Ask the Expert - Advice from a Real Shoe Dog!

However, I believe that now is a good time to make an exception and highlight a couple of our kids’ footwear styles.

Recently, there was an inspiring report on one of the national news stations regarding something being done special for kids in certain hospitals.

One of the heads of this camp had a reputation of being a great wrestling coach. While he may have been great for the more experienced wrestlers, he was not a good fit for me. He liked to call me out in front of the class to see how I was grasping new moves. I did not do well as I was overwhelmed and dreaded every day of that camp.

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I really feel for Jack’s character at times as you see him work so hard to try to atone for his past mistakes while trying to win over Helen Hunt’s character; and then with one quick slip-up he has to try to work his way out of trouble again. However, he is the cause of most of his own troubles.

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One of them was getting to see one of my favorite movies with Richard Dreyfus - Mr. Holland’s Opus.

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In the Forward of the book there is a sentence that really hits home with me, “If the traveler expects the highway to be safe and well graded, he might as well stay home.”

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As I believe is likely for almost everybody at times, this past year has provided some road bumps in my way. I do not like them; but try to handle them the best I can because I do not see any better options.

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I like how Travolta’s character, George Malley, struggles with dealing with telekinetic and other special powers he somehow attained that he felt did not belong to him, but to someone who was much smarter than he.

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However, there are other important aspects not to be overlooked regarding them. One key additional factor is style. We realize that our customers want to be safe and comfortable, but also want to look good.

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While a shoe may be right for me, it may not be the right shoe for you because of possible differences in the type of work we may do or our own personal needs/wants, but there are certain shoes that appear as stronger candidates than others.

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When I attend meetings along those lines, it serves as a reminder to me how much talent and work goes into new products. Our developers and designers can be so busy behind the scenes that the extent of their roles may be overlooked at times.

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My classmate was to be the host reading the answers and it was to my job to be each of the three contestants providing the questions to those answers. For those of you that may not be familiar with Jeopardy, the contestants’ answers must be in the form of the question.

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Seeing that my brother was performing and my parents were sitting with parents of other band members, I was able to sit with the younger brother of one of the band members at a separate table. We thought we were pretty cool at our own table.

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Two in particular were so good about keeping our group active and together that they literally carried me out the den in my parent’s house basement when they felt I was laying too low and not out with the group enough. I appreciated it later.

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While the holiday shopping season is well under way, we have recently been able to add two new styles from Avenger to our Lehigh Outfitters web site. We originally did not anticipate them being available until 2012, so you could almost say it’s a Christmas Miracle of sorts!

One day I actually went overboard as I went too far backwards and hit my head on the corner of a piece of furniture. We only had one car in our family at that time and my father was off to work in it. This left my mother to take care of my wound at home which she did.

While there were a number of great football highlights shown during the course of this show that I enjoyed, the part of the show that had the greatest impact on me was when they were interviewing Herschel’s son about his father afterwards.

Plus, I did not know the first thing about shoes. However, the company thankfully took a chance on me with the hope that I could learn well over time.

When I still had not been on the job for very long and still did not know too much about shoes, the company found a task that they thought was right up my alley.

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We have recently added the Pro-Step brand in a grouping of styles geared for men and women. All of these styles share the following features :

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You can see steel toe as well as soft (non-protective) toe versions of them on our web site at this time. There are 6” lace-up, 8” lace-up, as well as 10” pull-on boots in both categories.

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While you can see a good general grouping of options by typing Made in the USA in the Search box of our web site, there have recently been some newer additions that we really want to highlight to your attention.

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I remember working real hard on the arm motions, while not letting my feet stop contacting the bottom. I am thinking that it may have been somewhat entertaining, but also a bit frustrating for my mother to watch me try to work through this.

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For you decision makers, we have recently added 3 new products on our website in Timberland PRO dress/casual styles.

Durango has taken steps to improve this selection by adding three good looking Composite Toe Western boots to its offering. They are now displaying on Lehigh Outfitters.com.

Anyone who has read some of my past blog posts, probably has caught on that I am a huge fan of our Georgia Boot FLXpoint footwear.

One newer boot that you could possibly check is our Georgia Boot Steel Toe Waterproof Muddog Wellington boot stock # G5594. It shares many of the same properties of the current Georgia Boot Basic Muddog Wellington boot stock # G5655 except it is waterproof and has an upgraded comfort-oriented outsole.

These Nautilus protective toe locut athletic styles are men’s stock #’s N1710 & N1711 as well as women’s stock #’s N1750 & N1751 and they have only been displaying on our web site for a short time.

Our parent company Rocky Brands just held a fun-filled picnic honoring Mike for both his dedication to the footwear industry and his priority to support the local community through various key contributions. The legacy of the Brooks Family as a whole is great leadership and dedication exhibited by the long range planning of our business and products.....more

Jason is a person who puts his heart and soul into his job. It is difficult for me to imagine Jason not being here working with us, but his wife has found an excellent employment opportunity outside of our area that has led them to decide it is in their best overall interests to move at this time.

