Setting his own pace | Unlike a typical entrepreneur, Bart Hersey's challenge is to fend off growth at his custom shoe business
It's a simple setup, perfectly tailored to Hersey, a big man with nimble hands and an easy smile who's preferred to keep his business affairs as uncluttered as his workspace. He builds each shoe by hand, and makes just a few models of walking and running shoes that all sport a signature gray-and-blue upper. Since founding Hersey Custom Shoe Co. in 1983, Hersey has been content to keep the personalized approach to building shoes that he says has helped him fill three large filing cabinets with dossiers on the feet of existing clients, many of whom place orders once a year.
Hersey, 60, is an anomaly in a world where most small-business owners dream of hitting the big time. Indeed, Hersey has done a capitalistic about face: Last year the company opted to start turning away new customers. The Hersey Custom Shoe website and voice mail explain, in no uncertain terms, that the company takes orders from existing customers only.
It's a strategy most entrepreneurs would label as crazy. After all, Hersey is living the dream of every entrepreneur. He's got plenty of demand for his product, he's able to pay the bills and there's no one bossing him around. So what's the problem? In many ways, Hersey Custom Shoe is the embodiment of the question facing most entrepreneurs: At what price growth? "I have no desire for employees, no need to set the world on fire," he says. "My focus since day one has been to create a client base of repeat customers."
The decision to limit Hersey Custom Shoe's business to existing customers wasn't a bid for exclusivity. Hersey found the demand for his shoes was simply too much for his one-man shop to handle. A website Hersey launched five years ago created a spike in customers clamoring for custom-made shoes. It's a problem most small-business owners would happily trade for, but it was a burden for Hersey.
Hersey has worked for more than 20 years to keep the company a manageable size. For Hersey, growing too fast would mean hiring staff and expanding into a bigger space, boosting overhead and spending more time planning strategy for the company's continued growth. In short, life at Hersey Custom Shoe would become too much like the management work he did for more than a decade in Maine's shoe industry. "We're as independent as you can be in the world today," he says. "It's a very nice way to make a living."
Meeting demand
Whether or not Hersey wants to set the world on fire may be irrelevant — in some ways, it's already happened. Hersey is far from a household name, but since their debut in 1983, Hersey Custom running shoes have cultivated a dedicated group of acolytes, from weekend joggers with foot problems to ultra-marathoners searching for comfort over grueling, 100-plus-mile races.
Jan Hersey, who handles the company's paperwork from the house across the driveway, drops into her husband's shop with a manila folder stuffed with letters and testimonials from customers. Some are posted to the company's website, like the one from a customer in Houston, Texas that credits Hersey Custom shoes for the 68,000 miles he's logged in 16 years of running and racewalking. "I think Bart likes the idea of helping people through the shoes he makes," says Bob MacLaughlin, an avid runner and long-time Hersey Custom Shoe customer from Warren who in the 80s began trading marketing work to Hersey in exchange for running shoes.
But meeting the demands of a growing client base with limited resources can strain any small business. Like Hersey, Peter Limmer has seen spikes in demand for his company's handmade hiking boots over the years. Limmer is owner of Peter Limmer & Sons in Intervale, N.H., a third-generation family business. He remembers seeing his father scramble to fill orders after the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about the company in 1974. "I do about 150 pairs a year, and we were getting 125 orders a day," he says. "We had to stop taking orders to get the backlog cleared."
These days, existing Hersey Custom Shoe customers have to wait roughly six months for their shoes. It takes Hersey just a few hours to build a shoe for an existing customer, but figuring out the dimensions for a new customer's shoe can take the better part of a day — another reason he decided to stop taking new orders. (For more on Hersey's shoemaking process, see "Hand made" on page 24.)
It's work that Hersey likes. For one, he can make his own schedule, which might mean closing up shop on a nice day to work on his hundred-plus acre spread.
But remaining small also means retaining full control over Hersey Custom Shoe's direction. He's the skilled worker and the upper management. It's a dynamic he rarely saw in the 15 years he spent in the New England shoe industry. He bounced from job to job, from making Thom McCann shoes in his hometown of Nashua, N.H., to G.H. Bass shoes in Wilton. "I went wherever someone would pay me $50 more a week," he says. "I kept looking for the perfect job."
