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STREET: Interview with Dan Dahl – VP of Red Wing Shoes, Heritage Division

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During our recent trip to Red Wing HQ, we had the opportunity to talk to Dan Dahl (Vice President, Red Wing Shoes, Heritage Division) on why Red Wing has lasted so long.

Why do you think Red Wing Shoes has been able to survive 110 years in the shoemaking business?

You know, I think we’ve been owned by the same family almost the whole way. The Beckman family started Red Wing. Soon after it was taken over by the Sweasy family after a couple of years and the Sweasy family has owned Red Wing for 3 generations now. It really helps, because their motive to run the company is not solely profit. It’s because they love it. Because they love the brand, they love the company, they love the employees and they love the community, so for us that makes a big difference. They’re not solely trying to make lots of money, because if they did they would probably sell it to some big shoe company and try to make millions of dollars. They haven’t done that, so that helps, certainly.

Secondly, the community in where we are right here is the mid-west, it’s Red Wing, and it’s a really conservative place. They don’t take a lot of risk, they don’t like to really push the edge of anything, they like to just work hard and stick to what we call “stick to your knitting”, which means stick to what you know.

So Red Wing has really been like that, so they haven’t taken any big risks over the years. And because of that the product we make is still a really traditional product, it’s really high quality – the leather is thicker, it’s stronger, it’s better. And it’s always been like that, so I think people understand they can trust Red Wing.

The product we make, we’re not going to make something totally different tomorrow. We’ve been making the same thing for a hundred and ten years – great shoes. That’s all we ever think about. I always say our history is kind of our biggest asset; sometimes it can be a bit of a liability, because we’re so conservative we refuse to change sometimes. But luckily the market always needs really good shoes, so … so far, so good. A hundred and ten years!

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Somebody told me some of the machines in the factory are almost 100 years old, wouldn’t it be easier to buy new ones?

They don’t make them. The nail seed that we use, the style of construction isn’t that popular in the US anymore and it hasn’t been for a long time so they don’t make that machine anymore. They make a similar one but it’s not the same for us. We really like that old machine that can put those nails in all in one shot, beautifully nailed just like that. We’re proud of that machine – it’s like a dinosaur! We had the machine parts for it, we can’t fix it anymore, so we had to keep machine parts as they don’t make parts for it anymore. But it’s a great machine. It’s an inside-nailer. You can get an outside-nailer, but it’s a bit different. For us an inside-nailer…it’s the only one I know of. I’m not a manufacturing expert, but it’s the only one I know of. And the Puritan machines are old, they don’t make those anymore either. But that’s a beautiful stitch. That stitch right there is a Puritan machine and it’s really unique. So we keep doing it.

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It would be great for people to see all this in person, are the factory tours available for public?

Yes. Not all the time but you can request for it. They can call up the front desk, and say they would like to go on a factory tour. They can request it, and they’ll set it up for them. So it’s not every day we do them, like automatically at 10 o’clock be here for a factory tour, no we don’t do it like that. But if people show up, or call in advance and say “Hey, I want to come on a tour”, we can usually schedule them together with somebody else or some other time.

Do check out our trip to Red Wing Shoes Factory and Tannery, over here and here!


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