FLORSHIEM Marshall Brown Oak Woven Leather Loafer

Marshall Brown Oak Model 18126 02 LIKE NEW!! Genuine Woven Leather Upper w/Rubber Soul Florsheim & Co. was founded in 1892 by Milton S. Florsheim. He and his father Sigmund Florsheim made the first shoes in Chicago. Eventually, some stores were owned by and sold only Florsheim. By 1930, Florsheim was making women's shoes and had five Chicago factories and 2500 employees, with 71 stores partly or entirely company-owned and 9000 stores around the US selling Florsheims. In 1953, International Shoe Company, the world's largest shoe maker, bought Florsheim for $21 million. Three years later, Florsheim became a division, operating as a separate entity. During its first ten years, Florsheim was International Shoe's most important unit, doubling its sales, and responsible for a quarter of the parent's sales and more than twice that fraction of earnings. Florsheim had 70% of high-quality men's shoes and succeeded when its parent company was struggling. Florsheim eventually sold women's shoes through Thayer-McNeil stores, also owned by International Shoe (by this time called Interco). In the 1980s Florsheim began selling athletic shoes, and Interco's shoe division became part of Florsheim. In 1991, Interco declared bankruptcy but kept Florsheim until the company exited the shoe business in 1994. Florsheim became a separate company. In 1996 it changed its name to Florsheim Shoe Group. Until the mid-1990s, almost every mall in the US had a Florsheim store