The Comfortwear Story

The

Comfortwear Story

Contents Memories of Comfortwear Footwear Comfortwear Archive Letters

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The Comfortwear Story

584

Steel Blue Founders Edition

585

Comfortwear Archive Letters The letters contained here in this Ebook date back nearly 100 years and were kept by my father Allan Nichols. I have scanned them and include them in chronological date order, so it is possible to follow some of the historical events of the company. I have also found a few old photos and press articles from later years, that also help paint the story of Comfortwear Footwear Pty Ltd and some of the people involved.

Memories of Comfortwear Footwear

by Peter Nichols I believe Comfortwear started around 1907. These are my memories of Comfortwear spanning over sixty years, growing up as a child and visiCng my father, Allan Nichols, who worked there, and then finally working there myself. So please forgive me if I have missed a few points.

I can remember back to around 1960, when I was four years old. Then the office for Felt & TexCles (F&T), Comfortwear Footwear was in an old two-storey converted house at 276 Newcastle Street Northbridge. To the right was a laneway and next to that was the F&T carpet warehouse at No 274, which was the original West Australian Boot Manufacturing Co factory and then next to that was the Newcastle Club Hotel on the corner of Lake Street. The original factory was in a L shape around

Memories of Comfortwear Footwear

the hotel fronCng Newcastle and Lake Streets.

Included in this eBook is a photo of the staff of the West Australian Boot Manufacturing Co, out the front of the 274 Newcastle Street building. Someone has wriWen the date of 28/11/1929 on the photo, but I think it was taken several years before that. The factory is about six blocks from the Perth CBD separated by the main Perth to Fremantle railway line. An arCcle of the day said, ‘how daring it was to build a factory so far out of the town’. To assist workers to get to the factory, the WA Government installed a tramway system that operated up unCl about 1963. My father, Allan Nichols, took a photo of the tram lines being pulled up on Newcastle Street where City Toyota is now, which used to be a Ford dealership. In the old photograph you can see Newcastle Street was a gravel road with large rocks scaWered around in the 1920s.

The precinct of Northbridge is now regarded as inner city and the old Lake Street factory has been turned into up-market town houses. Up unCl the 1980s the area was run down with low rent houses and neglected buildings. A bikie motorcycle gang lived in one of the semi-detached twostorey terrace houses and they would ride their motor bikes up the staircase and park them on the balcony. There were many warehouses and wholesalers in the area. The smell of coffee being roasted in big industrial ovens at Pisconeri’s permeated the air every Friday. Around 2010, the rail line to Fremantle was sunk underground to allow easy access to the city. The area is full of restaurants and night clubs now.

In the 1940s and 1950s, F&T had three factories. The main Comfortwear factory was in Northbridge in Lake Street and at 181 Wellington Street near Royal Perth Hospital was Comfortwear Slipper Co. When you look through the photos you will see a plaque commemoraCng the spot where the old factory was, which is sCll there. The other factory was in the town of Northam and was known as the North Avon Shoe Company, named acer the Avon River that runs through the town, where the famous white-water classic, the Avon Descent, starts each year. I think they built the factory during World War II to ensure it was safe and out of the main Perth city.

Dad used to go up to Northam by train every couple of weeks and do a stocktake. In the late 1950s they decided to amalgamate all three factories into one in Northbridge.

Dad lec school at about 15 to support his mother and brother when his father became very ill – his father eventually died a few years later. His first job was a telegraph delivery boy. He lied about his age and joined the army when he was 17 around 1941. Dad was flat-footed so was unable to join the infantry – much to his dismay. He loved to Cnker with things and was enlisted into the Signals Corp as a radio technician and posted to Papua New Guinea, repairing and maintaining allied radios. Acer the war he returned home and married my mother, Peggy. They bought a block of land at 201 The Strand in Bedford Park and built a garage, where they lived for five years while they built their house. On one side Dad’s brother, Harley, built his house, on the other side Mum’s sister and her husband, Poppy and Les Bradshaw, built their house and next to them was their best friends, David and Sylvia Trigg.

Dad was sort of the office boy / stock clerk in the early 1950s at Comfortwear. Because of his Army service during World War II he was eligible to do a retaining course at war’s end. He chose a night school AccounCng degree and began his long climb into an amazing and rewarding career. Dad and Mum were very affable people and had a great rapport with the staff.

As children, my brother, Graeme, and I were treated and spoiled by the office girls, who would give us cool drinks and lollies when we visited Dad at the office. Every day, Dad used to drive a few blocks away to Hyde Park and have lunch to get away from the office chaWer and telephones. Mum always made his lunch and someCmes during school holidays we would catch the bus and meet him for lunch at Hyde Park.

Dad started the company social club and we had regular events in the lunch room at night. He had set up a badminton court, dart boards, table tennis, quoits and other games. I remember it was very spooky walking into the dark factory at night. There were only a few naked light globes

hanging from the factory roof, lighCng the way to the lunch room. The deserted factory seemed huge at night. Mum had sewn up a dark green canvas bag that was used as a bassinet to carry my baby brother Graeme and for him to sleep in. It later became Dad’s fishing and skin-diving bag.

I used to get to play with the other workers’ kids. The Factory Manager was John Worth and his wife was Helen. I used to call him Uncle John and he used to ruffle my hair and call me ‘Sonny Jim’.

We made friends with the Worth children; David, Denise and Kerryn. The General Manager at the Cme was John Gundry and his wife was Phillis – they had three children; Rodney, Kay and Linda.

SomeCmes we would go out at night, maybe for a fish and chip dinner at the beach or a walk in Kings Park. On the way home we would call into the factory to make sure everything was ok. The firm employed a night watchman called Mr Dean. He had a gammy leg and used to limp a bit. He would do a circuit of the factory every now and then with his torch light and just a couple of very dim naked light bulbs hanging randomly from the factory roof. It was very dark, spooky and eerie.

Mum and Graeme would stay in the car and Dad would take me into the factory to find Mr Dean.

Quite ocen he was having a snooze on the bales of soc crepe rubber off-cuts. We had to call out so we didn’t scare him, less he aWacked us. Mr Dean was a lovely old man who looked like he had been around the block a few too many Cmes. Dad had felt sorry for him and gave him the job which he appreciated very much. He carried an old hessian bag and he would say “put your hand in the bag young’un and see what you can find”. There were a few snoWy old hankies, a ring of factory keys, a spare torch and right at the boWom was a small block of chocolate that he would let me have.

Footwear manufacturing was very labour-intensive, as every piece had to be cut, sewn, lasted, soled, finished and then cleaned and boxed. The factory consisted of several large rooms over two floors that had been added to over nearly 70 years and the place was known affecConately as ‘The Rabbit Warren’. In the late 1960s an addiConal factory was built onto the Lake Street old factory and the main office moved upstairs to 127 Lake Street. In the office was the General Manager, Mr John Gundry; Sales Manager, Mr Frederick Lancelot Marston; the Accountant, my father; the Pay Mistress, three or four office girls and a telephonist-recepConist. The work started below in the Clicking Room, where the leather was stored and cut. Jim Witheridge was the Foreman with about ten Clickers under his control. Footwear is made up of various different shapes of leather and ‘clicking’ was the term used to describe this process of cuqng out the pieces. I think it referred to the sound made as the heavy press came down on the metal knife (paWern) posiConed over the skin of leather. It made a metal clicking sound. The next room was the Stuff Cuqng room, where the heavy, thick leather and rubber soles were cut using big hydraulic presses. Sandals were also assembled here and riveted and riding boots’ uppers blocked to give them a nice curve over the

instep of the foot. Henry Lennon was the Foreman in this room with several workers including an apprenCce called Robert Debarro, who started in the mid 1980s. Henry’s twin brother, Wally, was the company paWern cuWer and grader. It was his job to make and grade all the individual paWerns into each size and then make sure the shoe fiWed correctly. The Closing Room was where the sewing was done and the uppers started to come together like a jigsaw puzzle. There were around thirty women working in the Closing Room and Anna Traganopoulos was the Forewoman. Then the uppers went into the next factory and upstairs to the Making Room where the uppers were put on the foot lasts and the leather pulled and tacked under the last. This was a very noisy operaCon with big dangerous machines banging, hammering and sewing the uppers to the innersoles.

Gordon Nunn was the Foreman of one line, with Leading Hand, Peter Mackwell and several others.

The glue soluCon was also applied to the safety boots and PVC injecCon moulded footwear here by a couple of ladies. Desert boots and riding boots’ soles were sCtched or screwed on another line

by Foreman, Keith Stuart, and his crew of five. The safety boots were then sent back downstairs to the Vulcanising Room to have the soles aWached. The Vulcanising Room was hot and worked on two shics and employed about six men and a couple of women. It involved raw nitrile rubber that had to be individually weighed per boot size and then laid in the metal sole mould. The boots were pulled onto a metal last and under great pressure and heat it slowly melted and was aWached to the leather upper. Desert boots, riding boots and sandals were then cleaned, sprayed with lacquer and polished and put in shoe boxes in the Boxing Room by several women. Pauline BurneW was the Forewoman in this room. Finally, the footwear went upstairs again to the old warehouse in Newcastle Street and employed about five people, who put the finished footwear on the shelves.

They would then go through the orders and dispatch them.

There was also John Worth, the Factory Manager’s office in the centre of the complex downstairs, and a large lunch room, and men’s and women’s ameniCes. The raw materials were stored all around the inside of the factories. In the early 1980s, the factory needed more room and took back the warehouse at 274 Newcastle Street and this became the dispatch warehouse, sales office and show room.

To keep things Ccking over the firm employed two engineers and, generally, an apprenCce. Jack Tamlin was the first Engineer and then Jim Dandie and Vic Daniels. The engineering workshop was situated downstairs in the bowels of the factory, which resembled a cave – no windows, lots of machines, oxyacetylene torches, electric saws, lathes and a huge array of tools. The engineers were very clever and made amazing machines that improved producCon. Originally, all footwear technology for Australia came out of Great Britain. All the major BriCsh footwear companies and machinery makers were headquartered in KeWering. Most of Comfortwear’s big machines were made by BriCsh United Shoe Machinery (BUSM). Some of the machines were quite temperamental and needed a delicate touch to keep performing. A lot were run on compressed air pumped in pipes from a compressor in the engineering shop throughout the factory, so good engineers were

criCcal. Dad and Jack got on very well. He and his wife lived near us on GarreW Road in Bayswater.

We used to drop into their place for morning tea some Saturday mornings so the two men could have an impromptu and uninterrupted discussion on factory maintenance. Mrs Tamlin would make pikelets for us.

Some weekends, Dad needed to do a bit of work in the office so us kids with a few friends would tag along and muck around in the factory. There was an old internal telephone system between all rooms – the old heavy black Bakelite rotary phones. We would run around phoning the numbers telling jokes to each other and having a lot of fun. We were told to never touch any of the machines, so of course we did! SomeCmes we would push the start buWon and scream when the thing chugged to life. Dad would hear it upstairs in the office and turn on the factory PA system and tell us to behave and don’t touch anything. We played hide and seek and chasey throughout the factory, screaming and larking about like we were in another world.

I loved walking into the factory and smelling the powerful aroma of leather. Its bouquet engulfed your senses and wrapped itself around you like a soc comforCng blanket. In other parts of the factory there were other interesCng aromas like the various glues and chemicals used: the burning smell of thick black sCcky nitrile rubber used for the boot soles slowly being moulded and melted down under heat and pressure in the vulcanising machines. The vulcanising plant was hot and humid. One of the operators, big Colin Mayers, told me once he hadn’t showered for weeks, so that was another interesCng aroma.

