Factory puts its best foot forward

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This article was published 11/08/2018 (2653 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Making leather boots isn’t all that different from making shortbread cookies.

A man wearing an apron places a metal stencil onto a beige piece of leather hide. After placing the pattern, he presses a button and then steps back to watch a heavy machine drop down and puncture a shape, which roughly resembles a shoe, into the leather.

He does the same thing over and over and over again, the assembly line equivalent to using a star-shaped cookie cutter to bake holiday treats.

This is the first of 80 steps in the cowboy boots production line at Canada West Shoe Manufacturing Inc., a factory tucked away in an industrial neighbourhood in Winnipeg’s North End. It’s also a step that’s been used in the family-run footwear factory for decades, since Bill Moorby and three friends started the company in Winnipeg in 1978.

Little has changed on the assembly line over the past 40 years, said company president Graham Moorby, the founder’s grandson; many of the same hollow dies are still used to start the shoe-production process today.

The business — which is celebrating four decades of cutting and stitching leather shoes in the city this summer — has been run by three generations of the Moorby family. Moorby said his father, Ted Moorby, the former president, is still his go-to consultant and his uncle Paul Moorby, the former vice-president, also currently owns the Canada West Boots Factory Outlet shop attached to the factory on 1250 Fife St.

“There’s some pressure in that, that I feel to keep it going, but it’s a good kind of pressure to want to keep it going,” the 35-year-old responded when asked about how it feels to be in the president role, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father.

“It’s an exciting industry to work in. I never quite know what’s going to happen every day; there’s always something new to do and there’s always lots of variety and lots of different challenges, whether that’s design, machinery, personnel.”

The company produces 200 shoes every day. Photographs of boots of various shades of brown and black fill the vintage pages of the catalogues on Moorby’s desk.

The models they make have varied over the years, from cowboy boots to casual shoes to specialized workboots such as knee-high logging boots and fire-retardant footwear for welders. They also have a contract for the official ­Canadian Armed Forces dress shoe.

Footwear on the shelves in their outlet store, and in independent stores across the country, vary from about $150 to $300 in price, Moorby said. They don’t sell to chains because they simply don’t have enough manpower and making cheap shoes isn’t their ambition.

“It’s no secret that in the big-box model, the lowest price point wins every time. Whereas, with a smaller, independent workboot shop or western boot shop, they’re taking the time to fit people, they’re trying to sell a quality product,” he said.

Every shoe made and boxed in the Winnipeg factory is Goodyear-welted, meaning they are all made using a durable shoe-building method created in 1890 by inventor Charles Goodyear.

“What makes that unique is the upper materials and the sole are sewn together, it’s not just glued on,” Moorby said.

The only other company in Canada that constructs Goodyear-welted shoes on the same production scale as Canada West Shoe Manufacturing Inc. is Boulet Inc. in Quebec.

Although the Winnipeg factory’s president’s genes and boot construction have remained relatively unchanged over the decades, the boot-making business in Canada hasn’t. When Bill and his partners Marvin Rutledge, Paul Cook and Frank O’Gradnick started the company, there were more than 300 Canadian companies making leather shoes, Moorby said. Today, there’s a half-dozen that produce at the same level the Winnipeg business does.

“We want to be the last shoe manufacturer standing in Canada,” Moorby said.

Fifty Winnipeggers currently work for Canada West Shoe Manufacturing Inc. That number has varied, reaching as high as 85 employees over the years. The company often hires newcomers, mostly landed immigrants, Moorby said; they don’t use the temporary foreign worker program.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for employees to ask for a day off because they have to take a citizenship test, he said.

Moorby started working full-time at the family business in 2006, following years of part-time experience on the factory assembly line during summers while he was going to school. The first time he clocked in for a shift, he was 15.

“It was very, very important to be in the factory for a lot of years,” he said, adding that it’s allowed him to be able to diagnose problems with machines, provide informed direction to his staff and brainstorm new shoe designs.

“I’ll still go out in the factory and make shoes. If someone is sick for a number of days, I may have to go out there and give part of the factory a boost. And sometimes, just for fun. I like making things.”

The Brahma western boot is the bestseller, although Moorby said their fashion-oriented shoes, similar to Blundstones, have been gaining popularity. The company only recently got into the fashion shoe market about 11/2 years ago.

Most of the leather they use comes from Mexico and the U.S., Moorby said. While they used to rely on sourcing local materials, that’s become increasingly difficult as the shoe industry in Canada and related industries have downsized because of outsourcing for cheaper goods.

Despite Canadian stores importing mass amounts of cheap shoes from factories in China, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia and Vietnam, he said he’s not worried about business because of their good-quality products and niche market of specialized workboots.

Moorby said he’s not too worried about the Canada-U.S. trade war hurting business either since Canada doesn’t have a leather industry to protect. The only thing that’s gone up in price is the nails they buy because of costly aluminum, which isn’t a big deal, he said — it’ll barely raise the price of every shoe they sell. “I’m not worried about it particularly.”

If anything, he said, he thinks Canadians want to support local more than ever now, 40 years after his grandfather opened up shop.

“What’s next? Pushing our Moorby fashion shoes and to keep on our tradition of making good boots that people are proud to wear, that we’re proud to make. We want to keep going.”

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @macintoshmaggie