Rockport (company)

The Rockport Group is an American shoe brand owned by Authentic Brands Group. Associated brands include Aravon, Dunham and Rockport, and the Rockport Cobb Hill Collection.

Founded in Marlborough, Massachusetts, in 1971 by Saul L. Katz and his son, Bruce R. Katz, the company marketed walking as a healthy alternative to running. In 2023 the Rockport Group was acquired by Authentic Brands Group.[1]

History

In 1930, Samuel Katz founded the Hubbard Shoe Company, which had its first factory in Rochester, New Hampshire; eight years later the company employed 700. In 1945, Saul Katz took control of Hubbard from his father. In the 1960s, U.S. shoe manufacturing increasingly moved to countries with lower labor costs, making it difficult for U.S. plants to stay competitive in the face of less expensive imports. Saul Katz urged Congress to aid the American shoe industry[2] and in 1977 the Carter administration imposed quotas on shoe imports,[3] but the controls arrived too late for Hubbard, which went out of business in 1970.[4]

Saul Katz continued to run a surviving subsidiary spun off from Hubbard, called Highland Import. It operated out of offices in the old Diamond Shoe Company in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and imported shoes from Brazil.[5] Highland Import worked with American branded shoe companies to develop special products. One was a hand sewn heavy leather moccasin modeled after a shoe developed by Walter Dyer in Rockport, Massachusetts. When Saul Katz went to the tannery in Brazil he named the leather Rockport.

Products

Rockport is credited with popularizing walking as a healthy alternative to running. It invested heavily in design and spent lavishly on marketing to create a strong brand name and carve out a market niche. Rockport also invested in research into the biomechanics of walking to design its shoes.[8]

Rockport's first product was the Country Walker, introduced in 1973.[4] On the basis of the company’s subsequent RocSport shoe and those that followed, Bruce Katz is credited by the shoe industry monthly Footwear Plus with creating the "modern-day lightweight and technology-infused comfort shoe concept."[20]

Rockport shoes of this period were designed as alternatives to athletic shoes, which were gaining in popularity as all-purpose footwear. Rockport focused on designing shoes that more closely resembled traditional styles, but sought to incorporate the lightness and comfort of running shoes. This development effort made the RocSport "perhaps the first real 'high technology shoe'", according to James A. Phills, Jr., who teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Apple University, Apple Inc.

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