During the early 1960s the footwear trade in Perth was well established and probably employed three hundred people or more throughout the city. There were work picnics, car rallies and trade events organised. One of the big picnics was held at Point Walter each year and everyone took the ferry from Barrack Street. Us kids were given ice cream, watermelon and ginger beer from a wooden keg. We’d have egg and spoon and three-legged races. As well as Comfortwear, other footwear companies at the Cme were Weavers Footwear, Regina Footwear, Prairies Shoes, N. Shilkin & Sons Leathers, Fremantle Leather Co, WA Tanners, many footwear agencies and BUSM. Every year, Dad would organise the Comfortwear Christmas Social and Staff Christmas Lunch. The staff lunch was held in the factory lunch room on ‘knock off day’ and was always looked forward to. It was mainly sandwiches, cold meats and salad with beer and soc drinks, all prepared by the wives of the Company’s partners and Mrs Millie Bruce, the morning tea lady. Acer, some of the stayhards migrated up to the Northbridge Hotel for a year’s debriefing of events and ‘who done

who wrong’. There were scores to seWle. There would be the odd fight. Apparently one bloke punched the glass windows out of a telephone box once to show how tough he was. The Christmas family social was held in a hall in Cambridge St, Leederville. It consisted of an old threepiece band that played a couple of old Cme waltzes, the Barn Dance, the Pride of Erin and the big favourite, the Hokey Pokey. Everyone, including the kids joined in the Hokey Pokey and it was played two or three Cme during the night. Father Christmas came and gave the kids presents. All the big kids dared the liWle kids to pull Father Christmas’s beard off so we could see who he really was. Acer that we all went and had supper in the small hall next door. Us young ones were then put to sleep in the cars out front. The next day, Dad and I would help clean up the hall. Dad and Uncle John would talk about who got drunk and that they would have to talk to that person about their behaviour. I remember David Worth dared me to drink a half glass of lecover stale beer, which I did and it went straight to my head. I was probably only seven or eight years old at the Cme. The place stank of stale spilt beer and cigareWes. I used to collect some of the scraps of leather when I went to the factory and make watch bands out of them. During the early 1970s it was groovy to have a wrist band with tassel fringes. I made many for me and my friends. During this period, Comfortwear was making men’s surfy sandals and they used lots of different metal medallions, buckles and studs so I incorporated them into my designs. It was very hip.

I also worked in the factory during school holidays to earn some extra pocket money. I saw a beauCful gold-plated watch at the big Boans Morley jewellery shop when Dad and I went to get a haircut. I think it was worth around $18 and looked smashing to a 13-year-old. It had a date and a gold metal stretchy bracelet. Dad said, “if you work in the factory for a couple of weeks when school finishes for Christmas holidays you could probably earn enough to buy that”. So off to work I went. I fronted up to the factory manager’s office at 7.00am, walked in and said, “Hi Uncle John, Dad said you would give me a job”. He looked at me and said, “I’ll give you more than a bloody job, Sonny Jim, and don’t call me Uncle John. I am Mr Worth your boss and don’t you forget it”. Wow! Welcome to the real world. My first job was painCng the glue on the boWom of the lasted shoes to help aWach the sole. It was an exacCng and painstaking job. You had to work to an imaginary line and not let the glue go over or under or the PVC sole would peel off or come up the side of the shoe too much and sCck to the leather and ruin the shoe. The glue was pungent and us gluers were referred to as ‘glue sniffers’. The glue would drip everywhere and stained my hands red. In the 1980s when workplace health regulaCons were brought in, this whole area had to be air filtered with big extracCon fans. It was a long day working upstairs in the ‘Making Room’. We

started at 7.30am, and at 10.00am we had a 15-minute smoko, then at 12.30pm we had 25 minutes for lunch. It should have been 30 minutes but everyone traded the extra five minutes a day so that when it came to the big staff lunch at the end of the year, they could work half a day and all knock off at lunch Cme. That way, the factory wouldn't lose any Cme. There was no acernoon break but if it was hot, one of the apprenCces, Sammy Cacciola, came around at about 2.30pm and you gave him 20 cents and he got you a small boWle of cold Coca-Cola from the ice machine in the lunch room. That part of the factory around summer could get up to 44c. It was sCfling hot. My legs hurt from standing up all day. The ladies I work with used to give me a stool to sit on and if they saw Mr Worth coming they would nudge me to quickly stand up. “Not slacking are we Sonny Jim,” Mr Worth would holler at me. “No sir”, I’d reply. “Ok”, he’d say “concentrate and don’t glue over or under the line and stuff the shoes up, or YOU will send us all broke. Got it?”

There was a “YES SIR” from me.

The factory workers were a great bunch of people to work with. I used to get the odd clip around the ears someCmes from the Foremen. For some, it was the only job they had ever had acer leaving school at age 13 or 14. A lot of them were semi-literate and were deemed more equipped for manual work. Many of them reCred, reluctantly, in their 70s, only ever having worked at Comfortwear. I remember one man, Len McGinnis, who had worked there since he was 14-yearsold and eventually Dad got him to reCre in his early 70s. He wasn’t happy about reCring and tried to get the Union to persuade Dad to keep him on. Dad presented him with a gold watch the day he reCred to which Len said, “a lot of bloody good that is to me. I am reCring and don’t need to get up at any parCcular Cme now”. The staff were part of a big ‘family’ and they were so aWached to the firm and relied on Dad doing the right thing, steering the company on a steady course and keeping them all in work. They feared for the future if the company failed. By the mid 1970s, all the major shoe factories in Western Australia had closed, so there was nowhere to go if things went bad. In the eBook there are a lot of leWers that paint a grim picture from Cme to Cme, but Dad never let on because he knew it would unseWle everyone.

The factory ladies all loved to gossip about everyone and were always asking me quesCons about Dad and the family, so I had to be very careful what I said. They used to pick and poke. There was an amazing collecCon of naConaliCes; Greeks, Italians, BriCsh and, later, the very hard-working Vietnamese. Northbridge was a rough and tumble place during the 1960s and early 1970s. It was ‘liWle Italy’. There was the poliCcs of naCons to manoeuvre around. Usually, when you came to work in the morning there would be couple of drunks siqng on the office doorstep with a boWle of methylated spirits wrapped in a brown paper bag. “Can you lend a bloke 20 cents mate,” they

would ask. One morning I told the ladies about the watch I was going to buy with the $18 I was going to earn over three weeks. Well that really set things off. It soon got out and according to everyone in the factory I was being ripped off, cheated, underpaid. My father was a mean man using his son as a slave. Child labour they screamed! The Union Rep was called and told to go a speak to my ‘capitalist Father’ about how he was treaCng his poor downtrodden hard-working son.

It caused a bit of tension at the dinner table that night but I got a $4 rise and told not to speak to anyone about how much I earned. Up The Workers!!

Dad loved working with his hands and making things. He and Mum had built their own house brick by brick and he was always thinking up new gadgets for around the house. He made all the fiqngs, bed, cupboards, kitchen and accessories for our Commer camper van. If a machine broke down in the factory he would relish the opportunity to put on his overalls and cap and work with the engineers nuqng out and solving problems. He would get covered in grease and crack jokes. It gave him a level of respect that you couldn’t put a price on. Dad knew the name of every employee, their spouse and children’s names and ages. He knew their weakness and helped them do their household budgets, get housing loans and even mediate on personal family issues someCmes. He would try and teach the young apprenCces to save and encouraged them to have a few dollars taken from their pay each week and he would bank it for them. When they were old enough to get their drivers licence they would then have some money to buy a car. Dad would then help them choose something suitable and roadworthy. Dad enjoyed helping people. There was a Bootery at the old Fremantle Jail and long-term trusted prisoners worked there making shoes and boots for the inmates. They were using sharp knives so they had to be trusted. Dad would go there every fortnight and mentor and teach the men boot-making skills. Comfortwear donated various machines and raw materials for them to use. He really enjoyed this side of the business and would help parolees get jobs on their release. He did this through his network of business colleagues in the Rotary Club. He also designed an ApprenCce Technical College course and tutored the classes. Once a year the partners held an apprenCce dinner and awards night. The top apprenCce was presented with a trophy and a watch.

Up unCl the early 1970s, wages were paid weekly in cash. Sylvia Trigg, who was married to David, one of Dad’s lifeCme friends, was the pay mistress for many years. On pay day, the Armaguard truck with two to three armed guards would arrive at 127 Lake Street and take a box of cash upstairs to the office for processing. Sylvia would count it all out and then put it into an envelope for each employee. Whilst some were illiterate, they knew to the exact cent what they were going

to get paid each week, according to how much overCme they did. All hell could break loose if someone was underpaid.

Just before Christmas in the late 1960s, I remember Dad and Mum having hushed conversaCons over a few days. On ‘knock off day’ Mum hugged Dad and said, “be careful”. LiWle did I know that the police had noCfied Dad that they had a Cp-off that a syndicate of crooks from the eastern states had been casing the office and were going to rob them of the holiday pay. Apparently, the cops closed down Lake Street and had uniformed officers up and down the street. That was the last Cme any big amounts of money were processed at the office.

There was a big old iron safe upstairs in the office that held important papers as well as, during the 1960s, a manual adding machine. This was years before calculators and the adding machine was treated like a priceless, irreplaceable instrument offering the most Cme-saving applicaCons of the day. It was wrapped in a velvet cloth and keep in the safe. Clark Johnson, a very trusted colleague of Dad’s, owned one of the leading footwear agencies in Perth. Dad would lend Clark the adding machine in the evenings to do his stocktake but the machine had to be back in the office safe by 7.00am the next morning before anyone knew it was missing. One weekend, some crooks broke into the office and lugged a very heavy oxyacetylene torch all through the factory and up the stairs to the office with the idea of cuqng open the safe. Someone outside saw the smoke billowing from the windows and called the police and fire brigade, who scared the robbers off. Funny thing was the safe hadn’t been locked the night before and the robbers could have opened it by just turning the handle.

On other school holidays, my job was to clean the whole factory with help from an apprenCce or two who needed some extra cash, so didn’t go on holidays. This took about two weeks and involved using high pressure compressed air hoses and blowing all the dust, coWon, leather and tacks from every nook and cranny in the factory. It then had to be swept up and dumped in the big car trailer and taken to the rubbish dump. It was dirty and hot work. I would go home filthy each day with my hair full of dust. We would tune the PA system to a pop radio staCon (6PR Good Guys) and blast the music throughout the factory and clown around while we worked, singing our hearts out. The rubbish dump was on reclaimed land where the Burswood Casino and park is now on the banks of the Swan River. The engineers worked during the factory closedowns doing maintenance.

Jim Dandie would drive the car and trailer, taking me and the apprenCces to the rubbish Cp to help unload all the rubbish. We used to go scavenging and come back someCmes with more treasures

than we dumped. We were reprimanded once by Mr Worth when our normal three quarter of an hour trip turned into three hours.

Comfortwear had a number of owners from its incepCon around 1909. During the 1940s to the 1960s it was owned by Felt & TexCles (F&T). They were about the tenth largest company in Australia and their main interests were in wool, felt, carpets and footwear. They had various associated companies in New Zealand and South Africa. They were coming under pressure due to the growing AnC-Apartheid Movement. F&T owned some of the largest shoe brands in Australia, including Grosby, Hollandier, Good Child, Myrl, Buckingham Shoes, Nielsen Slippers, Australian Slippers and Comfortwear. Unfortunately, they didn’t plan ahead all that well and eventually, due to financial problems, they merged all the footwear factories and brands with Dunlop. Dunlop owned a number of footwear factories including the largest Australian safety footwear factory at Bankstown, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales.

Dad had gone from an office clerk in the 1940s to become the Assistant Accountant, then Head Accountant in the early 1960s to Assistant General Manager (mid 1960s) to General Manager around 1968 when John Gundry lec. He worked long hours travelling to and from the east coast to company meeCngs. In the early 1960s, the WA Government, along with heads of the new emerging iron ore companies, flew several Perth-based manufacturers, including Dad, to the north of WA to see the mines that were being built at the Cme. The idea was to give Western Australian businesses a first-hand look at the huge scale of mining that was to come and to see if any of them could develop products locally, for use in this industry. Dad saw the potenCal to shic the direcCon of the company to something more sustainable – to manufacture and market steel toe cap safety boots and an opportunity to grow along with the new mines.

At that Cme Comfortwear’s main footwear offerings were boys’ and girls’ black school shoes called Hustlers, ReflecCon and Chuckles. I sCll have a ‘chuckle’ about calling a boy’s school shoe a ‘Hustler’. They also made football boots, desert boots including the famous black ripple sole DB, children’s school sandals, leather soled elasCc sided horse riding boots, men’s surfy sandals called Astra-Nauts and vulcanised rubber soled work boots. In the late 1960s, the factory was under a lot of pressure to increase profit and lower costs. Kids’ school shoes were losing market share due to the popularity of the new look sports shoes, as the youth of the day developed a more casual dress code.

