#5 Stitching and Gluing a Career in Footwear Management

Today there are only a small handful of footwear factories still reliably turning out footwear in Canada. While the exact number of factories once reliably making footwear may be lost to history, in Toronto alone there would have been at least a dozen as recently as the early 1990s. Mellow Walk footwear was born from the collapse of the industry in Canada and first opened its doors in 1993.  At that time Diana was fresh into her career working in accounting and purchasing at Terra Footwear’s Markdale, Ontario plant. How do you go from administration to running the entire factory? As Diana says there was no training manual, no college level program, it was all on the job and training started years before the current plant manager was scheduled to retire.

Fast forward a dozen years later, Terra had recently closed its Markdale factory and Diana came to work for Mellow Walk safety shoes. As Diana freely admits there is something about a career in footwear that makes it hard to let go. It’s possible that someone like Diana simply thrives in the planned chaos of manufacturing; of scheduling promises, supplier errors, production shortfalls, machine breakdowns and staff absences. And while many of Mellow Walk’s production staff over the years have been on the edge of retirement all find it difficult to say goodbye to the job, the people and, of course, the footwear. And just as Diana was trained to manage a footwear plant she has helped train many others, and training is all on the job. There are no training manuals.

At Mellow Walk, the show must go on and the shoes must continue to be made.

To Listen to the episode: Apple Podcast / Spotify Podcast