Clarks: Made to Last by Mark Palmer

Author:Mark Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2013-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Compared with women’s shoes, little money was spent marketing the Clarks men’s range – because there wasn’t much of a range to market. But in 1962, Clarks bought the established men’s shoe manufacturing business of J. T. Butlin & Sons Ltd. This company, based in Rothwell near Kettering in Northamptonshire, specialised in mail order sales and had a sound reputation for the more formal men’s shoe market. This was a contentious acquisition because Clarks had always approached men’s shoes with a diffident air – making a mere 0.8 per cent of men’s shoes in the UK in 1959. But the decision may have been influenced by the fact that John Butlin, the managing director, was married to Honor Impey, a great-granddaughter of James Clark.

In 1941, Clarks had made men’s boots as part of its commitment to the war effort and shortly afterwards it experimented by subcontracting work to G. B. Britton & Sons in Bristol, hoping this might lead to a more concerted commitment to men’s shoes. But it never quite happened. In the 1940s, the board had concluded that G. B. Britton & Sons did not produce the quality of work that Clarks required – or, at the very least, a standard that could command the sort of prices necessary to justify a bigger investment in the men’s market. Prior to the purchase of J. T. Butlin & Son, Bancroft had considered a bid for an alternative Northamptonshire firm, Crockett & Jones, which also made men’s shoes, but this came to nothing.

Traditionally, it had been left to the factories in Ireland to manufacture most of Clarks’ shoes for men, particularly the successful ‘Flotilla’ range, which was first introduced in 1954 and then gained its own separate catalogue in 1958. By 1962, Flotillas supplied everything a man could need by way of footwear: ‘Brogues’; ‘Suedes’; ‘Casuals’; ‘Contemporaries’; and ‘Sandals’. Appropriately, the sales slogan for Flotillas was: ‘The City to the Sea’. Not until 1970 was the Clarks Flotilla range superseded by Craftmasters, City and Club shoes.

A touch of design class was introduced to Clarks’ range in 1963 with the appointment of Hardy Amies as consultant designer, a man whose other clients included the Queen and the Queen Mother. Amies, a Londoner born in Maida Vale, was 49 when he began working for Clarks and seemed in no doubt about his expertise. Speaking at an event organised by the Royal Society of the Arts, Sir Hardy, as he later was to become, said:

A dress designer is not just a frivolous person catering to the whims of rich women, but someone who, properly used, can play a part in the industrial life of this country.

His credits included a variation on the Chelsea Boot, elastic-sided shoes and slip-ons, and it was he who coined the phrase ‘the laceless look’. Amies was invited to share his vision with readers of the Courier in October 1964, advancing the cause of raised heels. ‘There are few men who would scorn at being an inch taller,’ he

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