The world was changing fast in the early 1970s. I was a young teenager, there was quite a lot of industrial unrest, strikes, the Vietnam War was slowly coming to an end, and higher wages and cheap footwear imports threatening local manufacturing. The government had set up a quota and tariff system to try and assist and protect the local footwear and clothing manufacturers. The footwear industry Australia-wide employed directly and indirectly over 300,000 people. I had always hoped to get a job at Comfortwear, but Dad said he was concerned about the future and its sustainability. F&T/Dunlop summonsed Dad to Melbourne and told him they didn’t need or want a second safety footwear factory, specially so far away in Perth. They asked him to go back and close it down. He was horrified as it meant over 120 people would lose their jobs and there were no other factories in Perth that would be able to employ the redundant staff. This was his life and his extended family and they trusted him to keep them all safe and working.

He pleaded to Dunlop to reconsider, which miraculously they did, but with a catch. There were two opCons: close the factory or force Dad to buy it. Dunlop was not prepared to sell the business to anyone but Dad. There was a high level of trust between everyone. Dunlop said they wanted good compeCCon and Australia needed good footwear manufacturing and if Dad was prepared, then they would support him. So, they put forward a deal for Dad; the Factory Manager, John Worth and Sales Manager, Frederick Lancelot Marsden, to buy the business together. Dunlop was a very gracious company at the Cme and a gentlemen’s agreement was arranged. Dunlop would lend the three men some of the money, on an agreed price at a reasonable interest rate and they could also use their long service leave, holiday and sick leave pay to help offset the cost. I think the original period to pay down the loan was five years. They achieved it in three. Dunlop then agreed to sell them the Northbridge factory building with a similar deal. Once again, it was paid off before Cme. A story I love is when Mr Harry Goodman, one of the F&T/Dunlop Directors who mentored Dad, and stayed in touch with him throughout his life, did a remarkable thing. All the men were in the office one day and Mr Goodman had come to Perth for the final signing of the offer. He took out an unsigned cheque for one thousand dollars. He then asked for a ladder. He climbed the ladder and tacked the cheque above the door in Dad’s office. He said “I believe you three men will build this into a fine business. If you pay it off before Cme I will come back to Perth and sign this cheque”.

And that is what he did. In the early 1970s, one thousand dollars was nothing to sneeze at.

So, the struggle went on, there were good Cmes and bad. Dad wouldn’t give me a job when I lec school. He said, “go and get something else behind you first and maybe you can join the business someCme in the future if it's sCll going – ok?” So I got a job as an apprenCce spectacle maker at OPSM. I thoroughly enjoyed my Cme there and made some fantasCc friends. I did a four-year

apprenCceship and then a further three years as an opCcal prescripCon dispenser, serving customers.

One night (in about 1978) I got a phone call from Mr Worth. “Hey, Sonny Jim”, he said, “do you sCll want to come and work for me”? “Yes, please”, I replied. He then said, “Ok, don’t tell your old man or he will sack us both. Come and see me when you're ready”.

I turned up to the factory one morning. Apparently, the whole factory, except Dad, knew I was going to work there! I am sure they all thought I was going to be favoured and given a plum job.

But no, I was the new eyeleCng guy. The eyeleCng machine is a clumsy noisy machine that punches holes in the leather shoe upper and spits out eyelets like bullets from a machine gun, which it crimps over. I called it the karchoonk-a-machine. One false move and it could take your finger off.

The eyeleCng was done in the Closing Room where the leather pieces were sewn together. As menConed previously, there were about 30 women working in the Closing Room and the Forewoman was Anna Traganopoulos. Anna was very wary and thought that I was going to steal her job. My eyeleCng teacher was Cal Edwards. Cal was ‘old school footwear’ from KeWering in the UK. He came out to Australia with his son’s family to reCre but then decided to do some casual work at Comfortwear, which then turned into full-Cme. He showed me how to calibrate the machine to get the right spacing for the eyelets for each different size upper. You had to hold the leather upper with two hands and press one foot on an accelerator pedal, like in a car, and the machine went off like a machine gun. I had been used to working with fine precision opCcal instruments and finally polishing fragile glass lenses to fit perfectly into delicate wire spectacle frames – totally different to the karchoonk-a-machine, which was like a pre-historic dinosaur barking like a wild dog. In the early days I made a lot of mistakes and ruined quite a few leather uppers. Anna would quickly take my mistakes to John and show him how bad I was. Mr Worth would then come down and put on a show and say, “are you trying to send us all broke, Sonny Jim”?

So, for the first couple of days I sat at the eyeleCng machine while Cal showed me what to do.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Dad walk from the office down through the factory and he didn’t see me. I could hear everyone sniggering. Then on or about the third day when he walked through someone yelled out “Hey, Mr Nick, have you seen the new bloke”. Everyone had a good laugh and I suppose that’s when I felt I was where I needed to be.

The job was quite mind-numbing but I was told I had to start at the boWom. John’s son-in-law, Brian PiggoW, had started working at Comfortwear a year or so before me. Brian was a year older and we grew up in the same street, The Strand in Bedford. Both went to Hillcrest Primary School and John Forrest Senior High School. We weren’t close friends but knew each other. I remember Brian speeding down The Strand in his Volkswagen fastback with surzoards on the roof tooCng his horn at me as he went by. Brian also started at the boWom. His first job was as a cleaner, scrubbing out the toilets.

At smoko every morning I sat in the lunch room with Cal and Mrs Millie Bruce. Mrs Bruce was the matriarch of the factory. She knew everything about everyone. So had an opinion on everything and was just waiCng for her LoWo numbers to come up. She loved a fluWer at the casino and always sat in the same lucky chair. She was probably in her early 70s and came in every morning to turn on all the urns and get the morning tea trollies organised. She then cleaned up the lunch room and went home about 2.00pm. One day, this big burly Indigenous guy came up to me in the factory and said, “hi Pete, remember me”? I scratched my head and said, “no, sorry”. “It’s me, Greg Blair, from high school!” came the reply. Wow! The Greg I remembered was a skinny, weedy liWle kid and was always being picked on at school. We were in the Army Cadets and I remember we were on a camp at the Northam Army Barracks with other schools and I walked into the toilets and some kids were picking on Greg. Not that I was a big kid, but I told them where to go and leave him alone. Greg and I were now both about 25 and he had really filled out. He told me a sad story about growing up and how the family had been poor and there was never enough food. He said, “your Dad gave me a job as an apprenCce. At long last I had some money and the family could all eat and we love KFC. Your old man is a good bloke”.

Dad was a planner and he took Brian under his wing and groomed him to eventually take over as General Manager. John took me under his wing and trained me to use a lot of the machines.

Sewing the uppers was very labour intensive and a costly process and he asked me to do a sewing machine training course. I did this locally at a clothing company and then was sent to Melbourne to work for a few weeks at Julius Marlowe (JM). JM was one of the most modern shoe factories in Australia with state-of-the-art manufacturing. Melbourne was the mecca of the Australian shoe industry with many factories and material supplies located there. Dad has close Ces with many factories around the country and overseas, so he managed to get me direct access with the JM management team. One day when I was there the head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Bob Hawke turned up to address the workers. Dad wasn’t impressed with Hawkie,

especially when he became Prime Minister and we won the America’s Cup and said, “any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up to work today is a bum”.

I started up a sewing machine training class at Comfortwear and there was a lot of opposiCon from Anna, who sCll thought I was trying to steal her job and didn’t think a man should be teaching women how to sew. As Cme went on John got me involved with the raw material purchasing. We had long lead-Cmes on many items; our steel toe caps came from Dinkie Heel Co in the UK; some leather from India; eyelets, shanks and other grindery from the UK and threads from Phipps Faire in the UK. The three partners nurtured close personal relaConships with both suppliers and customers. Dad travelled to Europe and the UK a couple of Cmes, building and enhancing relaConships with the world authority on footwear technologies SATRA (Shoe Allied Trade Research AssociaCon) of which most footwear companies were members.

In 1976, the three partners and their wives had a working holiday to Singapore and Malaysia and visited the crepe rubber plantaCon and supplier in Penang. The company used large quanCCes of crepe rubber for the soling material for desert boots (DBs) and lead-Cmes were several months from order to arriving at the factory. Crepe rubber was a natural material and was made from the sap from rubber trees, grown on large plantaCons. A pot was Ced to the tree trunk and a couple of V cuts were cut in the trunk and the white rubber sap flowed down into cup. This was then mixed and extruded into sheet forms of various thicknesses and cut into oblong mats of about 1.5 metres by 0.5 metres and boxed in packing cases and shipped to Perth. The crepe was cut into soles that were acCvated for gluing by spraying a petroleum compound onto the surface so it stuck to the midsole and was then sCtched to the upper using a tradiConal veldtschoen method in the Making Room, heavy line. The company made hundreds of pairs of desert boots each week. I remember once filling up my car with petrol at the servo and then walking over a patch of spilt petrol in my DBs. As the petrol acCvated the crepe sole it started to melt and I looked like I was slip-sliding on ice with my arms flaying about to keep my balance. It was very funny to the onlooker but a bit embarrassing for me.

Even local leather from N Shilkin & Sons and heavy buW leather from WA Tanners had lead Cmes of three to four months. We carried large stocks of everything which was stored all around the factory. Whilst we were all fierce compeCtors, all the factories looked out for each other. It wasn’t uncommon for Dad to make or receive a telephone call to or from our compeCtors asking to borrow a raw material that you or they had run out of.

Dad had been good friends with Nate Shilkin who owned N Shilken & Sons Tannery that was situated in the dirty industrial area of South Fremantle and Coogee, near the old power house. As kids, whenever Dad drove passed the tanneries on our way to Rockingham we would all hold our breath for as long as we could, because the smell was so bad. Nate and his wife had a holiday house on the banks of the Walpole River in Walpole WA. They had a boat shed with a sturdy wooden hulled motor boat docked inside. We would go for holidays to Albany and always stop for a few days and go fishing with Nate. We would sit around the big old kitchen table and I would listen to Nate and Dad discuss the issues of the day. When I was doing the purchasing, I used to go to the tannery and discuss orders and quality issues. The leather for safety footwear had to comply with Australian Standards 2210 and be within a tolerance of 1.8mm – 2.10mm. Cost was always a factor in the compeCCve market. Unfortunately, most companies that supplied safety boots to their workers wanted to buy the cheapest boots they could, as they didn’t see any value in supplying anything too good. Shilkins used to drum tan the leather hides in old truck cement mixers. The cheapest leather was buffalo or cow that had a heavy pebble print on it to hide imperfecCons, such as scars caused by the beast rubbing up against barb wire fencing or tree branches. I think most of the toxic chemicals were pumped out into the ocean in Cockburn Sound.

Like all the industrial places in South Fremantle, Shilkins closed down and, now, Coogee is an upmarket seaside suburb.

I also became the Quality Control Manager. I had to test and verify various raw materials before they were released to producCon. Steel toe caps also had to meet AS2210 Standards. This involved doing a batch hardness test and drop test to see how much force the toe cap could withstand before it crushed the toes – then a drop test on finished safety boots. Shipping was becoming a problem from the UK with rolling strikes and the dollar would fluctuate wildly. We managed to secure a second supply of steel toe caps from Ryan Brothers in Melbourne.

Buffalo leather from India was very compeCCvely priced, but the delivery was quite unreliable.

SomeCmes the Indian sellers resold our order to someone else for a beWer price and when we asked where it was, they said there was a problem and it would be another three to four months.

Also, the leather could be held up for weeks at the port in India due to the monsoons. Once, we received a large order of several hundred hides. They were rolled up into bundles of 50 and had all become damp and covered in mildew. One of the apprenCces and I spent weeks rolling each skin out and mopping it with a disinfectant and then wiping it dry. Ocen, we were short supplied on the square footage sent or large secCons had scars, folds in the skins or holes which meant there was a considerable loss in value.

