
That's amazing without a gauge. Me encanta su trabaja
Ah me (unintelligible). Los detalles que necesita hagar (*hacer) algo um como este es increíble. Ohh, sí! Muy bonito muy detallitas. Yes.
So now, you get to the real finessing. So, these are all of our...These women here are our absolute top stitchers. Alright? There doing what we call fancy stitching.
Fancy stitching is anything that is going to be seen by the customer. Okay?
And again, as you can see, here tolerance are extremely tight.
They have to be perfect because of course,
now you can see this. You know, some of the other things it's inside the shoe.
If it's off a little bit okay no big deal. No harm, no foul. yeah absolutely
all these women they can't be all even a 30 second or even more
importantly on a job like this it can't be wavy. She's got to make sure that those seams are exactly to the edge.
That's really the most challenging thing of all. It looks like a loafer. This is a loafer style. This a shoe
called the Harrison. Could you imagine a wavy stitched loafer?
Oh yeah, sure! You can see how precise she's got to be.
It already has one seam, and now, she's adding the second decorative seam but
again, she's got to be exactly the same width away from this first seam all the
way around. The tricky part is when she makes that turn. So, when she turns that
material turns that shoe again it's holding it steady so it's perfect
all the way around
Jennifer is doing the initial. Hey Jennifer! She's putting that first she's putting
first the plug in so Jennifer is inserting the plug and the plug is this
part right here
this is the plug and Jennifer is sewing the plug into the vamps and the quarters
Sorry babe. Anyway, so she's been doing again her seam's gotta
be perfect so the next operator has a perfect seam
to stitch against. If her seam's wavy then even though her seam is straight, it's not
the look good. This department is called match up and set up. So, match up is where
they actually match all those parts that you see over there that's all the
outsoles all the foot beds all the insoles they're going to match that up
with a upper and they're going to bring it over here
these guys are going to set it up and they can set it up by putting it on racks, getting ready for it to go out into the lasting room. So match up and set up.
These are all our lasts. Hey Aaron! How's it going? Aaron Morgan is our Warehouse Manager.
Nice to meet you. His wife is our Plant Manager, Amy. Oh, wow! Oh okay, so we wan to meet her soon.
We're all family here. We keep it in the family. Nice to meet y'all. Thank you. So these are...Both Amy and Aaron have been with us 27 -28 years both started working for us when they were 18. Wow! That's loyalty right there.
Yeah, well and Amy started out it the Fitting Room. She was a Fitter, and then she became what's called
the Line Supervisor and then she became ...
You need some help? Nah, I got it. Okay so... Oh wow! There's your lasts. This is my life right here. This is your last.
Oh wow! Yeah, that's a AAAA. This is my whole foot right here. This is for, of
course, you know a thong sandal. Yes. That's why it's split like that. Wow!
So, this is your insole. Your entire shoe is going to get made on this insole. Everything is this insole.
Each one of these insoles is molded to fit a particular last. This is not a generic piece.
they also have to have molds to create the shape to match this
So, we have to have moulds not only for our outsoles but also for our insoles. Okay?
and this supports all of our insoles. You see these ribbits? That's a steal shank.
And that is what gives all of our shoes support. All of our shoes, including the ones that you have on, have steal shanks
and that's so that when you go from your heel to your toe, it gives you enough support and the shoe as you break down and stress your insoles.
The insole board is on.
...we saw the box toe. We saw that plastic piece in the toe. We have to the same thing in the heel. That's called a counter. And that counter is that thick piece of plastic that's inserted into the back part of the shoe.
So, she's heating up
the counter
that's the make it soft. She places it very carefully into the back part of the shoe.
And then, she puts it this mold.
And that mold creates the shape of the heel.
Wow! Again, there is all different molds for different shoes.
make sure we get it correctly
So, once that's ready to go, now we're going to (unintelligible)... now follow me
Here's your completed upper.
This is a shoe that's ready to be made into shoe. Everything is in there.
You've got your counter.You've got your box toe.
All your lining is done. Everything is ready to go. So, we do the heel first then and the toe second.
That's to ensure that our back seams are straight.
First thing he does is
he's heating up that counter that you just saw that woman inserting. Right?
So, he puts it again on the mold
and he's heating it up under pressure. Right?
So, that get's it ready to be formed. It makes it malleable enough so it can be formed.
