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August 10, 2009

Putting Our Best Foot Forward: A Conversation with an American Shoemaker

By Joan Brunwasser

Today, Soft Star sells our handmade shoes to over 35 countries and specializes in selling direct to our customers who often designs their own shoes by choosing the colors and adornments. I feel pride in being one of the last shoemakers left in the USA and have no intentions of taking our manufacturing overseas. It feels good at the end of the day to package up beautiful shoes made with your own hands that morning.

::::::::

Last winter, I wrote an article about patriotic spending: buying goods that are made right here at home. Soft Star Shoes was one of the featured companies. Because it was busy season, we put off an interview. Now, I'm happy to welcome Soft Star co-owner Larkin Holavarri. Share with us a bit of company history, Larkin.

Soft Star Shoes was started in 1984 by Tim Oliver and his wife Jeannie, after a futile search for good quality, soft shoes for their baby daughter. At that time, stiff, white shoes with laced ankle support were still the "mode" and the Olivers saw the market for a healthier, more natural alternative. For almost 20 years, Tim made shoes and sold them through craft fairs and wholesale catalogs.

I came to the company in 2005 when I learned my friend Tricia had approached Tim about purchasing Soft Star. I knew Tricia had been actively looking for several years for a small manufacturing company to buy, and when she told me about Soft Star, it really appealed to me. At the time, Tricia and I both worked at Hewlett Packard as engineers.

I was newly pregnant with my first son and had been doing a lot of thinking about raising a family while working at a large corporation. I wanted my work and family life more integrated and was attracted by the direction she was going. I approached Tricia about joining her in the purchase of Soft Star as a business partner. Lucky for me, Trish said "yes" and we bought Soft Star together. Tim has stayed on because he loves the company; he was just tired of being a one-man show.

Trish and I are both raising families (between us there are four children under six) that are very integrated into our work. In the last four years, we have had three babies in the shop learning to crawl and walk and talk. It's a pretty special situation. And, at the same time, we have managed to keep Soft Star healthy and growing as a business.

Today, Soft Star sells our handmade shoes to over 35 countries and specializes in selling direct to our customers, who often designs their own shoes by choosing the colors and adornments. We are one of a handful of shoe companies that still manufacture in the USA. It is often challenging to find materials or equipment for our workshop as the craft has almost disappeared here. It is so fun when we run into an old "shoe dog", who shares with us the techniques and tricks that are otherwise lost.

What have you learned from these "shoe dogs"?

Mainly, how to pay attention to details and making the shoes correctly. Quality is the most important thing. I feel pride in being one of the last shoemakers left in the USA and have no intentions of taking our manufacturing overseas. It feels good at the end of the day to package up beautiful shoes made with your own hands that morning.

Did you two know much about the shoe business before you took over Soft Star? Or has this been a case of on-the-job training?

We didn't know anything about making shoes. Tim was very open with his books which allowed Trish to do quite a bit of financial analysis to build a business plan based on the company's performance. For a couple months before the purchase, Trish and I would spend time helping out with shipping and light manufacturing to get a feel for how everything worked. But, really, everything we know now about making shoes and running a business was learned on the job.

Describe your workshop for us.

We run a very efficient shop and keep our average turnaround time one business day for custom orders. Our main goal is to make sure our employees enjoy themselves in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. We have a minimalist process with the bare minimum tools needed to make the shoes. We do indulge, however, in a broad inventory of leather; we just can't resist all the great colors. Our workshop is on the second floor of a 100 year old warehouse near the river. It's a comfortable place with massive wooden beams.

What's your least favorite or most difficult aspect of the business?

It's hard to run a family business and stay financially afloat, especially being competitive in an industry that has all but left the USA for cheaper labor. This had always been an underlying worry, but somehow we have always managed to make ends meet. We could not have done it, of course, without loyal customers.

Speaking of loyal customers: You have a great cyber-bulletin board with pictures and stories from a sampling of satisfied customers. It's fun to see all sizes and ages modeling your shoes and enjoying them immensely. Where did that idea come from?

We regularly get e-mails from people who are very excited about our shoes. We keep these in a folder called "Happy Customers." We also thought it would be fun to encourage people to share photos of their Soft Stars, so the fan page and photo contest were born. We've been doing it for several years now and have a couple hundred photos and stories. We still get one-three new photos a week so we're going to keep putting them up.

By the way, in mid-July we launched a Facebook fan page for Soft Star (www.facebook.com/softstarshoes). There are fantastic stories there, too.

Let's pause here, Larkin. When we come back for the second part of our interview, we'll learn more about Soft Star's environmentally friendly practices and what it's like running a business with four small children on the premises. Please join us.

***

Soft Star Shoes website



Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.


While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

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