In the mid-1980s Brian and I were working together in the ProducCon Office under John’s watchful eye. We were doing the recruitment and interviews for various staff and apprenCces. We interviewed a skinny liWle 14-year-old Burmese boy called Anza Shirazee to work in the Making Room. It turns out, Anza was a bright kid and worked his way to become a Leading Hand, then Foreman. Anza is now the Manufacturing Manager at Steel Blue, and so very proud of his achievements and dedicaCon to the Australian footwear industry.

Nev Hurring came to Perth from New Zealand and got a job in the Making Room. We had a chat one day and he said, “you Aussies are stupid. I came to Perth for two weeks holiday. As soon as I got here I went on the dole, bought a V dub beetle for a couple of hundred dollars through the Sunday Times, cleaned and polished it, then sold it for three Cmes what I paid for the following Sunday. I then thought, how good is this place and got a job at Comfortwear for twice what I was geqng paid in Dunedin”. We were at a Comfortwear social ouCng one night at an Italian restaurant in Northbridge when Nev comes up to me and says, “I hear Brian is being groomed to take over from you father. I reckon I could do Brian’s job in the producCon office. Would you put in a good word for me to John Worth?” So, on Monday I went in and told John, “bloody liWle Kiwi, – yes, he probably could do the job, I’ll give him a go.”

Dad and John encouraged Brian, Nev and me to try and improve our knowledge, so we all enrolled in various night school courses. Brian did a business diploma. I did a sales and markeCng diploma and Nev and I also did a joint courses on computers. Nev and I swoWed together leading up to a major exam. We went over all the old exam papers which generally had five to six quesCons with two hours to develop a wriWen detailed answer. As we walked out of the exam, I said to Nev how easy it was with only five quesCons. He exclaimed, “there were nine – didn’t you turn the page over and see the other four on the back!” I wrote a leWer of complaint as never before had there been quesCons on the back page and there was nothing to say ‘turn over’. I got a pass mark.

The Sales Manager and business partner to Dad and John was Frederick Lancelot Marsden. Fred was a gentleman and a character – he was five or six years older than Dad and about ten years older than John. He was ‘old school’ sales – shrewd and a product of The Depression, so there was no wastage and everything was recycled. One of his many claims was that he was the first person in the country to put money down to buy the first Holden car when it was announced manufacturing was starCng up. He claimed to have designed the first JC (Jesus Christ) sandal. I asked him once what it was like measuring up Jesus’s feet to work out what size he was. He wasn’t amused. Fred doted on his daughter, Ann, who was a ‘woman of the world’ who married an

Englishman called Ted Rhodes. Fred was training Ted to take over from him and become Sales Manager, which would have been perfect for Fred, so as to conCnue to offer his ongoing experCse. Tragically, Ted contracted mulCple sclerosis, which was devastaCng and extremely debilitaCng. Ted and Ann had a two young children: Jane and Jamie. Everyone rallied around to help but eventually Ted had to resign and passed away a few years later. Fred pulled me aside one day and told me how upset he was but he and the company had to look to the future. He asked me if I would like to become a salesman. Wow, what an opportunity. There was one other salesman, Colin Bangs, he was a bit miffed as he thought he had seniority and assumed he would eventually become Sales Manager. Fred was a great teacher and as well as selling our footwear we also had a few women’s fashion shoe agency lines that we sold to retail shoe stores. There was a brand called Sari, which was made by a Queensland company called F L Charters; Novat Shoes which made a high-end ladies fashion line in Melbourne and Ramayana, which was made in Indonesia. Fred encouraged me to expand my horizon and got me a retail sales job with the shoe retail chain Cecil Brothers, working Thursday nights and Saturday mornings at one of their BeWs & BeWs stores. I really enjoyed this and made some great friends and the extra pay came in handy. I learned a different side of the footwear business. Fred allowed me to take on more and more responsibility and deal with the large retailers. Cecil Brothers was a big customer of Comfortwear buying desert boots and school sandals. Every week I would go, cap in hand, to their office and pick up an order for several hundred pairs. The Cecil Brothers recepConist would call out to the buyer, “young Neter Pickles from CRUMPETWEAR is here for his order. Are we giving him one this week?” I would also show the buyers our agencies lines but very rarely did I get an order. They used to screw the price down so much, you just had to say ‘barleeze’ and walk away. One of their worst traits was that they would give a factory such big orders that they became reliant on them, and the following year they were so reliant on filling their factory they had to offer more discounts or suffer the consequences of retrenching staff.

I used to do selling trips driving around the state a couple of Cmes a year. One trip was from Perth to Kalgoorlie and down to Esperance, Albany and back home. We were desperate for a safety boot distributor in Kalgoorlie as we got dumped by Protector. I had a feisty encounter with a guy called Greg Jarvis at Rowedia Goldfields Supply in Kal and eventually convinced him to take on the distributorship. They became a large customer and every year I would go to Kal for the huge Mining Field Day to promote our footwear alongside Rowedia. Another trip was out through the wheatbelt up to Geraldton and then home. I also flew up to the Pilbara to the mines at BHP Mt Newman, then hired a car and drove to Hamersley Iron in Tom Price, Paraburdoo, Port Hedland,

Robe River, Pannawonica and Karratha. We had a very good distributor called Atom Supply in Karratha and the owner, Max MorCmer, who was a wild man, would get me to stay over the weekend and party with the staff. In those days everyone lived on site. There was no Fly In Fly Out (FIFO) so there was a great feel in all the towns. They were very family orientated. We also had a large contact to supply GP army boots to the Australian Department of Defence for a number of years.

Another great friend and customer was Greg Johnson who owned Tredways Shoe Stores. Greg was the son of Clark Johnson who owned the largest wholesale shoe agency in Perth – Clark Johnson and Sons. Dad and Clark had been longCme friends and business colleagues. Greg was a very cheeky, lively character and had an opinion on every topic and, if he didn’t, he would make one up.

He used to come to the factory to pick up his weekly Comfortwear order and we would have a robust discussion on everything from what I was doing wrong, to what the opposiCon was up to and how we should stay one step ahead. I would visit him at his Mount Hawthorn shop on Scarborough Beach Road for coffee and he would have my sides spliqng with laughter at his stories. Greg turned up one day at Comfortwear and said, “come and have look at my new car”.

Parked out front was a huge old dark green Mercedes-Benz. He said it was bomb and bullet proof and once belong to an African dictator. A mate of his had brought it to Australia and gave it to Greg in lieu of a debt he owed him. Greg had a number of detractors around town, so it was probably a suitable car for him.

Other great luminaries of the day were the McCreery Brothers who owned the McCreery Shoe Store on Beaufort Street, Inglewood, by the Civic clock tower. Robert McCreery used to smoke these obnoxious cigars. I would take a case of new women fashion samples to show him and he would be lying on a camp stretcher in the store room, smoking his cigar. The smoke filled the closed room. As he lay there, I would pass him a sample to look at. He would inspect it then chuck it away and say, “next”. Acer doing that for about 30 samples, I would crawl around on the floor picking up the discarded samples and he would holler, “give me two packs of the red ones, one of the blue spigot heel slingbacks, blah blah blah”. He was the customer so I did as he wanted and I got the order. The other one was Galbraith’s Shoe Store in the Boans Morley Shopping Centre. This was the centre of my youth growing up as it was one of the first big suburban shopping centres in Perth. Alas, the whole place burnt down in 1986. Both McCreery’s and Galbraith’s were started by the fathers and handed down to the sons.

As I was starCng out in sales, John’s other son-in-law, Ross Fitzgerald, joined the company and took over the purchasing and quality control funcCons I had been doing. We had a nice liWle team of junior execs. Brian, Nev, Ross and I and we would meet in the liWle sales office downstairs for our morning smoko and have a few laughs. Dad, John and Fred would always have morning tea together in Dad’s office. About once a week, the juniors were invited upstairs to discuss various topics of the business. I think we all felt a part of what was happening and we could all contribute something from Cme to Cme. It was interesCng listening to their stories and there were some very funny stories too.

Unfortunately, Fred had some health issues and took more and more Cme off work, which forced me to step up even more. Every second night on the way home I called and visited Fred at his house in Glen Forrest and gave him a rundown on events of the day and he mentored me with various strategies. Fred was very proud of the large industrial contracts he had secured and the personal relaConships he had forged. We were the contracted suppler to BHP Mount Newman’s huge iron ore mine in the Pilbara, Alcoa WA, Nabalco at Gove in the Northern Territory along with all the WA Government uCliCes. In the 1960s, Protector Safety was the largest naConal supplier of safety equipment in Australia and they were an agent/distributor for Comfortwear and would quote on the major contacts on our behalf. Comfortwear made some exclusive products for Protector and things went reasonably well. Protector was also the exclusive supplier of Dunlop safety boots from the Bankstown factory in NSW and would favour Dunlop over Comfortwear. When the W A State Government tender came out each year it was a forgone conclusion that Protector would only supply a quote on Comfortwear products and the contract would roll over again. This was around 40% of our business. It included West Australian Government Railways (WAGR), Main Roads Department (MRD), State Electrical Commission (SEC), Water Authority of WA (WAWA), ConservaCon & Land Management (CALM) and the Metropolitan Transport Trust (MTT). Dad got a phone call from the Government Tenders Board saying they had just opened the latest tender and Protector have only quoted Dunlop products. If we wanted to be included we needed to provide a direct quote the next day. Dad and Fred franCcally put a quotaCon and supply logisCcs document together and lodged our tender. We were victorious and Protector was furious. They tried to make Comfortwear look like the villain, where instead we were the vicCm, being slowly strangled by the giant naConal industrialist. So, the Cme had finally come when Comfortwear had come of age and had to stand on its own feet, so to speak.

Protector had contacts to supply Hamersley Iron, Robe River and Woodside with Dunlop boots.

Between them the miners employed around twenty thousand people. MulCply that by a couple of pairs of boots per person each a year and it certainly adds up to big boot business. I started calling on the other miners’ head offices in Perth and got laughed at, but I persevered and built up a good rapport with the buyers and over a few years picked up all the contracts. It was the days of contra deals – you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Rumour had it that certain purchasing officers were receiving gics of air condiConers, holidays, alcohol and dinners for contracts – something Comfortwear couldn’t match. All we could offer was a good product and good service. On one occasion a new Safety Manager was appointed at the BHP, Mt Newman Mine that we had serviced for a couple of years. I tried to make an appointment to see him but he wouldn’t speak to me, so I made the arrangements through his secretary and flew up to Newman to introduce myself. I picked up a hire car at the airport and drove to the mine and went to his office. His secretary told me to take seat and she would go and inform him I was here. I could hear him yell at her saying, “I am a Dunlop man. When his company starts making pink safety shoes I will see him”. Later, I phoned Rob Debarro at our factory and asked him to order me a pink leather hide. I found out what size shoe the guy took and we made up a pair of pink safety shoes and I sent them up to him with a card that read, “we are now making pink safety shoes but they are only for dickheads – hope you like your pair”. His secretary phoned me up and said, “he hasn’t stopped laughing and wears them when he plays golf. He is coming to Perth in a few weeks and would like to take you to lunch”. Another contract saved!

The factory had quite a flexible manufacturing system that allowed us to make special boots for some people who had odd sized or shaped feet. We could hacksaw off the corner of the steel toe cap so it didn’t rub on the liWle toe, or put in an oversize toe cap. We developed an extra wide last for people with wide feet. We would go on work sites and measure feet to fit the correct size boot.

