The high street's great survivor
The man who came up with the distinctive logo that now sits above more than 1,000 Clarks stores around the world, knew full well the secret of the company’s grip on the chil-dren’s shoe market.
Bancroft Clark, the great-grandson of James Clark, who co-founded the firm with his brother Cyrus in 1825, put it all down to the humble footgauge.
He made clear that without Clarks persuading mothers that they must at all costs take their children for a proper (and sometimes laborious) tting, the company might well have gone the same way as Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Dolcis, Saxone and dozens of other shoe companies that ended up either boarded up or sold o in the 1980s and 1990s.
Hands up those who remember trying not to dget as a sales assistant perched on a stool and slid the gauge down to the tip of their toes and then moved a piece of tape over the bridge of their foot. Precisely.
.
Although many of us over a certain age will also remember the Pedoscope, a huge contraption that required the customer to stand on a step and look down at his or her feet through a pane of glass. The Pedoscope did the job but it also came with a health warning: ‘Repeated exposure to X-rays may be harmful. It is unwise for customers to have more than 12 shoe- tting exposures a year.’
On the other hand, you could have as many shoe-fitting exposures as was humanly possible if it involved the patented Clarks footgauge. And sometimes it was important to speak directly to mothers about, well, how to be a responsible mother.
‘Isn’t it exciting that your child is, at last, walking? And isn’t it so important that his or her First Shoe allows the soft, delicate bones to grow in a strong, healthy way?’ pronounced an advert in the early 1960s.
Very important – but for most of us a visit to the shoe shop was never a highlight of the summer holidays. And yet as parents and grandparents ourselves, we make the trek to our local Clarks. After all, we want the best for the next generation, don’t we?
Clarks is one of the great survivors of the British high street but not many people know a lot about the company. For example, Clarks does not make its shoes any more, whereas once it was one of the biggest shoe manufacturers in the world.
And whereas many other great Quaker businesses such Cadbury, Rowntree and Huntley & Palmers have either been consumed by huge conglomerates or withered on corporate vine, Clarks remains a private company. What’s more, it is still based in its original headquarters in Street, Somerset, and remains quietly tethered to its Quaker roots.
Co-founder James Clark, who was my distant cousin, was deeply religious – and brilliantly inventive. At the age of 17, he started making slippers from o cuts of his brother’s woollen rugs. The Brown Petersburg or ‘Brown Peters’, as the slippers were called (no one seems to know why), were so warm in winter and so comfortable in summer that no one wanted to take them o . Expansion was rapid. In fact, by 1835 the brothers were producing 60 lines of footwear, including, for the rst time, a range of children’s shoes. The village of Street became a town and an iconic brand spread across the world.
Today, Clarks sells more than 55 million pairs of shoes per year and has just made record pro ts of some £120m. Mind you, it has not always been an easy journey. The founding brothers were incompetent accountants and had a habit of taking money out of the company to build homes for their families. Suff¡ce it to say that in 1844 and again in 1863, Quaker cousins were asked to bail out the Clarks, and did so, generously.
Fast forward to the early 1990s and the rm came perilously close to being bought by a properties and commodities group called Berisford International plc, which didn’t know one end of a shoe from the other.
Such was the drama that some family members wanted to take the money and run while others were prepared to ght all the way to remain independent. On the day of the shareholder vote, the Daily Telegraph ran a leader saying: ‘If the bid is rejected, Clarks’ future looks grim.’
The bid was rejected but the future was far from grim. Tough decisions were taken. Professional managers were brought in to run the company but it remained more than 80 per cent family owned – and by 2006, each factory was closed down.
Clarks shoes are now made, for the most part, in Vietnam, China and India. But they are still designed in Street, the main warehouse is in Street and many of the Clark family continue to live there. The challenge for the current chief executive, Melissa Potter, is to shed the rm’s somewhat old-fashioned image.
‘In the past we became polarised between young people and older people, rather than appealing to the 30 to 45 age bracket. But that has changed,’ says Potter. ‘The commonality between the average 65 year old and 30 year old is closer than ever before. Everyone wants to look stylish – whatever their age.’