In case you are not familiar with him, the Dos Equis man is the self proclaimed most interesting man in the world. In his commercials for Dose Equis beer he indicates that he rarely drinks beer, but when he does he prefers Dos Equis.

In this blog post, we want to focus on restaurants and particularly on chefs. July is National Culinary Arts Month and it is time to show appreciation to the chefs and kitchen workers.

Our black Merrell slip-resistant clog and side gore slip-on styles have been well received for various hospitality applications seeking slip resistance in a high quality black uniform shoe.

I have always been a big fan of the Dos Equis commercials that feature the self proclaimed most interesting man in the world. He is so cool, so diverse in his talents, and basically so not me.

The Dos Equis man tells us about himself including that he rarely drinks beer, but when he does he prefers to drink Dos Equis.

According to the NSC, “Falls are one of the leading causes of unintentional injuries in the United States, accounting for nearly 8.6 million visits to emergency departments (Injury Facts, 2011). While there are different reasons for why a fall may occur, wearing slip-resistant footwear is one way to minimize the chances of it happening.

Of course, we believe we are already nice to each other, but we can always strive to do better in our interactions with our customers and fellow co-workers.

While there were many Pirates players of which I was a big fan, including Matty Alou and Willie Stargell among others, my favorite player was Roberto Clemente.

However, I am by no means the sole contributor to our blog posts – it is truly a team effort. We have people who supply the accompanying images and others who add or alter the headlines of the articles to help attract your attention. They may also tinker with my words when they don’t quite explain themselves as well as I had intended.

Three products in particular that were a part of our Slip Resistant offering in the past are the CD1210, CD1230, & CD4290 styles.

We now have men’s and women’s Florsheim LoCut metatarsal stock #’s FE2440 and FE244 respectively available for possible purchase.

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However, the Georgia Boot people asked themselves what they could do even better and came up with what I think is a great idea.

They kept the easy on – easy off upper design of a Romeo, but added a new bottom construction to it.

Those traits noted above all fall well outside my area of strength. My artistic skills have been limited at best. I have never been responsible for the actual purchasing process of obtaining our products and managing our inventories is done by our Supply Chain Planning group.

The Lehigh 6333 actually has multiple applications, but we might not be getting the word across regarding it.

First of all, the 6333 is a protective toe work shoe that is compliant with the ASTM F2413-05 Protective Toe Footwear standards. So, if you just need a protective toe shoe, the 6333 may be for you.

It is often times difficult for an old school shoe dog like myself to follow along with all of these modern technologies and languages.

I am a guy who wears traditional shoes such as Lehigh Lites steel toe casual oxford stock # 5194 because they suit my style and comfort.

We felt that making a basic black uniform looking steel toe locut athletic style retaining its basic features (such as being compliant with ASTM F2413-05 Electrical Hazard standards) would be easy, but it was the two new features we added to it that could help generate extra reasons for people to possibly utilize it.

We have recently added some more Timberland PRO styles to our Lehigh Outfitters selection. Included among them is their Timberland PRO Magnus stock # 85591.

Working with and for Joe has been enjoyable, educational and at times exhausting as he is one of the few people I have seen who can go at the same pace as the head of our division for sustained periods.

While I never had the design skills of our current developers, they have always treated me well I think at least partly because of the shared development aspects of our backgrounds.

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Included among some of our more recent additions have been the Spring, Merrell, and Crocs brands. We now have a newer addition to our SlipGrips package with the Avia brand.

We have recently started to display a group of newer Rockport styles including a traditional men’s black steel toe dress wing tip stock # RK6741 at one extreme as well as a very casual tan color steel toe boat shoe stock # RK6736 on the other.

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It was around this time that a friend offered to fix me up on a blind date. I had never gone on a blind date and was dead set against them, but I decided to give one a shot this one time since desperation had pretty much settled into my mindset.

If you think that it was bad that I chose to go out of desperation, I wonder how you would feel about my date-to-be being tricked into going on the date.

Super Bowl weekends were not kind to my Bills in the early 1990’s when they lost 4 straight Super Bowls. However, the Bills have had some positive Super Bowl weekend experiences since then when various players from their Super Bowl era (such as Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, & Bruce Smith) have been elected into the Hall of Fame on past Super Bowl weekends.

We offer composite toe as well as steel toe protective toe sport styles. We also offer Static Dissipative as well as Electrical Hazard sport styles.

It is nice to spend time with a number of our key field sales people and home office employees away from the office on a weekend. This is certainly one of the highlights of the year for me.

While we have offered Timberland PRO slip resistant products as part of our SlipGrips package in the past, we are now expanding it further with their women's Timberland PRO Renova Professional slip resistant products that could be appropriate for health care or hospitality purposes.

Nautilus has been strong in women’s footwear through the years and continues to be so now.

I am admittedly not much of a shopper. However, the one part of shopping I like to do is to provide my wife with some sort of surprise Christmas gift. It does not have to big in size or $, but I like to try to think of something that my wife does not see coming.

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We have been receiving requests for a new SlipGrips branded pump and the initial inventory of our SG7586 has just arrived.

We had referenced some New SlipGrips Slip-on stock #’s SG7030 and SG7530 for men and women respectively.