A good friend of Dad, through the Rotary Club, was Bruce Hodge who owned WA Surgical Bootmakers in Shaco Lane in the city. Bruce had polio as a child and wore a leg calliper and a special boot as he had one leg shorter than the other. Bruce also made some special boots for our clients that were beyond our capabiliCes. We developed special leathers with causCc resistant properCes for Alcoa. We developed a quick release boot for welders that were sCtched in heatresistant Kevlar thread. They had a zip down the side so if a hot spark accidentally got into the boot it could be zipped off quickly. This was also good for men working on oil rigs in the ocean. If they fell into the sea they could quickly zip the boot off and not be dragged under. We were problem-solvers to heavy industry. Hamersley Iron had a problem with a staffer slipping off the

three-storey gantry at their Seven Mile train engine repair shop in Dampier. Someone wearing an opposiCon boot had slipped off the top floor and sustained a terrible injury. I asked if I could have a crack at fixing the problem and, if we did, would they look more favourably to us at the next contract offering. I visited the site and worked out that the nitrile sole rubber used on the boots was too hard and slippery and, combined with the oils spilt on the smooth steel gantry floor, it was extremely dangerous. With our local Perth-based rubber supplier, R David Moss & Sons, we came up with a new socer rubber compound with flakes of cork in it. I also recommended to the safety officers that they roughen up the smooth steel floor and coat it with a sandpaper compound to assist grip. This solved their problem and we then won the contract next Cme around. Once the first domino fell, the others realised we had the experCse, we were local and we could do the job, so we picked up all the major mining companies.

Comfortwear was very WA focused. Brian and I saw opportuniCes to expand into the eastern states. When Brian became General Manager and I became Sales Manager we were sent on a week’s trip around Australia and Tasmania to introduce ourselves to our exisCng distributors and meet up with potenCal distributors.

In Queensland, our agent was wholesaler, A T Spranklin & Sons, who sold all types of footwear throughout the state to the retail stores and specialised in cowboy riding boots. In New South Wales we used I Westheimer & Sons who also sold a huge range of various types of footwear and handbags. Dad and Mum were once again longCme friends of both the Spranklins and Westheimers. In Melbourne we used another family business Norm Phillips & Sons. Norm was an old ‘shoey’ and started out under-capitalised selling safety products. He gave Comfortwear a go when no one else would and built the business up to be a major PPE supplier in Victoria. They had contracts to supply our footwear to Toyota, Phillip Morris, AnseW and a number of large industrial accounts. Both Brian and I made many visits there each year to help support them and gain large accounts. Unfortunately, they bit off a bit more than they could chew and went broke.

The orders and Work in Progress (WIP) was done on a laborious manual card system that was very Cme-consuming and prone to errors. Everything started in the office where the customer orders were recorded and put on a hand-wriWen cards system. These orders were taken to the Dispatch Department and the dispatch hands would pick the orders if there was stock and send them out when there was enough of the order. SomeCmes part orders were sent and the card was marked with a back order. Cards were also printed and sent to the ProducCon Office and each day the producCon personnel would select the amount of pairs the factory needed. This depended on

what raw material stock was available. The cards were put in a pigeonholes under each room in the factory separated by each parCcular style. Every day the foreman would give producCon a list of completed work that they had sent to the next room. The producCon personnel would then move the work Cckets from one room’s pigeonhole to the other. We decided to computerise the whole system. Orders would be keyed into the computer, a work Ccket was then generated depending on what raw materials were available and what was low in stock, the goods would then go through the factory and each Foreman would key in the work Ccket number on their computer terminal as it passed through their room and the orders could be tracked. When they finally arrived in the dispatch warehouse they would be picked and packed and sent out. The system caused all sorts of problems in the beginning. We had several different Alcoa sites that we sent goods to. The computer picked what was available then back ordered what wasn’t available. The computer jumbled up all the back orders and grouped them all together and printed out a dispatch docket that sent every back order to one site. It was like trying to unravel a bowl of spagheq. It took weeks to sort out and at one stage I had hundreds of printouts all over the showroom floor trying to work out what was what.

Just down the road in Newcastle Street was a horse saddlery shop called Bates Saddlery. We made a budget range of leather boots, similar to RM Williams but nowhere near as good. I struck up a friendship with the Bates guys and they helped me re-model our range. They also gave me Cps on expanding into overseas markets. We had a small PVC sole injecCon plant that was used to put the soles on kids’ school shoes. The boys’ shoes were called Hustlers and the girls’ shoes were called ReflecCons. Imagine using a name like Hustlers for kids’ shoes nowadays? School shoes had gone out of fashion years ago so the machine was mothballed, but in its heyday it was worked on double shics making a thousand pairs a week. Bates said there was a market for cheap kids’ pony boots for the gymkhanas and farm work, so we developed a range of tan kids’ boots. I exhibited at a couple of saddlery trade shows and signed a deal to make the boots for two different franchise brands. One was for Horselands and the other for Nag Wear. This gave a lic in sales for the riding boot story and soon it was being sold all around the country. This was a different side of the industry that we hadn’t been all that acCve in and I met some very interesCng people and formed good friendships with some of our compeCtors including Blundstone and Michael Cloros from Victor/Mongrel Boots. We would all end up in a bar acer the trade shows spinning yarns.

Unfortunately, the leather used in the riding boots was becoming harder and harder to procure and our safety boot business was expanding, so we killed it off. It was a sad day for me when I had to call Horselands and Nag Wear and say we were stopping producCon. By this Cme, Ross and I had

built a good relaConship with the three brothers that owned Europa Saddlery in Perth and that was the end of that.

One day, I needed to travel south of Perth to a Bunnings Cmber mill and meet up with a distributor’s representaCve to do some boot fiqngs. The rep was Bob Dewar and we got on very well. Bob lived in Bunbury and, one day, he visited Perth and asked that if he opened up his own store would we sell to him. He seemed like a decent bloke so we did and Bob started Work Clobber which became a very good customer and, later, an even beWer customer to Steel Blue. There are now several Work Clobber stores around Perth and they are a household name.

There were big changes building ahead and on 30th March 1987, the three partners at Comfortwear sold the business. They knew the company needed to reinvest in new technologies and they felt they had done all they could and wanted to enjoy a well-earned reCrement. Brian, Nev, Ross and I were all re-hired and John Worth was going to stay on a for a couple of years to help in the transfer. Brian was General Manager, I was Sales and MarkeCng Manager, Ross was the senior Salesman and Nev was ProducCon Manager. The new owner was an accountant by trade and had a couple of other businesses. Most of the negoCaCon was done on a ‘gentleman’s handshake’. Unfortunately, it didn’t run smoothly and John lec.

Dad reCred and played an acCve role in the Mount Lawley Rotary Club holding many posiCons, including President. Dad was a keen sailor and sailed every Saturday at the South of Perth Yacht Club for about 20 years on Bob Moss’s H28 yacht. Bob’s company, R David Moss, supplied Comfortwear with the nitrile rubber soling material. Mum and Dad conCnued travelling about in their liWle caravan or pop-up car camper. They owned a 24-foot yacht called Honey Bee unCl it became too much for Dad to handle and then bought a 30 foot Randell Sports Fisherman diesel launch. They were both great contributors to the community and Mum was a volunteer Meals on Wheels driver, school canteen and Cub Scout camp cook as well as maker of cakes for all sorts of church, kindy and school fetes. Dad had a number of health problems and had open heart surgery to replace his heart aorCc valve. He then was racked with arthriCs. His brother, Harley, was one of Perth’s top signwriters and Dad started to help him with his accounts and rein his debtors in.

Unfortunately, Harley died suddenly and very unexpectedly, so Dad stepped in to help Harley’s widow and set the business up for sale.

John and Hellen Worth were very keen golfers and traveled around Australia a number of Cmes playing golf at as many Golf Clubs as they could.

The new Comfortwear owner knew nothing about footwear and lec Brian and I to reorganise and run the place. I had just done a major trip up through the Pilbara to the mines. The staff there were telling me about a new light-weight soled safety boot Dunlop were going to start making and they were all very keen to switch over to Dunlop and drop Comfortwear. The new soling was called Dual Density Polyurethane (DDPU). The outer sole tread was hard-wearing and midsole was a socer density that cushioned the foot. Dunlop’s machine was on order and was cosCng over a million dollars. Our Management team got together and came up with a plan to buy a smaller more versaCle DDPU machine. Robert Debarro was working with Wally Lennon in the Design Department and proved very talented in developing a men’s stylish execuCve safety shoe range.

Rob was given the job of designing two sole designs. One was a tradiConal heeled boot sole and the other was a wedge sports shoe sole. The range was called Comfortwear Ultra and was modern and unlike anything on the market. We also did a jogger-looking safety shoe. One was in blue/silver leather upper with a grey and blue sole and the other was grey/red upper with grey and red sole.

It was a hit and sales took off. Our compeCtors went crazy trying to criCcise the range. They said the wedge sole was dangerous because it didn’t have heel to grip a ladder rung. It didn’t maWer, we were so far in front.

Polyurethane had a melCng point at around 180c and the older nitrite rubber had a melCng point of around 300c. We were working on a separate nitrile rubber outsole that could be moulded to the polyurethane midsole for areas that required higher heat resistance. This was about $5 more a pair so we didn’t know if it would be exceptable as there had already been a price increase from the old solid nitrile sole boots to the new DDPU boots. One day, all hell broke loose. A Safety Officer at the WA Water Authority threw a pair of Ultra boots on a BBQ grill and took a photo as the sole burst into flames. He flashed it all around the country, saying our boots should be banned.

Immediately we went into damage control. Rob Debarro and I did our own experiments and we discovered that while the sole would melt at around 180c it wouldn’t catch fire unless there was a naked flame. Even nitrile would catch on fire with a naked flame. At the end of the day, we quickly developed the nitrile/polyurethane sole and called it NiThane. People who had worn the old heavy, hard nitrile rubber sole now liked the new DDPU lighter more shock absorbent sole and didn’t want to change back. We went to all the companies that wanted to ban DDPU and converted them over to NiThane and picked up even more sales at a higher margin. It was a ‘winner winner chicken dinner’ – all thanks to the BBQ. The WA Government put together an assortment of different local businesses and about 20 of us went to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to invesCgate potenCal markets. We arrived in Port Moresby and

aWended a dinner of local businessmen and government officials. One day we went to a big building site and watch the bricklayers going about their work. I was talking to the Minister for Infrastructure and he said, “I don’t think you will be able to get the locals to wear safety boots – look they all have bare feet”. As we watched, a guy walking bare-footed and carrying several bricks on his shoulder, stood on a plank of wood with a nail sCcking up. Ouch, the plank was then nailed to his foot. He conCnued to walk and the plank kept slapping on the ground with each step. He stopped and lent against a wall and flicked the plank away and kept walking without saying anything. “See what I mean,” said the Minister. We flew to Bougainville Island and went up a mountain to the huge Rio Tinto Panguna Copper Mine. I made three more visits to Bougainville and did a lot of wear trials to prove how good our boots were. Our EEE extra wide last was perfect for the locals’ feet. We were finally awarded the boot contact, then civil war broke out and that was the end of the mine. It amounted to 40% of PNG’s GDP and was a major blow to the economy.

I did several more trips to PNG and we used a Kiwi distributor who arranged for us to fly to Lihir Island to the Newmont Mine in a private Learjet one day. I thought this was so decadent, unCl I got on board and realised it was a cargo plane with only four seats – two for the pilots up front and two for us – behind us was an assortment of live pigs, goats and chickens, all having a party!

We felt that our Ultra range was world-class so Brian and I decided to test the water. Brian booked a small booth at the USA Safety Expo in Orlando. He came back with a number of leads that I had to follow up and then visit. Due to Cme differences most of the correspondence was done via fax and mailing catalogues out. It was difficult and I made several appointments around the country and did a two-week trip to introduce myself and discuss our products. It was hard going just understanding the customs. They spoke English but the comprehension was different. In the end we hooked up with Dan Saylor who owned Titan Footwear. Dan was ‘larger than life’ and portrayed Titan as one of the leading safety shoe companies in the US. He bought some product and Brian and I travelled to the US the following year and exhibited in Chicago at the Safety Show. Dan introduced us to Richard ChaWerton who was the InternaConal Sales Manager for Totectors who were the largest safety boot manufacturer in the UK. We also met Richard’s wife, Barbara, and we all got on well. Dan took us all out one night for dinner to a flash restaurant called The Italian Village. Dan also invited all his salesmen, including his son, Danny Junior. Brian and I had a ball roaming around Chicago at night with Danny Jr. We also exhibited in Singapore and Hong Kong and Richard was also there, exhibiCng the Totector brand. We picked up a distributor called Barry Arnold who was originally from Perth and living in Singapore. Barry was a ‘rough diamond’ so to speak. He was always going to make it big, but never

did. Barry, Brian and I used to have dinner in a hawker kitchen downstairs off Orchard Road acer the exhibiCons. Barry loved to drink big cans of Fosters beer, he called Blue Thunders. Between the three of us we would drink about 20 cans and Barry would build a pyramid of the empCes on the table as the night went on. At the end of the night, he would stagger to his feet and punch the stack of cans so they flew all over the place and announce it was Cme to go home!

