Rockport (company)

The Rockport Group is a manufacturer of shoes based in Newton, Massachusetts. It is home to the Aravon, Dunham and Rockport brands and the popular Rockport Cobb Hill Collection.

Founded in Marlborough, Massachusetts in 1971 by Saul L. Katz and his son, Bruce Katz, the company produces footwear that is found in various retail channels in more than 60 countries worldwide.

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 and in 1977 the Carter administration imposed quotas on shoe imports, but the controls arrived too late for Hubbard, which went out of business in 1970.

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 Marlboro, Massachusetts and imported shoes from Brazil. 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, MA. When Saul Katz went to the tannery in Brazil he named the leather Rockport.

The 3,000 pairs of moccasins brought into Marlboro arrived too late for Highland’s customer and so the shoes remained in the warehouse for some months. Bruce Katz then began working with his father and travelled the East Coast from Boston to Washington, DC, selling these shoes in plain white boxes to small leather shops and shoe boutiques in many small towns. The shoes carried no name until Katz learned that others were beginning to copy the shoes and calling them “Rockport type” shoes. He subsequently returned to Marlboro and decided to start branding the shoes as “Rockport.”

In 1971, Saul Katz and his son, Bruce, formed The Rockport Company from Highland Import. The company was started with $15,000 and grew entirely by staying profitable each year. In 1986, shortly before the company was sold, Rockport’s sales were reaching nearly $100 million a year, having turned a profit every year since it was founded.

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