The Unlikely Return of Birkenstock

Re:The Unlikely Return of Birkenstock by DiabloD3 on Friday August 24, 2018 @07:13AM (#17834183)

Doc Martens don't actually exist anymore, however. It is just a brand that was outsourced to China and Vietnam, so unless you have an authentic vintage pair, you don't actually have a pair at all.

Doc Martens used to be made by a factory in the UK, and the company dropped them. Solovair still operates the old UK factory, using the same employees and the same machines and the same techniques (such as the Goodyear welt stitching technique), since it was theirs to begin with.

Literally, those classic Doc Martens were just a Solovair sole combined with a Greggs upper (the company that owned the Doc Marten brand), stitched together at the Solovair factory.

What Greggs really provided was patents owned by an actual guy named Doctor Marten, who tried to make more ergonomic boots; all of those patents involved the soles, of which the technology was licensed to Solovair and is now part of their product line as the patents have long since expired; even though it was a Greggs upper, there wasn't anything magic about the upper in a Doc Marten, it was all in the sole.

It isn't often HN and /r/BuyItForLife/ intersect.

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Re:The Unlikely Return of Birkenstock by SmellyGeekBoy on Friday August 24, 2018 @07:20AM (#17834215)

Surely by this logic even the "authentic vintage" Doc Martens weren't all that authentic either. If it's just a case of sticking a brand on someone else's shoe what does it matter where they're manufactured. ;)

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Re:The Unlikely Return of Birkenstock by chriselles on Friday August 24, 2018 @03:45PM (#17837375)

I wonder if that’s a common theme in shoe/boot making?

I’ve got more boots than Imelda Marcos had shoes

Vibrant soles matched to Meindl boot uppers for example.

Interesting story about Doc Martens.

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