I also opened up an agency in New Zealand (NZ) run by John Langan who was Dutch and in his late 60s. I would go to NZ a couple of Cmes a year and we would drive all over both islands selling to several distributors. John lived in the small town of Foxton in the North Island on the lower west coast. We always stayed a night there and his wife would cook an amazing meal for me – once again, building close relaConships with many of the people there as I travelled around.

Things were moving fast. We had an excellent product with many technical advantages over our compeCtors. I took out an adverCsement in the inflight Qantas magazine and it was spoWed by a guy in Japan, who started placing orders for 200 pairs at a Cme. I took the opportunity to visit him in Tokyo on a trip out to the US. Brian and I exhibited in Düsseldorf in the late 1980s at the A+A Safety Show. We were one of about 50 other footwear companies. We had an interpreter to help us. We picked up a distributor called Urli Flisher who sold nurses shoes. Urli was a nice guy and purchased some footwear from us and tried to introduce us to other potenCal distributors around Germany. I made a couple of trips around the country with him. On one trip the new Comfortwear owner came along. I have found that the Germans are very technically minded and I was to give a presentaCon to several execuCves around a big table. The Comfortwear owner sat next to me and fell asleep during my presentaCon and started snoring. As I came to the end of my talk, I nudged him and he sprang back to life and blurted out, “what da ya think of Pete’s chat – he could sell ice to the Eskimos and he can teach you how to do it too”. Funny, I didn’t get an order!

Back home, things were moving at such a fast pace. Brian, Nev, Ross and I were always looking at improving the product. One suggesCon was to mould the innersole board, used in the foot bed of the shoe, to take on more of the shape of the foot. This would be a costly exercise to do in the factory. We persuaded the owner to let the four of us make the innersoles for the company and sell them, to which he agreed. We formed a company called Project Components and rented a small industrial garage off Beaufort Street. We purchased a clicking press and had insole knives made, we also purchased a hydraulic press to mould the innersoles. The manufacturing system

worked by first laying several sheets of insole board on top of each other and then placing the insole knife on top, swinging the clicking press head over the knife and with a ‘thud’ it would punch down and cut out the insoles. Then four cut insoles were put in the lec and right moulded foot contours of the moulding machine and moulded under extreme pressure. Each size was marked with a different coloured chalk line for ease of idenCficaCon at the factory. Half sizes had a cross chalk mark. We employed Rob Debarro to help Nev do the clicking. They would start either on a Friday night or early Saturday morning. Ross and I would go in around 7.00am on a Saturday and do the moulding and chalking. SomeCmes we would bring in our kids, Ebony and Kevin Fitzgerald and Trent and Pippa Nichols. As a reward for helping we would buy them a choc milk and sausage roll for morning tea. It was Brian’s job to do the Project Components invoicing to Comfortwear. We did this for a couple of years and made a bit of pocket money out of it. We had a bit in the bank and it paid for all the families to go to Bali in 1992 for a great holiday together. All the kids got on well and played together. We asked the hotel where we stayed to play the AFL Grand Final which was West Coast Eagles versus Geelong. The first half of the game was a shocker and suddenly a plane-load of Geelong supporters turned up. We slunk back into our chairs but then in the second half, it all turned around. West Coast 16.17 (113) defeated Geelong 12.13 (85).

We went to the markets at Kuta and had T shirts made with ‘West Coast Eagles 1992 Premiers’.

Once a month, Brian, Nev, Ross, Rob and I would meet for a breakfast at Horse Feathers in the city to discuss plans to start our own business. Back when Dad and the other partners said they were going to sell, we approached them, with the hope they would sell to us, but we couldn’t raise the capital. Through our distributor in Hong Kong, we met up with a Dutch guy who was markeCng a range of assorted Personal ProtecCve Equipment (PPE) under the name of Unisafe. Acer a trade show in Singapore, I took a couple of days off, and with funds from Project Components I flew to Hong Kong to meet with the PPE group. They had an extensive range of products and were looking for a company to distribute it naConally in Australia and compete against Protector. They sent us samples and we started to work on a business plan.

A new acquaintance of ours was Colin Jorgensen who worked for Uvex Safety. Col is one of the most amicable people you could ever hope to meet. He lived close to me and I showed him the PPE range and he was impressed and said he would also like to get involved if it got off the ground.

Unfortunately, it didn’t eventuate because the whole Unisafe company was sold to a big European company, so we all conCnued to look around. Col started up his own PPE supply company called Range Industrial and became a Comfortwear distributor.

In 1991, we designed an elasCc-sided boot that had a steel plate guard over the instep of the foot.

It was called a metatarsal boot and through Dan Saylor in the USA we got a contract with the huge Harley-Davidson motorcycle company in Illinois. This was quite an accomplishment and looked good for the future. At this Cme, we also came across a unique product that we through would revoluConise the safety footwear industry. It was shown to us by a good friend and supplier, George Raymond, from Mondopoint in Melbourne. It was an air bag system that could be moulded in the PU midsole of the shoe. It was like the very popular Nike Air. In fact, it was the Nike Air system but we couldn’t use the impervious gas they used due to the patent licence. This device could only use normal air, which could slowly leak out, but we thought ‘what the hell, this is gold’.

Rob Debarro was very excited about this and designed some very cool up-to-the-minute looking footwear. We called the range Ultra Direct Air and it went ballisCc. It was very expensive by comparison to what was currently available on the market but we did such a good markeCng pitch, it took off. It also demonstrated to us that some people were looking for more comfortable safety shoes and boots and price wasn’t the only consideraCon. Comfort was becoming a key sales point.

During this Cme, we were also building a good relaConship with Totectors in the UK and Richard ChaWerton invited me to co-exhibit with them in London at a trade show. We were looking at doing a product swap between Titan in the USA, Totectors in the UK and us in Australia. Titan had a range of cowboy and military boots I thought we could sell and Totectors had a nice range of fashionable ladies’ steel toe safety shoes that suited us. We would supply Titan and Totectors our Ultra Direct Air range. Between the three companies we could become a global force. On a trip to a trade show in Las Vegas, I met two brothers who had invented a super shock absorbent rubber material. They were selling it as insoles to go in work shoes to cushion people’s feet whilst standing all day. It was called Implus. They gave me some samples to bring back to Perth. Whilst the Ultra Direct Air was doing good business it also had problems in that it lost air pressure and therefore didn’t retain its shock absorbency for long. Another problem was that due to the patent, the valve had to be exposed under the sole. It was very similar to the type of valve used in football bladders.

As a gimmick we had liWle pen size pumps that could be used to pump up the air bladder and it had a pressure gauge to determine the pressure. Of course, there were always people that thought they could pump them up quickly using compressed air. Bang!! Quite a few exploded.

I had an idea that we could pack the heel area of the shoe with Implus and it would deaden the shock to the body. Implus had a great video showing an egg being dropped from a second storey building onto a piece of Implus, a few cenCmetres thick, and not breaking. Implus actually absorbed shock! It could reduce shock to the knees, hips, lower back and therefore increase

comfort all day long. But we needed to find out if it could tolerate the heat and pressure from the polyurethane sole mould injecCon. Comfortwear’s owner was becoming quite erraCc in his behaviour and wanted to become more involved in the business, which, of course, he was enCtled to do. His wife, who I hadn’t met, apparently would come into the office on Saturday mornings and go through my desk and files, according to one of my sales clerks who worked Saturday mornings. Brian and I were very meCculous when we did cosCngs and pricings for contracts. I had been working on a large 12month contract and if it was acceptable to the client they would roll it over and not go out to tender. She came in on a Saturday morning and wrote all over the tender pages in red pen, “too cheap, add $5 to every item”. Another Cme, Brian and I had done all the new cosCngs and the new customer price list was being prepared. These were printed in our office and each price list was about five pages per customer – we had over several hundred customers. Brian was interstate on a business trip and I was helping the office staff to collate and staple the pages together when the owner came up and said, “throw them all out and reprint them and add $2 to every item”. This would have made us totally uncompeCCve and have dire consequences for the business. I tried to plead with him and had to phone Brian to try and get him to see reason, which he eventually did.

Comfortwear’s Head Engineer, Jim Dandie, was doing his best to get onside with the new owner and told him that the company could do a beWer job at moulding the insoles than Project Components. So Comfortwear stopped buying insoles off us and we closed our liWle business down. We sold off the Project Component machinery and that was the end of that. Rob lec and went to Sydney and got a job with Dunlops. I had been contacted by an employment agency to apply for the Sales and MarkeCng Manager’s job at Dunlop. I did a couple of phone interviews and they knew my track record but gave the job to one of their internal staff. Dunlops closed down a few years later. The new Dunlop Sales Manager came up with what they through was a brilliant idea, to buy cheap safety boots for Protector from India called ‘Bluey’s’. Their plan was to wipe out the likes of Comfortwear. Dunlop would be the premium brand and Bluey’s would be the budget brand. Unfortunately what it did instead was take sales and producCon off the Dunlop factory, which eventually closed down. Bluey’s turned out to be terribly uncomfortable and badly made and the Dunlop safety boot brand disappeared from Australia. That guy eventually became a small distributor for Steel Blue in Wollongong.

Dad, John and Fred only sold the Comfortwear business to the new owner. They didn’t sell him the Northbridge factory, which they rented back to him. The owner decided he want a newer more

presentable factory and showroom. Plans were drawn up to relocate to a new factory at 5 O’Malley Street, Osborne Park. This was a conflict for me. I told Dad that the company was going to shic but Dad said the owner insisted he wanted to negoCate a new lease, but was stalling. In the end, Comfortwear moved. The engineers came in and stripped everything form the old factory.

They guWed it and took everything including every single light bulb. The factory sat idle for a few years and was eventually sold to an investment company for around a million dollars and turned into sixteen fashionable town houses that sold for a million each. The old factory facade was retained and is sCll there, heritage listed.

The owner came on a couple of trips with me to Germany, the UK and Dubai. He would sit in on my meeCngs with customers, fall asleep or contradict me or beliWle me and then chasCse me for not geqng an order. Due to the popularity of the brand, our lead-Cmes were extending. The owner didn’t always pay the bills on Cme so raw materials were held up. We were making an excellent profit but it was being syphoned off for other projects. It was very frustraCng. The phones were running hot with cranky customers chasing their orders. Back orders were lingering out to months.

The owner and I were in London when he said to me, “when we get back I want you to sack Nev and you can run the producCon and sort out the mess”. I said, “let’s worry about that when we get back”. We had a stopover in Kuala Lumpur where he must have phoned the office in Perth. I was in my hotel room when he phoned and screamed at me saying, “when we get back to Perth I want you to sack Brian and take over”. First thing I did when I got back in the office was get Brian, Nev, and Ross together and tell them what had happened and that I was fed up working there. Nev said, “while you were away, we moulded a pair of boots using that Implus material you brought back – and it worked! – and by the way I have handed in my noCce and I am going to work at Parkinson & Mann”. Parkinson & Mann was one of Comfortwear’s raw material suppliers.