Then, he comes over and he takes now the last with the insole on it, puts it in the machine, and the machine, is going to put glue and use pressure to glue or cement sorry
the back part onto to the insole board
So, once you can see you can see now that all the heel
So now, the heel has been cemented down.
Now, we've got to cement the toe down. Okay? Okay.
That's called toe lasting
or pull over. Pull over?
Hey Frankie!
So
Again, this is extremely critical. The shoe is make-it-or-break-it right here
If Frankie doesn't get the toe
great if Frankie doesn't get enough material pulled over
If Frankie doesn't get the seams to line up exactly, then the shoe is no good and is not going to look good.
And all that work
All of that
He's got
He has all these pinchers. And these pinchers grab the leather.
Frankie has all these controls that allow him to control all those pinchers. There's six sets of them.
He controls each one of those individually. And he will tweak that depending on the style of
shoe that he's doing
That allows him to make sure again that they are perfectly straight and more importantly
and the true difficulty in this job is to make a pair
Alright. So,
He does the left shoe then he does the right shoe
the left shoe the right shoe. If the left shoe is pulled over just a little bit further or a little bit less than the right shoe,
your pair doesn't match
What is that pad called that's hanging there?
Oh, that is actually does not come
with the machine with is why it's on a rubber band. He'll keep that pad you see the top pad
that comes down and pushes down on the toe
That gets hot over time. They're big heavy machines with heat on them. That will discolor the leather
That pad prevents that.
Now, we've got the toe. Now, we've got the heel. Now, we've got to
This is Colby.
Hey Colby!
Hi!
so now we've got the heel done and now we've got the toe done. now we've got to cement this part.
There you go, he going to
you can step in there and see it working
So, first he heats it up. Then the machine injects the cement.
And then applies the force.
That's called side lasting. Side lasting? Uh huh.
Although we don't have anybody doing it right now, the next step I told you that we put water on the shoe. So, we will take...that's just a water hose
We're gonna spray the shoe completely
We're gonna send it through that heat setter at about
Okay at about let's see what she's running now
at about 170 degrees.
for a couple of minutes
and what that going to do is get to pull the leather down tight onto the last
This one looks good already. So this this is looking very good. But sometimes, you'll see a lot of wrinkles in here. The leather won't be
be very snug down on the last so wetting it and heating it shrinks the weather
and allows it to set properly
As you can see for example, this is a Oh here's another AAAA
So you can see this is a fabric combination fabric shoe shoe that you can see here how
everything now has been glued down this is a difficult shoe to
last because of all the combination of materials this part is fabric
this part is gore this part is leather so you've got 3 completely different
materials that have different adhesive strengths and
different tensile strengths so this is a tricky one to last correctly and make
sure it all works
The operator is what is called sat treating those outsoles. The outsoles come to us when they come out of the
mold at the moment at the outsole factory
The molds have a resist put in them.
kinda like a almost like butter in a pan
and it's to keep the molds from sticking in the outsoles sticking in the mold
Well, that stuff that resist also will resist cement.
So, we have to clean the outsole to make sure that it can take the cement.
So, that's what she's doing.
cleaning the outsoles to make sure it'll take
Is it like acetone? Yes, exactly! Yep.
I was like it smells like a nail shop.
Exactly like a nail shop!
It's an acetone based solution.
These guys are finishing the shoe up.
This operation is called all crowning. Crowning? She is looking at the shoe. She's seeing if it has a lot of
wrinkles. She's seeing like you can see her here she's here brushing it
to make sure there's not dirt or dust on it. If it does have wrinkles she's going to do
the crowning part. This is very hot. This is the hot air. She uses that and she uses
her water brush as well so she can wet the material
and then use the heater to help shrink that material and shrink
out those wrinkles
So, some wrinkles are just stress wrinkles and so she'll just shrink them out
with that combination of water and heat
These two are the most important people in the factory right there.
Everything about the shoes perfect.
so they are our first line of defense. So, that's one of our latest styles is
getting great go out
This is the Marchella. She's making sure basically it's perfect. There's
no wrinkles in the shoes you know that outsole all looks good
can't see any roughing. You can't see any cement all the top seams are clean.
Edges are good and then they're gonna put laces in it and stuff it and
put a footbed in there and it's ready to go
As you can see, this shoe now is completely finished it's got a it's footbed in there. It's been
stuffed.
Okay, we use foam. We use tissue.
and it is ready to go in a box
Hi! Morning.
Hello.
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