These new slip-on styles were value driven plus were made with a rubber outsole that not only has excellent slip resistance for hospitality use, but also has extra durability by its one piece design that does not have multiple sole layers that can potentially separate from one another.

We have added the Crocs brand with 4 styles that were just uploaded to Lehigh Outfitters and SlipGrips.com. These styles include slip resistant Crocs styles for men and women. You can find these styles by typing Crocs in the search bar.

These work boots combine comfort and rugged features throughout, starting with their supple tumbled oiled leather upper extending down to their multi-layer bottom.

While I have some thoughts that come right to my mind, I believe that no matter how much I write about, I could always write more.

I had mentioned about an Outbound Sales / Customer Experience representative that is known for arriving to work before the rooster and we all believe it because none of us are there soon enough to observe anything otherwise. She is so early and so ready to go!

There is one person in the Client Services Department who was thought to possibly break out in song while happily conversing with a congenial customer

We have a waterproof lacer Rocky stock # 6717 as well as a more basic lacer in Rocky stock # 6722. However, these are no ordinary lacers

Route 89 was picturesque, but it did have one drawback.....more

Speaking of sparks...

These meetings can be challenging, yet productive, as they involve the input of a number of key people who can provide input based on their various backgrounds and perspectives.

Our recently concluded Line Review included the talents of our Lehigh District Sales Manager from Texas.

Timberland PRO series footwear is built with a purpose.  Their people look at what’s needed for feet to perform at their best on their job and design products to meet those challenges. 

Look for a wide variety of styles from Timberland PRO on our web site including Timberland Pro Pit Boss steel toe work boot stock #’s 33032 and 33034.

It was just about thirty five years ago that my parents were taking me to begin my freshman year at Grove City College. I was basically terrified because it was my first time living away from home, and I really did not know what I wanted to do in the future.

My first semester of freshmen year was overwhelming as I tried different classes.  Economics was one class that I struggled with the whole time.  Accounting never came together for me until the final exam (and I was relieved to be done with it afterwards). 

August 12, 2010 -- By the time that you are reading this blog, I will hopefully be relaxing away for our annual weekly vacation at the beach in Stone Harbor, New Jersey.

I plan to be focusing on a different type of toe, foot, and body protection during this week using my share of lotion on my skin that has not seen much exposure to the sun in quite some time.

Here we are well into summer and the baseball races are heating up.  It takes me back to my childhood routing for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  My father interested me in them at a young age.

We did not live in the Pittsburgh area, so it was a real thrill for me when I was able to go to my first major league game during a visit to Pittsburgh when I was probably about ten years old.

We offer a wide variety of protective toe hiker styles in our Lehigh Outfitters selection. One of our key partners is Timberland PRO.  While there are certain Timberland PRO styles we offer on a regular basis, there may be periodic times where we access some of their other products that we choose to try as a test.

Those of you that have read our Ask an Expert blog have likely caught on that I am a huge fan of our Georgia FLXPoint products because of their extreme flexibility and underfoot comfort.

We have encountered different comments over time regarding the ability of boots to resist the harsh work environments of working in concrete.

Concrete can be very harsh on boots in different ways.  One question we would have is does leather footwear tend to hold up acceptably in your particular environment.  If it does, we have some good composite protective toe all leather styles that could be well worth your consideration.

We receive many inquiries regarding what footwear we have that helps deal with the stress and strain of walking and/or standing on concrete floors for long periods of time.

We actually have a number of different styles that we might suggest under those circumstances, but these suggestions can also be significantly influenced by what other features are needed by a particular customer.

Being a person who has spent most of my working life involved in the development and functionality aspects of footwear, our marketing people have taken on the challenge of trying to make me into a marketer.  They throw different terminologies my way that I don't understand (such as a White Paper – Isn’t most all paper white unless it is a special colored version?).

Believe it or not, the article that I am to put together here is to be a White Paper and it is to be my first shot at trying one.  We will see how I do from here.

Lehigh Outfitters has been providing protective toe safety shoes since the early 1920’s initially under the name of Lehigh Rubber and Leather Company.

Until approximately 20 years ago the only option for protective toe footwear was with steel toe caps. Steel toe footwear has served the industry well over this time and continues to do so today.

However, one key addition in the past 20+ years has been footwear with non-metallic composite toe caps.

Like many of you, we have been dealing with our share of snow and cold weather lately.  Keeping that in mind, we wanted to highlight some of our footwear products with special features to help you deal with cold conditions.

I think that one of the more frequently asked questions we receive is what can you recommend for working (be it walking &/or standing) on concrete for long time periods.

We feel that we have an excellent series of products in our Georgia Boot FLX Point series.  The FLX Points are made with an extra thick Comfort Core polyurethane cushion insole that directly contacts your feet giving and springing rather than compressing down.  These boots also have....more

A number of years of my time in the footwear industry have been spent in the Product Development area.  While my eye for style has never been strong, I have been fortunate to work around other talented development people who I was able to learn from as well as utilize some of their skills, while I concentrated more on the detail aspects.