A few weeks later Brian announced his resignaCon and became the General Manager at Clipsal. I resigned a few weeks later and gave four weeks’ noCce and went to work at a small PPE supplier. I used to phone Dan Saylor in the US around 10.00 at night because of the Cme difference. I called Dan and told him I was leaving and had given four weeks’ noCce. During the four weeks I would do a proper handover to whoever was going to take over and make sure it was a seamless transiCon. Dan was concerned about the quality of the footwear he was ordering from Comfortwear and asked if I could go into the factory and inspect each order of footwear before they were shipped. I said, “no problem, but you will need to talk to the owner about that, and confirm it was ok”. So we hung up so he could call the owner. The owner phone me around 11.00pm, screaming down the phone that I was sacked immediately and to drop the keys and my company car off Monday

morning. Ross called me first thing Monday and said, “what’s happened? The owner is furious with you. He is not going to pay any of your super, holiday pay, or your credit card which totalled several thousand dollars” (we weren’t given company credit cards so we had to use our own). I used to do my expense account and submit it to the accountant, Mr John PickeW, and he would pay it directly into my bank account. I had a call the week before from the bank to say my credit card was overdue and I was going to sort it out on Monday. I would always get into the office around 7.30am and, on this day, I decided to would wait unCl 9.00am when I knew the owner would get into the office and I could confront him. I called John PickeW and asked about my money and credit card and he said he was told not to give me anything. At 9.00am I walked into the recepCon area and there was a temp recepConist, who didn’t know me. I said, “hi, is the boss in, I have an important message for him”. “Sure,” the girl said, “he is in that office”. I walked in and he almost died. The conversaCon went like this: “Oh, oh Pete, good to see you, aah, how are you?” I said, “I am fine, apparently there is a problem with my remuneraCon payout”. “No no, it’s all being sorted out, I will tell John to write out a cheque for you right now. I know you're not starCng your new job for a couple of weeks, so keep the company car unCl you get your new one if you like. No worries, you have done a great job for the company over the years”. The guy was all bluster and blunder over the phone, but face-to-face he was as shallow as a puddle. He let me go and say goodbye to the staff. It was heartbreaking, this had been my life since as long as I could remember. I had worked there for nearly 25 years and been a big part of its growth in later years. We had shaped it from a very humble shoe factory into one of the leading safety footwear companies in Australia.

Ross resigned several months later. Dad, John and Fred were very conservaCve men and their main priority was to protect the livelihoods of everyone working at Comfortwear. They paid themselves very modest salaries, and never over-extended their financial capabiliCes. It was steady as she goes. The company was turning over around three and half million dollars a year when they sold it in 1987. Brian, Nev, Ross and I increased the turnover to about fourteen million dollars by 1993. I lec and never looked back.

Greg Johnson phoned me a few months later and said the old company is in lots of trouble and you guys should get back together and start up a new safety footwear business. I told him that I had found this amazing shock absorbent material called Implus and that Brian, Ross, Nev, Colin and I were developing a business plan. We were finding it hard to raise the capital so were looking for addiConal partners and shareholder. I also told him that Dad and John Worth were keen, and invited Greg to come along to a meeCng and put his ‘two bobs’ worth in? He agreed and we started meeCng at Colin’s business premises in Bayswater. Peter Carter and Don Holmes also

joined the team and in 1995 we opened Steel Blue. Dad was the company’s first Board Chair unCl he reCred due to health reasons around 1999.

Around 2004, Comfortwear went into receivership. Turnover had slumped to around two and a half million dollars and closed down. It was a sad day for many to see such a long established and once successful West Australian manufacturing business disappear.

So that’s where the Comfortwear story ended, just shy of 100 years and that’s when the new and exciCng chapter of Steel Blue really took off. In the eBook, is the story of the first 25 years of Steel Blue and an old promoConal video we did on Comfortwear in the late 1980s.

Post script I am a very opCmisCc and posiCve person and a believer that desCny and fate are somehow combined. Mum and Dad weren’t able to have children – they were the ‘salt of the earth’ types, always helping others. They adopted me and my brother and brought us up as their own flesh and blood. Was that luck or what? Of all the kids in the world, they picked me. I wasn’t the brightest kid at school, in fact I was always in the boWom classes. I had difficulCes at school and was a dreamer. I used to frustrate Dad with my lack of reading and wriWen comprehension. He discussed this with his then boss, John Gundry, whose son, Rodney, was dyslexic. Mum took me to get tested at the EducaCon Department when I was about 10 and it was confirmed I was dyslexic. Once again as luck would have it, I managed to get into a remedial reading and english class at North Inglewood Primary School for Year 6 and part of Year 7, just a few blocks away from home. Apart from my reading problem I also spoke poorly – a bit like Eliza DooliWle in the beginning of My Fair Lady, so they sent me to elocuCon lessons to learn how to speak beWer and be more arCculate. I started to thrive, I had confidence and started to read anything I could get hold of – history, poetry and the current affairs news. I remember walking in on Mum and Dad when I was about 15. Mum was quite upset and Dad was trying to calm her. I went outside but kept listening. Apparently, someone had said to Mum, “have you put Peter’s name down at the local shire work depo? He could get a job as a rubbish collector or filling potholes on the road gang because he is never going to amount to much”. Well, that has stayed with me all my life and pushed me to succeed.

My pocket money jobs in the factory also taught me many things and made me realise how lucky I was. I got the odd clip around the ear from the foremen, who liked to teach the boss’s son a thing or too, in case he got too big for his boots. My seven years at OPSM also taught me a great deal of

things and slowly matured me. I started to develop my idenCty and selling skills there. Then I started my real job at Comfortwear on the kachoonk-a-machine. “Start at the boWom and work your way to the top, Sonny Jim”, said John Worth. Luck, fate, desCny – call it what you like – when the stars line up its a magical experience. I owe everything to my parents but I also owe a great deal to John, Fred, Brian, Ross, Nev, Colin and Greg, who added to the drive and determinaCon to go one step further.

Dad once said to me, “none of us are born world beaters but together we can show the world our collecCve ability to succeed”.

Comfortwear Archive Letters The letters contained here in this Ebook date back Letters nearly 100Comfortwear years and were Archive kept by my father Allan Nichols. I have scanned them and include them in chronological date order, so it is possible to follow some of the historical events of the company. I have also found a few old photos and press articles from later years, that also help paint the story of Comfortwear Footwear Pty Ltd and some of the people involved.

Astra-Naut sandals

Fred Marston

Vic Daniels

Comfortwear Social Club

Fred & Margaret Marston

Helen Worth

Peg Nichols

John Worth

Mark Scates

Mark Flentar Jim Witherige

Allan Nichols & John Prickett

Red Cross Blood Donation

Showroom 274 Newcastle Street

Colin Bangs

Colin Bangs & Allan Nichols

Leather Soled Riding Boots

PVC Soled Pony Boots

Social Club

Dave & Sylvia Trigg

Ainsley Aston, Helen Worth, Peg Nichols

Office 127 Lake Street

5 O’Mallet Street, Osbourne Park

Peter Mackwell

A+A Dusseldorf Peter Nichols

Brian Piggott

Harry Butler

Comfortwear Reunion 2000

Peter Nichols

Joan Prickett

Allan Nichols

Peg Nichols

Margret Potter, Keith Stuart, John Prickett, Jim Withige

274 Newcastle Street

Anna Traganopulos

Cal Edwads

Eyelet Machine (Karchoonk-A-Machine)

Jim Dandie

Brian Abrahams

Charlie Redgwell

Peter Waterson

Vulcanising Room

Bruce Hodge & Mark Flentjar

Wally Lennon

Allan Nichols on his boat “Apricus” with the Engineers

75th Anniversary of Comfortwear Pty Ltd 1985 Back Row: Colin Bangs, Mark Flentjar, Kevin Westley, Peter Waterson, Mark Scates, Robert Debarro, Mike Leigh, Colin Judge, Anza Shirazee,

Paul Stevenson, Kevin Saunders, Dessi Cooper, Peter Mackwell, Allan Hutchings, Keith Stuart, Graeme Nichols, Nevil Hardy-Johnson,

John Prickett, Greg Blair, John Bonola, Gordon Nunn, Sammy Cacciola, Neil Barry, Tindara Cacciola, Ross Fitzgerald.

Third Row: John Worth, T.L.Nguyen, Loan Tang, Maria Constantine, Win Hodgkinson, Maria Geronimos, Maria Locastro, Charlie Redgwell, G Furina, Wally Lennon, Vic Daniels, Cal Edwards, Allan Nichols, Norm Hastie, Henry Lennon, Jeff Haskins, Shane Campbell, Jim Witherige, S. Risleley,

K Wykes, M. Sutheran-Lott, V. Mannion, A. Ottobrino, Peter Nichols, Fred L Marston, Brian Piggott.

Second Row: Vera Vasilevska, Millie Bruce, Anna Traganopulos, B Lurkiewicz, Mark Weber, M Austin, Angie Nicolaou, R Tutungis, Gina Dimanopoulos, Alex Gotsis, E Toutountzis, Lyn Nunn, Jannelle Marshall, L. Pandervska, A Edwards, Kathy Norac, Ainsley Ashton, Terri Brunton,

S King, J Kay, A James, Michelle Cross, Sandie Clarke, Kathy Gaynor.

Front Row: Phillip Christianopoulos, Ian Hynd, Pauline Bangs, Sonya Wilkins, T Smith, Cheryl Potter, S Cowl, Brian Adrahams, Conrad Durham, Michael Nicolaou, Jeff Bell, Jim Dandie.

The Comfortwear Story

Steel Blue Founders Edition

The Founders Edition

Built for comfort, made for work.

Foreward In our 25 year journey, Steel Blue has grown from a start-up to a household name in Australia and more recently, a global brand. The Steel Blue brand is synonymous as a leader in comfort, innovation, foot health, community engagement and sustainability.

Our FORWARD values and focus on company culture are continually recognised as the benchmark by our external stakeholders, giving us a strong competitive edge and advantage globally.

Steel Blue’s success today is built on the solid foundations set by our Executive Founders - Brian Piggott, Ross Fitzgerald, Peter Nichols, Nev Hurring and Colin Jorgensen. Valuing our history and early struggles continue to drive the Steel Blue Team worldwide and makes us what we are today.

To commemorate the Steel Blue journey and 25 year milestone, I am delighted to share some of the stories from our Executive Founders, who overcame adversities and challenges to achieve their goal; to make the world’s most comfortable work boots.

Garry Johnson Chief Executive Officer

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www.steelblue.com

Built for comfort, made for work.

Defining a New Market Our journey began in 1994 when five men in Perth with a passion for footwear and over 100 years of combined experience realised a gap in the Australian market was being overlooked – premium work boots that were not only durable but also highly comfortable.

Steel Blue Founding Directors Brian Piggott, Colin Jorgenson, Nev Hurring, Peter Nichols and Ross Fitzgerald met through a well-known footwear company. Brian, Nev, Peter and Ross all worked directly for the company, whereas Colin was a distributor. Considered quite a strong, dynamic team in the industry, their complementary skillsets meant they were stronger than the sum of their parts – Brian in finances and strategy, Colin and Peter in sales and marketing, Nev in manufacturing and quality, and Ross in sales and distribution.

Founding Directors: Brian Piggott | Ross Fitzgerald | Peter Nichols | Nev Hurring | Bluey (Honorary Director) Not pictured: Colin Jorgenson

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www.steelblue.com

Built for comfort, made for work.

Creating Trisole® Comfort Technology Workers in key industries such as mining, construction and production were often on their feet for 10–12 hours a day without adequate foot care, which led to foot, leg and back problems. Health and safety was also an increasing focus for employers. At the time, the footwear industry relied on dual density and the industry had stagnated, with little innovation happening – definitely earning the saying “as tough as old boots”.

Brian, Colin, Nev, Peter and Ross knew they could do better. They set to work designing a comfortable work boot with the best leather, comfortable lining, and added cushioning.

A lot of market research was done, such as using world-leading footwear research organisation SATRA’s special system to map the high impact areas of the foot – the heel and forepart. The design evolved, trialling different ways of building the shoe to maximise comfort.

Then during a trip to a tradeshow in the US, they discovered new shock-absorbing technology called ‘Implus’ that you could bounce an egg on without cracking it – and Steel Blue’s patented Trisole® Comfort Technology was born. Implus was later superseded by PORON®, which is still used in our highly comfortable work boots and has since become an industry standard.

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Built for comfort, made for work.

Persevering Past Various Obstacles After months of business planning and product development, the new chapter began at 7:30am on 1 August 1995 in a modest factory they’d equipped in Bassendean. Brian, Colin, Nev, Peter and Ross took their first official step forward and Steel Blue became a reality. However, it wasn’t all a walk in the park…

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Built for comfort, made for work.