Hersey landed at New Balance in 1980, where he was hired as the manager of the company's Skowhegan plant. In just a year's time, he was put in charge of the company's manufacturing operations in Maine, which included another plant in Norridgewock. He was rising in the company's ranks, but says he wasn't ready to make the sacrifices to keep climbing the corporate ladder. First off, moving up at New Balance meant quitting East Wilton for Boston — something neither he nor his wife, Jan, a native of East Wilton, were willing to do. Second, he didn't want to choose a management career over a shoemaking career. "I realized I was chasing a job that didn't exist," he says. "I wanted to control my own destiny and I couldn't do that there."
The long run
Hersey first began thinking of a custom shoe business during a flight to Chicago in 1981, when he read an article in an in-flight magazine about custom car manufacturers that sold souped-up hot rods carrying price tags as high as a half-million dollars. "Every one of them were booked up to their eyeballs," says Hersey.
Meanwhile, Hersey was learning the business side of shoemaking at New Balance. One lesson was that people were willing to spend money on their hobbies. Case in point: Hersey says he and New Balance founder Jim Davis priced the company's 730 model running shoe at $75 — the most expensive shoe on the market when it debuted in 1981. "Jim Davis said it would be okay if he only sold 5,000 in a year," says Hersey. "We sold 50,000 in the first three months."
Like the custom car manufacturers, Hersey figured he could charge a premium for a running shoe made specially for each customer. The company launched in February 1983, and the Herseys re-mortgaged their house and pooled their savings to scrape together $50,000. It was enough for six-months of ads in niche magazines like Runner's World.
By late 1983, orders had begun to trickle in. Then, the Hersey Custom model finished third place in the Runner's World annual running shoe survey. The company ended its first year with orders for 300 pairs. The next year, Hersey topped the Runner's World list and the shoe was featured on the foot of Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith on the cover of the magazine's 10th Annual Shoe Survey issue. "That just opened the floodgates," says Hersey. Production tripled to 900 pairs in 1984 and 1,500 the next year.
It wasn't just athletes who jumped at the company's shoes. Hersey says he's seen a growing interest in his shoes from people suffering from diabetes, obesity, or leg and foot maladies. Billie Hundtoft, a customer from Torrington, Wyo., began buying Hersey's shoes in 1989 to help alleviate pain from polio she's had since the age of two. "I've always had pain in my feet," she says. "Now, I don't have pain in my feet ever. I walk four miles and I bike." (In fact, the 72-year-old says she's completed three triathlons wearing Hersey shoes.)
And Hersey says customers rarely balk at his prices, which start at $150 and average about $260 a pair. This year, Hersey estimates he'll sell roughly $175,000 worth of shoes — about 700 pairs. And most of that money stays in Hersey's pocket: He estimates that materials make up less than 15% of the finished shoe's price tag. Meanwhile, the company's advertising efforts are long dead. Instead, word of mouth has taken over — a method of advertising much preferred by the publicity-shy Hersey.
Hersey's son, Eric, joined the company in 2003, and the pair ramped up the Hersey Custom Shoe website to drive more customers to the company. But the business arrangement between son and father foundered — "it wasn't his cup of tea," says Bart Hersey, who found himself with lots of orders and little time to work on them. "That's when I stopped taking new customers."
That Eric isn't likely to continue the family business is another quandary now facing Hersey. What happens when his shoemaking days are through? During the past year, he's entertained offers from "eight or nine" potential buyers, he says, from the Hersey customer interested in running the business in his retirement to the local real estate investor who sees a big opportunity to grow the company. But so far, Hersey hasn't struck a deal with any suitor. Some potential buyers have gotten cold feet while the offers from others have been too low. "I wish I could find someone to buy it," he says.
For now, Hersey is content to keep the company running at his own pace. He may start taking new customers at some point, or he may not. He may be there when a customer calls, or he may be out walking on Titcomb Mountain on a nice summer day. It may be breaking the cardinal rules of retail, but that doesn't faze Hersey. "In all honesty, I'm a bit of a pain in the ass," he says. "I want things my way."
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