Clarks, Made To Last: The Story of Britain’s Best-Known Shoe Firm, by Mark Palmer (Profile, £20).
Bancroft Clark, the great-grandson of James Clark, who co-founded the firm with his brother Cyrus in 1825, put it all down to the humble footgauge.
He made clear that without Clarks persuading mothers that they must at all costs take their children for a proper (and sometimes laborious) tting, the company might well have gone the same way as Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Dolcis, Saxone and dozens of other shoe companies that ended up either boarded up or sold o in the 1980s and 1990s.
Hands up those who remember trying not to dget as a sales assistant perched on a stool and slid the gauge down to the tip of their toes and then moved a piece of tape over the bridge of their foot. Precisely.
. Although many of us over a certain age will also remember the Pedoscope, a huge contraption that required the customer to stand on a step and look down at his or her feet through a pane of glass. The Pedoscope did the job but it also came with a health warning: ‘Repeated exposure to X-rays may be harmful. It is unwise for customers to have more than 12 shoe- tting exposures a year.’
On the other hand, you could have as many shoe-fitting exposures as was humanly possible if it involved the patented Clarks footgauge. And sometimes it was important to speak directly to mothers about, well, how to be a responsible mother.
‘Isn’t it exciting that your child is, at last, walking? And isn’t it so important that his or her First Shoe allows the soft, delicate bones to grow in a strong, healthy way?’ pronounced an advert in the early 1960s.
Very important – but for most of us a visit to the shoe shop was never a highlight of the summer holidays. And yet as parents and grandparents ourselves, we make the trek to our local Clarks. After all, we want the best for the next generation, don’t we?
Clarks is one of the great survivors of the British high street but not many people know a lot about the company. For example, Clarks does not make its shoes any more, whereas once it was one of the biggest shoe manufacturers in the world.
And whereas many other great Quaker businesses such Cadbury, Rowntree and Huntley & Palmers have either been consumed by huge conglomerates or withered on corporate vine, Clarks remains a private company. What’s more, it is still based in its original headquarters in Street, Somerset, and remains quietly tethered to its Quaker roots.
Co-founder James Clark, who was my distant cousin, was deeply religious – and brilliantly inventive. At the age of 17, he started making slippers from o cuts of his brother’s woollen rugs. The Brown Petersburg or ‘Brown Peters’, as the slippers were called (no one seems to know why), were so warm in winter and so comfortable in summer that no one wanted to take them o . Expansion was rapid. In fact, by 1835 the brothers were producing 60 lines of footwear, including, for the rst time, a range of children’s shoes. The village of Street became a town and an iconic brand spread across the world.
Today, Clarks sells more than 55 million pairs of shoes per year and has just made record pro ts of some £120m. Mind you, it has not always been an easy journey. The founding brothers were incompetent accountants and had a habit of taking money out of the company to build homes for their families. Suff¡ce it to say that in 1844 and again in 1863, Quaker cousins were asked to bail out the Clarks, and did so, generously.
Fast forward to the early 1990s and the rm came perilously close to being bought by a properties and commodities group called Berisford International plc, which didn’t know one end of a shoe from the other.
Such was the drama that some family members wanted to take the money and run while others were prepared to ght all the way to remain independent. On the day of the shareholder vote, the Daily Telegraph ran a leader saying: ‘If the bid is rejected, Clarks’ future looks grim.’
The bid was rejected but the future was far from grim. Tough decisions were taken. Professional managers were brought in to run the company but it remained more than 80 per cent family owned – and by 2006, each factory was closed down.
Clarks shoes are now made, for the most part, in Vietnam, China and India. But they are still designed in Street, the main warehouse is in Street and many of the Clark family continue to live there. The challenge for the current chief executive, Melissa Potter, is to shed the rm’s somewhat old-fashioned image.
‘In the past we became polarised between young people and older people, rather than appealing to the 30 to 45 age bracket. But that has changed,’ says Potter. ‘The commonality between the average 65 year old and 30 year old is closer than ever before. Everyone wants to look stylish – whatever their age.’
Clarks, Made To Last: The Story of Britain’s Best-Known Shoe Firm, by Mark Palmer (Profile, £20).