Financial Struggles The Founding Directors needed $2 million of capital in order to start the business – equivalent to about $8 million today. They re-mortgaged houses to each contribute $100,000 while also securing further investment from Allan Nichols (Peter’s father, who also offered his garage for most of the planning phase, whilst Peg, his mother, supplied the pikelets to keep the Founding Directos energised), John Worth (Ross and Brian’s father-in-law), Greg Johnson (a fellow distributor for the previous footwear company), Peter Carter and Don Holmes (both footy mates of Ross). Another $1 million dollars was secured through a bank loan, which was difficult to get as a start-up.

The five Founders formed a Board with Allan, John, Peter Carter and Don, meeting regularly to steer the new business. Unfortunately, the first year was more challenging than expected and further funding was needed to stay afloat – at a time when money was already especially tight.

“It was a really stressful time in those first few years. We were all really stretched financially and five strong individuals starting a business together meant lots of robust discussions. We knew we were onto a good thing though. Everyone said that we’d created the comfort of a sports shoe in a safety boot!” – Colin

What’s in a Name There was even an issue with our original name, ‘Steel Dingo’, which was a nod to Australia’s native dog and the robustness of our shoes. It had been selected amidst other contenders such as ‘Pinnacle’, ‘Delta’ and ‘Austek’ to reflect the essential elements of innovation, high quality, comfort and being proudly Australian.

At the end of 1995 the Founders received a cease and desist letter from the lawyer of a clothing store in Sydney with the same name that supplied the Mardi Gras.

To avoid a lengthy legal conflict, a roundtable was quickly convened to consider other names. The winner was ‘Steel Blue’ – capturing the ‘true blue’ Aussie spirit while also retaining the dog theme through the iconic Blue Heeler. Over the years, the logo has evolved to more closely resemble the features of the Blue Heeler.

And the rest, as they say, is history! Nowadays Steel Blue is a household name – just like our Founding Directors envisaged.

First Logo

90’s - Early 2000’s

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Current Logo

Built for comfort, made for work.

Establishing Our 100% Comfort Guarantee At $120, Steel Blue work boots were 50% more expensive than most of our competitors. It was an uphill battle to get people to understand their value. Plus, Australia was in the midst of a recession – the worst since the Great Depression!

“I remember showing one of the distributors our prototype and spiel, only to have him laugh in my face on his way out the door, saying our boots were too expensive and we wouldn’t sell a single pair. Challenge accepted!

He was a friend of a friend, so I had a lot of fun over the years giving him updates on how many boots we were selling. I should thank him for motivating us!” – Ross Brian, Colin, Nev, Peter and Ross knew that people would love the boots if only they’d try them. Steel Blue had been doing wear trials since the beginning… but how would they break into this long-established market?

The answer came about when leading business consultant Mal Emery was engaged in 1997 for a half-day workshop retreat in Dwellingup. He asked the group: “You keep talking about comfort being your biggest point of difference – why don’t you do a comfort guarantee?” This was incredibly daunting – and they feared going broke! – but the Founding Directors realised that this was their opportunity to provide a low-risk entry point for consumers while also gaining invaluable feedback along the way.

It was a pivotal moment for Steel Blue. True to their nature, the Founders weren’t just talking the talk but actually walking the walk!

One of our first distributors, Work Clobber, loved Steel Blue’s 100% Comfort Guarantee, and really pushed it. Allan Mcauseland, who owned Comfort Products in Osborne Park, started taking out a half-page ad in the Sunday Times every week with the slogan “Walk to work and jog home”. As a result, sales started climbing.

“We started getting letters from people telling us what a difference Steel Blue boots were making to their lives. One truck driver from Queensland told us he’d had quite serious back pain. After 3 months of wearing Steel Blue boots, he wasn’t in pain anymore. It was such great feedback.” – Brian Previous Comfort Stamp

Current Comfort Stamp 7

www.steelblue.com

Built for comfort, made for work.

Turning Things Around with Boots on the Ground While Steel Blue was accepted in WA quite quickly, there was a lot of initial rejection from mining companies that were used to only paying $50 for work boots.

For the first couple of years Ross and Colin would have spent 90–100 nights annually in hotels, travelling between the Pilbara, Goldfields, South-west and the mining areas of Queensland and Papua New Guinea.

Sometimes they stayed at friend’s houses or even in swags in Karijini National Park to reduce costs.

With brochures and cutaway boots that showcased the Trisole® Comfort Technology in hand, Ross and Colin presented at tradeshows and on mine sites. They weren’t just selling boots, they were selling productivity – that Steel Blue boots would reduce lost time due to injuries and fatigue.

The key was impressing the mining companies so they demanded that the distributors stocked Steel Blue, or getting the unions and safety officers behind the need to have the boots for the workers’ health and safety. It was a lot of knocking on doors, but it was worth it. Eventually Steel Blue boots were a staple on the sites of Worsley Alumina, BHP, Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Woodside.

Establishing the Eastern States In 1997, Peter made a big sacrifice by moving to Sydney to try and stimulate sales in the east coast. It wasn’t easy and he stayed in a caravan that absorbed the humid days and the cold nights. He also spent a lot of time on the road going between Melbourne, Sydney and rural towns.

Peter would even go and work in the distributors’ businesses one day a week to show their salespeople his techniques. He built up such a good relationship with our network of east coast distributors that they regularly invited him around for Sunday roasts, barbecues and birthdays.

“I remember seeing the safety officer at the Arnott’s factory. He found safety boots so uncomfortable that he didn’t even wear them himself, but the 500–600 other workers had to.

On a Thursday, I gave him a pair of Steel Blue boots to wear. By Monday he’d called me to tell me that they were so comfy he’d worn them dancing Peter Nichols | Steve Edwards - SM NSW, ACT & NT | on the weekend and he wanted another Michael Rennison - SM VIC & TAS | Matt Anderson - TM NSW pair!” – Peter 8

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Built for comfort, made for work.

Creating a Positive, Loyal Work Culture From the beginning, it was important to our five Founding Directors that Steel Blue be different, creating a friendly work environment and truly valuing our staff, distributors and ambassadors. Together, the Steel Blue team has always celebrated our achievements, held regular social events and honoured long-serving team members through our Steel Blue Legends Board. We also still deliver cakes and morning teas to our distributors for their birthdays!

Over the years our ambassadors have included West Coast Eagles AFL player Glen Jakovich (since 1997) and Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee (since 2003), among many others.

“We’ve had a lot of achievements over the years, but nothing compares to seeing factory workers I employed 20–25 years ago coming up the ranks. For example, Dwayne Sewell, our Head of Manufacturing, Colin Sternberg, our Quality Assurance Manager, and Dave Mackwell, our Manufacturing Operator.

Eagles player Glen Jakovich, our first ambassador, has also been with us for over 20 years and is on our Steel Blue Legends Board.” – Nev

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Built for comfort, made for work.

Stepping Forward with Compassion After years of supporting local sports and community organisations, Steel Blue developed a special range of Pink, Purple and Blue Boots with a very special purpose.

It all started in 2006 when the Executive Directors and Board travelled eastward to represent WA as the state winner in the National Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Alas, it was not meant to be.

While commiserating with each other post event, they were joined by Ros Worthington, Founder and Patron of Breast Cancer Care WA (BCCWA).

It was here that Ros asked if it would be possible to make Purple Boots to raise funds and awareness for BCCWA. As genuine entrepreneurs – and a prime example of why they should have won the award – the Executive Directors and Board answered with an empathetic and enthusiastic “Yes!”. Later our Pink Boots were added to our BCCWA range, with both styles being specially designed for women’s feet.

The success of this initiative led to Steel Blue developing our Blue Boot range for Beyond Blue. The funds raised have helped over 5,000 Australians connect with the 24/7 Beyond Blue Support Service.

To date, over $1.4 million has been raised for BCCWA and over $250,000 for Beyond Blue through our Pink, Purple and Blue Boot ranges.

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Built for comfort, made for work.

Continuously Innovating & Achieving In establishing Steel Blue, the Founders raised the bar on quality and comfort in safety boots. In 2003, the hard work of our Founding Directors and Board paid off when Steel Blue was named both Telstra’s WA Small Business of the Year and Telstra’s Australian Small Business of the Year, beating approximately 4,500 businesses nationally. Many more awards and achievements have followed over our 25 years.

Continuously striving to innovate and improve, we’ve become Australia’s leading safety footwear brand – a fantastic legacy.

The World’s Most Comfortable Boots In 2004, SATRA named the Steel Blue Argyle® model the World’s Most Comfortable Boots. At the time, the best performing safety boot had a rating of 57, with an average of 42. Ours rated at 75 – the highest score at the time by far. SATRA rigorously tested our Argyle® boots multiple times before they’d believe the results!

Our Founding Directors started to promote this monumental achievement, creating a brochure that detailed the results, the types of extensive shock absorption and rebound testing SATRA used, and a diagram of our advanced Trisole® Comfort Technology.

However, SATRA wrote to Steel Blue saying that we couldn’t keep marketing ourselves as the World’s Most Comfortable Boots in case a competitor performed better (they never have). Instead, we started promoting our aim to make the world’s most comfortable safety boot, which led to today’s tagline of “Built for comfort, made for work”.

Built for comfort, made for work.

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Built for comfort, made for work.

Still Proudly Australian Owned and Going Strong From humble beginnings in 1995 as pioneers in the footwear industry to becoming Australia’s leading manufacturer of safety boots, our Founding Directors lived up to their vision for Steel Blue – and we’re still proudly Australian owned.

In their 1999 Strategic Plan, the goal of the Founding Directors was to make 285 boots per day. Steel Blue now makes over 4,000 boots per day!

From 1996 Steel Blue started exporting and our premium footwear is currently being enjoyed by people across New Zealand, Europe, the US, Papua New Guinea, South-East Asia, West Africa, the Middle East, Trinidad and Tobago. In 2002 we outgrew our original Bassendean factory and moved to our purpose-built head office and factory in Malaga.

These days, Ross is our Chief Sales Officer and serves on our Board alongside Brian and Nev, while Peter and Colin are passionate shareholders. What is their vision for the future? To become the world’s leading manufacturer of safety boots of course! And we’re well on our way.

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www.steelblue.com

Built for comfort, made for work.

Current Board

Nev Hurring Director | Neil Hackett Company Secretary | Brian Piggott Director | Peter Carter Director | Ross Fitzgerald Director | Don Holmes Chairman | Greg Johnson Director

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www.steelblue.com

Built for comfort, made for work.

Winners of the Western Australian Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Introduced 30-Day money back Guarantee

Established Steel Blue

1995

1996

1997

1

2

Polyurethane footbed.

6

Support shank.

8

Lightweight shock absorbing PU (Polyurethane) midsole.

1995 2003

19962006

Commenced in New Zealand

Trisole® Comfort Technology patent registered

4

Winners of the 2003 Telstra Australian Small Business of the Year Award

Quality, water resistant leather upper and high quality internal linings.

Choice of a Steel, NonMetallic or Non-Safety toe cap with edge protector.

3

Footbed top cover using abrasion resistant high wicking material.

5

Flexible anti-microbial insole with flex perforations to the forepart.

7

Energy absorbing anti-bacterial PORON® Permafresh inserts.

9

Strong, long-wearing Thermoplastic Urethane or heat resistant Nitrile Rubber outsole.

Signing of legendary Australian cricket fast Bowler, Dennis Lillee, in 2003 as our brand ambassador

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www.steelblue.com

1997

2003

Built for comfort, made for work.

Winners of the Australian Export Awards

Partnership with Beyond Blue via blue boot program

Established Modern Slavery policies

(Men’s mental health charity)

2007

2014

2015

Partnership with Breast Cancer Care WA and the Purple Boot program

2018

Received the independent FDRA Responsible Factory Accreditation EMEA

Established Steel Blue North America and Steel Blue EMEA

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2019 Launched our CSR Strategy In Our Stride

Steel Blue Head Office: 18 Irvine Drive, Malaga WA 60690 Europe: Witte Vrouwen 15, 1358 CD Almere NL US: 13028 Garrett Road, Houston, TX 77044, USA © Copyright 2021 Footwear Industries Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. January 2021.

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