Clarks turns 200: an icon that leaves its mark or more than just a shoe?

LondonThis September, in the small town of Street, in the county of Somerset, 220 kilometers west of London, the Shoemakers Museum will open, a way to celebrate, glorify and put into historical, economic, industrial and cultural context a brand of shoes that you have certainly heard of and that perhaps, even, you should do so. resonances for a large number of Britons, but not only, who initially identify them with the first shoes of school and then with a type of comfortable footwear with personality. Wallabee are associated not only with the years of the Cool Britannia and Britpop, but also to the Jamaican culture of the rude boys of the 60s and 70s and in the New York hip-hop culture of the 80s and 90s, which was in turn heavily influenced by its Jamaican roots. Bob Marley was also a fan. So was the actor Steve McQueen, and even Jon Pertwee's Doctor Who. It was the fashion of not worrying about fashion. And they were also part of the rebellion uniform of the Parisian students who barricaded the police and wanted to change the world in May 1968.

The Desert Boot was designed by Nathan Clark, great-grandson of James Clark, who in 1825—now 200 years ago—was a Quaker couple who owned a tannery for working leather, mainly sheep, and who lived in Street, where Clarks still maintains its headquarters. This religious community has a history of almost 400 years in the United Kingdom, from where it spread to the United States. While Quakerism has Christian roots, it also emphasizes moral commitments to peace, truth, integrity, simplicity, and equality—the Five Witnesses of Quaker theology that came to define the way they approached the world and its business.

Principles that were also behind the founding of other great British or Irish companies with well-known surnames: the Lloyds and Barclays, from the banking dynasties; the Jacobs, famous for biscuits and crackers; the Rathbones, fund management; the Penroses, founders of Waterford Crystal; the Waterhouse family, accountants; or the chocolatiers Rowntree and Cadbury. However, Barclays and Lloyds went public many years ago, and Cadbury was swallowed up by the American giant Kraft. But not Clarks, which remained in family hands until the end of 2020.

Civil War Volunteer

Nathan Clark (1916-2011) trained at the radical Odenwaldschule in Germany—he also studied with Klaus Mann—at the Clarks factory in Street, and at Queen's College, Oxford. His education was designed to prepare him to join the family business. But after completing his university education, Nathan followed the family's Quaker tradition and volunteered to drive an ambulance for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He spent two years there. There, on the front lines, he noticed that jute-soled peasant espadrilles were easier to replace and more comfortable than standard military boots. This experience, along with the experience he gained in the British Army in Burma during World War II, informed his final development of the Desert Boot.

After he presented it at the Chicago shoe fair in 1947, Clarks and Street made the final leap. What began as a handmade sheepskin slipper business using leftover offcuts from the rugs they made at the tannery eventually grew into a global brand. The village, not far from Glastonbury, experienced a surge in orders that necessitated expanding manufacturing to around 15 towns in the county.

The family remained in control of the business until late 2020, when a majority stake was sold to a Hong Kong-based private equity firm, Lion Rock Capital, for a reported £100 million. The intention was to grow the brand in China and the Asia-Pacific region. The group had suffered heavy losses before the pandemic, which Covid-19 exacerbated. Clarks has more than 200 stores in the UK and Ireland and more than 1,200 outlets and franchises worldwide.

What remains of the Quaker spirit is more of a legend and a history that can be learned at the Street Museum: both from an informative perspective and for researchers, who will be able to consult the company's archives. But unlike what the founders and their first successors did in the town where they were born—building housing for employees, the result of a certain Quaker paternalism, which they understood was good for productivity—in 2006, before the sale, capitalist logic prevailed, and Clarks closed its last factory. In fact, the first one they had abroad opened in Portugal in the 1990s. Now, Desert Boot is made in Vietnam, India, and China. There are shoes that are good only for walking and others that leave a mark. But global capitalism also ends up eliminating those. The rest is little more than an advertising fiction.